YOUR TAXES AT WORK

You might think state lawmakers would learn from an embarrassing lesson.

Lawmakers routinely introduce resolutions naming roads, bridges and intersections for living people such as disgraced ex-DOT Commissioner John Hardee.

The governor can’t veto the resolutions, and the cost comes from gas tax dollars lawmakers promised for road and bridge repairs.

The issue rose again with Hardee’s conviction for federal evidence tampering.

The DOT Commission unanimously approved changing Hardee Expressway signs at Columbia Metropolitan Airport to Columbia Airport Expressway.

They disavowed Hardee for his guilty plea on “payments from a contractor seeking to do business with SCDOT while serving as an SCDOT commissioner.”

Hardee was given what critics called a slap on the wrist – 18 months’ probation and house arrest.

He was arrested the next day in a prostitution sting.

He served on the DOT Commission 13 years until Gov. McMaster declined to renominate him – a week after we revealed he was a paid consultant for lobbyists who received thousands of state agency tax dollars.

When lawmakers approve road- or bridge-naming signs, the cost comes from money to repair local roads.

SC law caps DOT reimbursement at $500 per request, though not per sign.

Lawmakers promised the gas tax hike would fix crumbling roads and bridges, but DOT has done few of them.

Hardee is the son-in-law of state Sen. Hugh Leather-man, chairman of the Senate Finance Committee.

Government watchdog John Crangle said naming public roads, bridges and buildings after living people is a problem because “even though they may not have gotten into trouble they can get into trouble after.

“It creates an embarrassment, which is what happened in the Hardee case.”

Sen. Katrina Shealy, R-Lexington, has a bill to allow roads, bridges and buildings to be named after fallen soldiers or police officers and others only after more than a year following their deaths.

A 2014 Shealy bill proposed a 5-year wait for recognition of deceased officials. The bill died in Leatherman’s Senate Finance Committee.

Brundrett is the news editor of The Nerve. Contact him at 803-254-4411 or rick@the-nerve.org .