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Wednesday, 09 May 2007 |
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DOT’s Economic Impact
An economic impact study of the S.C. Department of Transportation, prepared in 2003 by the University of South Carolina’s Moore School of Business, found that the SCDOT’s activities enhance the overall transportation system across South Carolina and entail many economic benefits for the state, both in the short and long term, including:
• SCDOT supports a total of $2.1 billion of economic output annually. Of this total, $1.6 billion is attributable to highway construction and maintenance projects.
• $768.6 million in labor income for South Carolinians each year can be linked to the activities of SCDOT. This amounts to roughly 1.1% of total labor earnings statewide.
• SCDOT’s annual operations support a total of 24,360 full-time equivalent jobs distributed across all regions and sectors of the South Carolina economy.
• A total of $91.6 million in annual, recurring tax revenue for South Carolina is supported by SCDOT’s activities. Of this total, $79.3 million flows to the state’s general revenue fund, while $12.3 million is directly allocated to education via the Education Improvement Act.
By Shelia Watson
The timing couldn’t be better. A document that originated in the Intermodal Surface Transportation Efficiency Act of 1991 has become the Statewide Transportation Improvement Program just months after an upheaval in the S.C. Department of Transportation that ousted its director.
The improvement program for fiscal years 2007, 2008 and 2009 will deal with structuring and governance of the SCDOT, said Tee Hooper Jr., who serves as chairman of the SCDOT and who spoke at the recent annual conference of the S.C. Economic Developers’ Association earlier this month about some of the challenges facing the department.
“The DOT as a whole has gotten a black eye over these leadership issues, which were about the chairman and the commission and were not an employee issue,” he said. “The lack of structure caused a lot of problems.”
The SCDOT, with a $1.2 billion budget and 4,800 employees, holds the primary responsibility for transportation investment in South Carolina. SCDOT pursues activities that enhance the state’s transportation network, and, in dollar terms, the primary activity of SCDOT is the construction and maintenance of the state’s highway system.
The SCDOT also has been mired in controversy for more than a year with allegations of operational mismanagement.
“As a result of some things I questioned, we had a legislative audit,” Hooper said. “There were problems with leadership and operations, but if you fix the leadership issues, you fix the operational issues.”
Hooper said among the problems was management of the money coming from the State Infrastructure Bank.
"We’re able to take advantage of matching federal dollars, but we have to put the money up first and get reimbursed,” he said. “That wasn’t happening properly and that’s what cost Betty Mabry her job.”
Besides the money issues, the basic structure of the system was flawed, Hooper said.
“We had silos of reporting, and we haven’t had any long-term strategic planning,” he said. “On a scale of 1 to 10, we’re at 1 or 2. We’ve been reacting to who had the strongest voice.”
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