"Is the Juice Worth the Squeeze?" - 2017 Draft Report of the SCTIB Strategic Planning Committee.
In 2015, then South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley, appointed me to serve as Chairman of the Board of the South Carolina Transportation Infrastructure Bank., a state organization founded in 1997 to facilitate the funding of significant (>$100 million) infrastructure projects. During my second meeting, Senator Hugh Leatherman, Sr., who was then and still serves as the Chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, made a motion to form a Strategic Planning Committee. The motion was seconded by Joe Taylor, a Columbia businessman and former Secretary of Commerce under Governor Mark Sanford. Acknowledging that if we were going to be investing hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars, it might be wise to have a strategy, the Board unanimously approved Senator Leatherman’s motion. Joe Taylor, Greenville businessman Bo Aughtry, and I served on the Strategic Planning Committee.
In late January, 2017, the United States Senate voted to confirm Governor Haley as Ambassador to the United Nations. She immediately resigned her position as Governor of South Carolina, and Lieutenant Governor Henry McMaster assumed the Governorship. McMaster, as was his prerogative, appointed John White of Spartanburg as the new Chairman of the SCTIB in early March, 2017.
Prior to my leaving the Board, the Strategic Planning Committee, was at work on a report entitled Is the Juice Worth the Squeeze?. The purpose of the report was to provide a big picture overview of some of the public and private costs associated with SC’s automotive transportation system. It was felt such data could help inform the board’s priorities and decision making processes as to the best means of investing funds to benefit its shareholders - the Citizens of South Carolina.
The attached is a DRAFT copy of the report. I caution the reader that the report has not been vetted, nor was it ever published. Nevertheless, it includes valuable information on the state of automotive transportation in SC, including the SCDOT’s vast road mile inventory compared to that of other states, safety statistics, total costs, etc.
The DRAFT report is provided here as a public resource.