State officials may be letting you down – again.

When lawmakers passed the gas tax hike bill last year, they promised the money would repair roads and bridges.

Critics said the law was written to give millions of dollars to the legislatively controlled State Transportation Infrastructure Bank. It would pay for bonds for big projects in violation of the state constitution.

Department of Transportation Secretary Christy Hall told Rick Brundrette of the government watchdog SC Policy Council that the 2017 law raising gas taxes 75% is not a “windfall” to the infrastructure bank, and the law doesn’t require DOT to give the bank money.

In a response, she wrote that if she “needs to call on” the bank for “financing road and bridge projects, Act 40 provides a mechanism to do so.”

Hall didn’t directly answer how the 6-year, 12-cent gas tax hike and other taxes could be used to finance bank debt for interstate widening projects and repair of non-interstate roads.

DOT has said 80% of the state’s 42,000 miles needs to be resurfaced or rebuilt.

Before the gas tax hike was passed, DOT estimated interstate widening costs at about $5 billion, Hall told DOT commissioners.

But the projected costs are greater than what the 2017 law is expected to generate a year. That means DOT or the bank would have to sell bonds.

At the end of April – 10 months after the gas tax and other fee hikes went into effect -- $219 million had been collected in a special Infrastructure Maintenance Trust Fund and only 8% of it had been spent, the Policy Council found.

By law, gas tax money “must be used exclusively for the repairs, maintenance, and improvements to the existing transportation system.”

But no bridge repair or replacements are on the project list totaling $309.2 million as of April 30, the Policy Council found.

DOT, which has identified 465 out of 750 “structurally deficient” bridges statewide to be replaced, said the new bridges will be paid for primarily with federal funds.