Are state officials shirking their duty to protect your tax dollars from waste?

13 years ago, lawmakers approved $700,000 to help Erskine College establish the “John Drummond Center for Statesmanship.”

The college failed to give a written report on how it spent the money.

Last month, the nonprofit college affiliated with the Associate Reformed Presbyterian Church, admitted in court papers that a “physical facility for the Drummond Center was never constructed,” and that “no accounting of the $700,000.00 of state funds was made.”

A lawsuit asks the court to order the college to return the $700,000 to the state.

The case raises questions about lawmakers’ oversight of your tax dollars given to private organizations.

Last month, we found that annual reports submitted by 4 regional economic development organizations didn’t specifically tell what those groups did with $2.8 million in state funds.

We sent the Erskine lawsuit with questions to longtime Senate Finance Committee chairman Hugh Leatherman, House Ways and Means Committee chairman Murrell Smith, and Delbert Singleton, secretary of the State Fiscal Accountability Authority.

Leatherman did not respond. Singleton said he would not be able to answer the questions, and a Ways and Means staffer said Smith was “not available by email or phone this week.”

The suit alleges that instead of spending the money for the Drummond center, the college spent it on the “Grady L. Patterson Chair/ Professor of Politics.”

Patterson, who died in 2009, was a longtime Democratic state treasurer.

The suit contends the college is seeking $64.6 million for 13 charter schools and will keep $1.3 million as an administrative fee.

The college wants the court to dismiss the suit.