Carolinas AGC reports the SC Senate spent last week debating the budget on the Senate floor. “They talked about road funding and several amendments were offered. But, at the end of the week, it was just a bunch of talk and no action,” said CAGC, in its weekly NewsBreak.
The Senate returned to Columbia on Monday to resume their debate on the $6.3 billion spending plan and they only have nine legislative days to complete their work on the budget and many other important issues that CAGC and other members of the business community are interested in. Sadly, time will most likely run out before any real action is taken.
The Senate Finance committee recently passed a $1.3 billion dollar funding proposal to address the state’s road needs. The plan is the most comprehensive road plan that has been put forward in years and it addresses the funding needs in several different ways: indexing, local option sales tax (which provides funding to all 46 counties in the state), bonding, and fee increases. The needs are so great because the legislature has ignored crumbling roads for way too long. Thus, multiple revenue streams are needed in order to start addressing the problem. Allowing the legislature to continue to ignore the road funding needs of this state should be unacceptable to our businesses and to the public who use the roads daily. If the Senate is not going to prioritize road funding needs through the state budget, then they need to complete their work on the spending plan so they can pass legislation, like H. 3412, which does more than just kick the can down the road for yet another year.
Last week SCFOR, the SC Alliance to Fix Our Roads, of which Carolinas AGC is a member, published a YouTube video on how much roads are really costing South Carolinians. See it Here. Read More.
