DOT bill is critical victory for restructuring and reform

The state House of Representatives, almost at the last possible moment on Thursday, salvaged a bill to reform the Department of Transportation. Its passage was the most critically needed action of the legislative session.

While the bill retains elements of the existing system of agency governance, it turns over the administration of the state's largest department to the governor's appointee who will become a part of his Cabinet. As such, it is the most significant reorganization of state government since the initiatives undertaken by Gov. Carroll Campbell.

Further, it provides a rational criteria to determine which road projects will be built, based on, for example, public safety, traffic congestion, environmental effects and consistency with local land-use plans.

As Dorchester Rep. Annette Young, who led the House reform effort, said, "You can't put a road in there just because a legislator wants it. It has to meet the litmus test."

The reform campaign was initiated in 2005 by Tee Hooper, chairman of the highway commission and the governor's sole appointee on the board, who complained about waste and mismanagement at the agency. While his complaints went unheeded by his colleagues on the commission, all of whom were legislative appointees, they resonated with enough legislators to force an audit of the agency advocated by this newspaper.

The findings of the audit, released in late 2006, were simply devastating. The Legislative Audit Council determined that millions were wasted, contract rules weren't followed, hiring decisions were made on the basis of nepotism and favoritism and included make-work jobs.

Particularly irritating to legislators was the finding that the agency had misinformed them about fund balances in an effort to keep them intact during a difficult budget year.

If the LAC's findings were shocking, so was the blithe response to the audit by the agency. The executive director refused to acknowledge the validity of most findings and complained that the audit failed to report the good news about the agency — as if that were the LAC's charge.

But as the audit conclusions were validated one by one, over the course of extensive legislative hearings, the momentum for reform gained force. The first casualty was the executive director, who took early retirement.

Nevertheless, there remained many in the Legislature who were unwilling to change a broken system, and it took a concerted effort by a few reform-minded lawmakers to force the issue. Sen. Larry Grooms, R-Berkeley, who headed an ad hoc committee on the DOT, and Senate President Pro Tempore Glenn McConnell maintained unrelenting pressure in the Senate, as did Rep. Young in the House.

House Speaker Bobby Harrell was instrumental in pushing the bill to final passage after a group of Democrats threatened to stop the bill over an unrelated funding measure for rural development. Speaker Harrell's commitment to the reform proposal and his ability to allay the Democrats' apprehensions ultimately carried the day.

In his remarks to the House, Speaker Harrell noted that the audit only covered a fraction of DOT operations, and that the reform bill would make sure the job was completed. Additional audits should help uncover and fix other shortcomings. Under the new system of governance, there should be less resistance to change.

Sen. Grooms says that passage of the DOT bill shows that reform is possible for state government.

"If we can pass major legislative restructuring for the Department of Transportation, perhaps we can restructure other agencies," he said. "Perhaps we can reform the Department to Education. Perhaps we can put more agencies under the direct supervision of the governor."

Providing South Carolina a system of governance that shifts authority to the governor won't be easy, as the history of the DOT measure shows. And political reality says that restructuring measures won't be perfect. The current bill, for example, allows sitting commissioners to serve out their terms.

Nevertheless, the DOT reform is an achievement which will improve agency management, accountability and the expenditure of public dollars. That's good news for every South Carolinian who drives on state highways and pays the gas taxes to build and maintain them.