Transport center will be audited

The General Assembly's watchdog group will quickly launch an investigation to find out what happened to millions of state and federal dollars for the James E. Clyburn University Transportation Center at South Carolina State University.

Philip Laughridge, chairman of the Legislative Audit Council's Governing Board, said the group agreed at its Wednesday meeting to conduct an audit, and to do it "sooner rather than later."

Council Director Thomas Bardin said he would contact Jonathan Pinson, chairman of S.C. State's Board of Trustees, by the end of the day today to begin the process. He also said he plans to contact university President George Cooper to discuss the audit.

Bardin said he's aware that the university's board voted last month to hire an external auditor to conduct its own audit of transportation center funds.

The council would be open to reviewing anything presented by an auditor hired by the university, Bardin said, "but we'll be in charge of getting to the bottom of the issue."

Pinson said Wednesday that the board hasn't yet hired an external auditor.

He said he would have preferred to first have staff members from federal agencies review how money from federal grants for the transportation center was spent. "But we'll support (the audit council) fully, and get through the audit," Pinson said.

In a press release Wednesday, Cooper said, "SC State is completely committed to transparency and accountability; and during this process I will ensure that the University fully cooperates with the mandates that the Council sets forth."

Laughridge said that one of the reasons the Governing Board was compelled to move forward with the audit was that House Speaker Bobby Harrell and Senate President Pro Tem Glenn McConnell signed a request for it.

It takes the support of five legislators to call for an audit, except in the case of the speaker of the House or the president pro tem of the Senate, who can individually request audit investigations, he said.

And seven other legislators also signed the request, which was initiated by state Sen. Robert Ford, D-Charleston.

"It's an audit that gained a great deal of attention very quickly," Laughridge said.

Ford said he called for the audit in response to a June 14 report in The Post and Courier that showed that more than $50 million has flowed to the center since 1998. About half of the money was for the first phase of a new transportation complex and the other half for transportation programs.

The university in Orangeburg has most of the money for the new building on hand, but officials have been unable to account for millions of federal dollars for transportation programs.

While what happened to millions of dollars in grant money remains a mystery, some internal university memos obtained by The Post and Courier point to financial problems the Legislative Audit Council might be able to sort out.

The memos show that Reinhardt Brown, former interim director of the transportation center, raised concerns about how some federal grant money was being spent. In a March 2009 memo, Brown stated:

--$64,426 from the federal grant money available for the new transportation building was missing because it was used for a research project that was never conducted. The project was entitled: Historic Survey of Non-Metal Truss Bridges in South Carolina. Brown stated in the memo that he wasn't able to find out how the money was used.

--$15,572 from a Southern Rural Transportation Center grant was used inappropriately to issue scholarships to students in the Master of Science in Transportation program.

--In a September 2008 memo, Brown stated that $19,148, which was not authorized under the On-the-Job Transportation Careers grant, was paid to a nonprofit organization.

Brown, who was subsequently removed as the center's interim executive director, has filed a lawsuit against Cooper and board member Robert Nance, who is the district director of Clyburn's South Carolina staff.

Brown alleged that they knowingly made false statements about him that implied that he was incompetent, and engaged in a civil conspiracy against him.

Reach Diane Knich at 937-5491 or dknich@postandcourier.com.