State officials have awarded $8.4 million in contracts to a powerful senator’s company.

Since 2016, the SC Departenmt of Tranportation has given 56 bridge contracts to Florence Concrete Products.

Sen. Hugh Leatherman was Florence Concrete’s president when he joined the Senate in 1981 and served in that position until 1993.

Leatherman, R-Florence, has been the longtime chairman of the Senate Finance Committee which approves the Senate version of the annual state budget, including DOT’s money.

Since 2016, he has received an unspecified salary and dividends from the company, according to his annual statements of economic interests filed with the State Ethics Commission.

His latest statement on March 25 lists salary and dividends as “family” income, though his previous SEIs identified those sources as “personal” income.

The contracts with Florence Concrete Products ranged from $50,164 for a bridge near the town of Lodge in Colleton County to $564,400 for 4 bridges in Lexington, Richland, Kershaw, Sumter and Lee counties, according to DOT records provided under the state Freedom of Information Act.

State comptroller general records show that DOT paid Florence Concrete nearly $7 million from fiscal 2017 into this fiscal year which started July 1.

His latest SEI also lists several other general contractor or real estate businesses – Leacon, Inc. of Florence, “Hugh K. Leatherman LLC,” and “Hugh Leatherman One 1 LLC” – as family income sources.

His online legislative biography lists him as Leacon’s president.

Secretary of State records show Leacon, “Hugh Leatherman, LLC” and “Hugh Leatherman One (1), LLC” as companies registered under his name.

Leatherman also listed Leatherman Realty as a family income source.

His wife Jean is the broker-in-charge of the ERA Florence office.

He reported a total of $21,855 in salary and other public income related to his role as a senator.

Leatherman legally didn’t have to report his private income until state law was changed in 2017.

The law now requires politicians, political candidates and chief public administrators to report the sources and types, though not amounts, of their and their immediate family members’ private income.

That change was first pushed in 2013 by the SC Policy Council – The Nerve’s parent.

Although it allows taxpayers to see if politicians have potential conflicts of interest, the law has a number of loopholes.

In 2013, Leatherman began to report that he was a “minority” stockholder in Florence Concrete – several weeks before The Nerve revealed that the company had received more than $30 million in state payments from July 1993 to March 2013.

In a related matter, The Nerve in 2015 revealed that in 2012 Florence Concrete obtained an official “disadvantaged business enterprise” for hiring a female president.

The company has received $1.9 million in federal contracts through the DBE program to help minority businesses.

Leatherman’s influence over DOT and other state transportation matters extends beyond his chairmanship of the budget-writing Senate Finance Committee.

He chairs the state Agency Head Salary Commission which gave DOT secretary Christy Hall a $46,768, or 18.6%, pay raise.

That increased her annual salary to $298,000, on top of a nearly 32% raise the commission gave her last year.

The legislature approved spending more than $440 million through DOT to build a road from I-26 to a new Port of Charleston terminal named after Leatherman.

Leatherman also sits on the Senate Transportation Committee and the State Transportation Infrastructure Bank board, which over the years funneled several billion dollars to large construction projects in select counties.

Leatherman didn’t respond to a written request seeking comment on recent Florence Concrete contracts.

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