Would you buy a car, truck or house sight unseen or without knowing whether the vehicles would run or the house was livable?

Yes, that’s a stupid question.

Yet most of us – taxpayers and electric and gas ratepayers – pay billions of dollars a year in taxes and excessive rates without even knowing what it goes for.

For example, do you know what all the municipal property taxes and fees you pay go for? Many municipal officials don’t know either. The money goes to buy all manner of needed things each year, and they just sign off on the increased costs.

Are they aware that they and other town residents have paid millions of dollars to lobbyists to convince lawmakers to give back to your town more of the taxes you pay the state yearly?

The SC Policy Council discovered that in 2018, local municipalities, school districts, fire, water and sewer districts, public colleges and at least one state agency paid lobbyists more than $1 million to curry favor with lawmakers and other officials.

For example, state taxpayers and electric cooperative members are paying $20 million to lawyers and power industry experts to come up with a plan to sell or turn over management of taxpayer-owned Santee Cooper and its $8 billion debt.

At least half of that debt came from its ill-managed and abandoned nuclear power fiasco with SC Electric & Gas.

The expertise we are paying for is undoubtedly needed, but with it comes no guarantee that taxpayers and ratepayers will be any better off when Santee Cooper is sold or comes under more capable management.

For example, we were promised when the state raised our gas taxes that the money would go to fix our dangerous roads and crumbling bridges.

Most of the money has gone to widen interstate off-ramps. No doubt backing traffic into interstates is dangerous. But the hundreds of miles of pocked roads and crumbling bridges are even more dangerous.

It’s time our public officials leveled with us about this.

– Jerry Bellune