COLUMBIA -- State highway commissioners are questioning a five-year, $23 million Department of Transportation contract signed last year to provide management services by a private consultant.

At issue is not the quality of work the firm is doing but whether it was necessary to use private consultants, said Commissioner Bob Harrell Sr., who chairs the board's Finance and Administration Committee.

"Just looking at the numbers, it could appear to be excessive," he said. "My big question is, why don't we do this in-house? Do we not have the ability to do it in-house, and if we have the ability to do it in-house, why are we not doing it? I can't imagine what a reason would be for us not doing it in-house right now. But until I get the answer to that, I don't really know what to say."

DOT Chairman Tee Hooper said the questions are important in view of the agency's financial problems. Last week, officials told the commissioners that the agency was experiencing some cash-flow problems that could grow worse later this year, the result of fewer federal dollars than expected, flat fuel tax revenues and price hikes in petroleum products used to build roads.

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Sen. Greg Ryberg, an Aiken Republican who chairs the Senate Transportation Committee, said the contract "makes no economic sense" with the agency hurting for money.

"As big a shortfall as we have at DOT, it is the commission's fiduciary and moral obligation to establish the worth of this contract," he said.

Betty Mabry, the agency's executive director, could not be reached for comment. Her chief deputy for finance and administration, Mo Denny, who was placed in his current post in January and was not involved with the firm's selection, said he thinks DOT personnel did some of the work the consultants now do.

"They've been augmenting our staff," he said of the consultants. "I guess in some ways they are an extension of SCDOT staff. They are involved in a lot of our meetings and are basically almost like staff operatives."

DOT has more than 5,000 employees with an annual budget of $1.2 billion, one of the largest in state government. It cares for more than 40,000 miles of roads, many of which have been rated as some of the most dangerous in the nation. Yet budget shortfalls have interrupted paving of secondary roads in recent years and piled up construction and maintenance backlogs totaling more than $1 billion.

John Simpkins, a professor at the Charleston School of Law, said he would expect commissioners to look more closely at the way the agency spends its money now that cash-flow problems have emerged.

"Agreements that may have been made in times where the financial picture was a lot rosier can certainly come under some scrutiny when the purse strings have to be tightened," he said.

The consulting firm, Civil Engineering Consulting Services Inc., is a Columbia company founded in 1993, according to the firm's Web site. The firm's president is Cathy Raad, according to DOT records.

Her husband, Paul Raad, who said he is a senior engineer with the company, is a former DOT engineer. He also worked as a consultant on the agency's giant accelerated construction program known as 27 in 7, according to records provided under the state Freedom of Information Act.

Paul Raad has about 20 years of highway engineering experience, according to the agency's records. As a DOT employee, Raad served in project management, roadway design, traffic engineering and construction, the records show.

He also served as project director for work ordered last January by DOT similar to the contract being questioned by commissioners. The maximum cost of that four-month job, part of the 27/7 program, was to be $532,272, according to the records.

The firm also has done other work for the agency and has earned awards for its work, according to the firm's Web site.

The questioned contract, signed last May, allows the firm to be paid up to $4.7 million annually and can be renewed for four additional years. According to the contract, the company is to assist the agency in developing and maintaining a list of projects that can be let for construction.

The firm also is to monitor projects to be sure they are on schedule, issue progress reports and assist in the management of other projects to be sure they are on schedule and within budget, as well as various other tasks, according to the contract.

The contract estimated it might take at least 17 managers, schedulers and analysts to do the job, at a direct payroll cost of $109,520 per month. With added overhead, fixed fees, direct costs and outside services, the total estimated cost for the management work was calculated to be $396,807 per month, or $4,761,686 a year, according to the contract.

Since January 2005, DOT has paid the firm about $3.5 million, according to records provided by the state Comptroller General's Office. The records do not show whether all of that amount was for the May 2005 contract.

DOT used a competitive procurement process to select the firm but only Civil Engineering Consulting Services submitted a proposal, said Doug MacFarlane, director of contract services for DOT.

He said the proposal was checked by the agency's contract selection committee to be sure it met the agency's request for services. The contract was approved by other DOT executives but was not presented to the board, he said.

McFarlane said while a typical bridge contract might draw a dozen or more bids from engineering firms, it was not unusual that this contract only drew one.

"When you get to a management-assistance type contract, the variety of expertise that is needed on a project such as this, which involves a little bit of everything, a lot of firms would not have all of those services locally," he said.

Asked if the tasks listed in the contract were the type of jobs formerly done by Department of Transportation staff, Denny said, "That distinction, I can't answer." He said it could be that the agency's staff could not get to all the work the firm is now doing.

"That's kind of a tough one for me to answer," he said. "Some of the staff that used to work here work over there."

Harrell said he wants more information about the contract, as do other commissioners, who he said are concerned because of questions raised in anonymous mailings.

The board authorized staff last January to advertise for a consulting firm "to augment and assist staff in project scheduling, reporting and other management and engineering services," according to the board's minutes, which show that the board frequently has authorized the search for consultants.

Harrell said while the commissioners are often presented with a thick stack of documents regarding projects, he believes the board should be told of contracts like the one with Civil Engineering.