Members of the Aiken County Legislative Delegation agree with Gov. Nikki Haley's vision for spending the larger chunk of a $400 million surplus on fixing the state's roads and bridges and avoiding a gas tax increase.
Haley announced Tuesday that she expects about $400 million in the Supplementary Surplus Fund, leftover dollars in the state's budget. During a press conference, Haley said the money should only be spent on tax breaks, state debt payments or fixes to roads and bridges.
"If roads are that urgent, wouldn't that be the immediate need?" Haley said. "You'd say do that, and that takes all the tax increases off the table."
At the beginning of this year's session, Joel Lourie, a Democratic senator from Richland, said legislators are "kidding ourselves" if they don't address raising the gasoline tax as a viable way to raise funding.
But Haley and others believe the $400 million can diffuse discussions on raising the gas tax. About half of the money is recurring funding, which is a testament to economists who believe state revenues are on the rise.
Haley said recurring funding could be the ticket to keeping the gas tax at just more than 16 cents per gallon, the second lowest in the nation. That belief has garnered support from Rep. Chris Corley, R-Graniteville, who said he also is in favor of not raising the tax and relying on surplus funds.
"If we have the money, we owe it to the citizens to do just that," Corley said. "But I would prefer not to see tax increases. I think with our budget, we can find places where we can make cuts and come up with that money."
Legislators previously reported the surplus would be more than $100 million, but did not anticipate a $400 million sum.
Before legislators realized how much money was in the surplus, senators mapped out a plan that would have given $23.5 million toward state employee bonuses, another $4.1 million to county reimbursement for ice storm cleanup and the rest to transportation and infrastructure.
Sen. Tom Young, R-Aiken, said that on May 7, the Senate agreed to dedicate most of the then-expected, non-recurring supplemental funds to road needs by distributing the money in each of the 46 counties. Earlier this week, Young re-emphasized his support for spending funds on infrastructure needs.
"Doing this gets the money to those on the local level in each county who already have a list of roads needing attention and are waiting on funding availability in each county," Young said.
Derrek Asberry is the SRS beat reporter. He joined the paper in June. Follow him on Twitter @DerrekAsberry.
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