Who do you believe about pot hole patching?

State officials claim they patched about 411,000 potholes statewide in the 1st year of the gas tax hike.

If accurate, that’s an average of about 10 repaired potholes for every mile of state-maintained roads.

Last week, the S.C. Department of Transportation announced it was launching a “Pothole Blitz.”

Their goal was to repair more potholes brought on by heavy rain.

A review by The Nerve of DOT records found they filled far fewer potholes over the past 3 fiscal years through calls to their Customer Service Center.

For its “Pothole Blitz,” the agency encouraged the public to call the center or make online requests to report potholes.

In fiscal 2016, the DOT center received 3,197 requests to fix potholes.

The number of annual requests dropped 47%.

Just over a 1,000 requests came from Richland County and Columbia.

The next largest number

(478) came from Lexington County.

DOT spent $1,083,342 to fix the reported problems, though the records didn’t specify the number of potholes filled.

What DOT spent dropped 63% by the end of last fiscal year to $229,120.

In contrast, nearly $384 million in revenues from the gas tax hike had not been spent as of Nov. 30, and less than 12% had been spent on all “external projects.”

Lawmakers promised that the money from the 12 cents per gallon gas tax hike and other vehicle taxes and fees would fix the state’s crumbling roads and bridges.

The South Carolina Policy Council – the parent organization of The Nerve – contends the law was written to allow DOT to divert money to the State Transportation Infrastructure Bank to pay off bonds.

The Nerve reported last month that under a bill by state Sen. Nikki Setzler, D-West Columbia, millions will be siphoned from increased gas taxes to widen interstates.

The Nerve has questioned DOT about how often agency work crews inspect roads and repair work done outside of call center requests.

DOT has not responded.

DOT said 80% of about 42,000 miles of road need resurfacing or rebuilding and 465 of 750 “structurally deficient” bridges must be replaced.

Here’s a sample of Customer Service Center notes:

• “Customer states the road where SCDOT previously did roadwork has numerous potholes and it’s beginning to cave in” – Lexington County.

• “Sink hole on the roadway at this location. Repairs were made a while back, but the roadway keeps sinking” – Charleston County.

• “Length is full of potholes and sinkholes” – Aiken County.

• “Customer states that a sinkhole is forming in front of her driveway. They’ve placed an orange cone so people can see where it’s forming” – Richland County.

You can submit an online repair request at http://dbw.scdot.org/workrequest/.

Read more on SCDOT repairs on page A3.

Brundrett is the news editor of The Nerve (www.the-nerve.org). Call him at 803-254-4411