THENERVE.ORG RICK BRUNDRETT STOPS BY 7/28/26

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 1:01

Yeah. And back in um uh back in April I'd written a story that uh uh DOT had claimed that you know it had filled you know something like you know over eight million potholes, okay. Um and uh although uh they never said that back then, and that was over like a you know five-year period, um as many as eight million potholes filled, but they didn't specify whether the pothole was repaired multiple times. Um so what I wanted to do is besides, all right, about besides doing a story on potholes being filled, is what happens when your car gets damaged. I mean, uh there are l lots of people okay in South Carolina and they know firsthand, you know, what driving over a pothole can do to your car.

SPEAKER_03 1:50

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:51

So um I wanted to get records from the Department of Transportation on, you know, how many, at least this past the fiscal year that just ended, it ended on June 30th. So, you know, at least for uh how many you know, pothole claims have been filed um against DOT and and what had happened to them. So there are roughly about a thousand claims filed statewide for over a million dollars just in uh you know one year period. And even then, those records went up to like April 30th. So there are only even two more months left in the fiscal year, but it's at least, as I wrote in the story, at least 954 uh claims totaling over a million dollars. And you know, um they only you know they approved only about you know less than half, 37%, you know, with you know, payouts totaling, you know, around 175,000, which is only about 17 percent of all the claims. You know, around 40% of claims are just denied outright. And they did have, you know, uh several hundred, you know, a couple hundred claims still pending, but I determined in my review that let's say they approved all of them at the full claim amount. Well, it still represents less than half of all the claim amounts that were filed. So, you know, and it it's uh you know, the average payout is only about $185, which anybody knows that's basically, you know, maybe one tire, okay? The cost of a tire. And so, you know, and and it can, as you pointed out, Liz, lead to injuries. So, as part of my review, uh the DOT claims that under their policy is that if you make a claim of over $2,500 or it has you were injured, they kick it over to the state insurer called the uh state insurance reserve fund, okay, which is operated uh underneath the uh uh part of the uh state fiscal accountability authority. It's a state agency and it's governed by a five-member board that's chaired by the governor. Okay, so I looked at, well, what are they actually, you know, paying out for like you're saying, some maybe these more serious injury claims. So um I looked at closed claims that were done last fiscal year as part of that. And you know, you can get some pretty big payouts. The vast majority of, you know, I looked at 125 what they call manhole pothole drain claims. Now that's not saying that all of them are potholes, okay, because those records don't actually specify whether it's a pothole unless a lawsuit was actually filed. Then I went and looked up those lawsuits and I gave um uh five examples of you know pretty serious claims that um that were filed and and and settled, and one of which occurred, uh I wrote in there, one of those examples was a $50,000 claim out of Ory County when a motorcyclist hit a you know pothole on the uh Robert Griston Parkway there back in 2023, and uh his lawsuit um said claimed that you know not only his motorcycle was obviously damaged, but he was injured too. Um and when I read that lawsuit, what was interesting was uh compared to some of the other lawsuits I looked at, they actually included a picture in the lawsuit itself of the pothole, big pothole in question. So uh uh it's most you know, most folks know um when they're driving on South Carolina roads that it can cause, at the very least, pretty serious damage to your car, and even more sadly, it can injure you, you know, whether whether you're driving a car, whether you're you know driving a motorcycle or something.

SPEAKER_02 6:03

I exactly I I don't even know how many uh people are uh in this um you know the status update were on a motorcycle or a bicycle or something and you know you're going uh 50-60 miles per hour, these things can sneak up on you and throw you off. Um but here's the thing uh that I'm wondering is why do you care? Why should we care? What it's so the so what the roads are bad, you know.

SPEAKER_01 6:36

Well, I I think you know, because um as I've shown in the story is that it's affecting your at the very least, even you're not injured, it's uh you know, it's money, it's hundreds, if not thousands, of dollars out of your pocket, own pockets to, you know, pay for damage. And if you say, well, it's not a given that if you file a claim with the Department of Transportation that you're going to get approved and paid in full. My own the their own records show that, you know, the um uh you know that that's not happening. So it's not that they're denying all claims, but they're not approving all claims either. So, you know, you've got less than uh, at least uh by my calculations, you've got less than a 50-50 chance of getting your claim approved and paid and paid in full, which means the so what is, that means you're eating the cost of our bad roads that they should be maintaining. And remember, back in 2017, you know, our uh uh lawmakers uh passed a law uh that would raise the state gasoline tax by 12 cents, which was a 75% increase over the base state gasoline tax. Um, you know, that 12 cents was phased in over six years. So, you know, it's raised a lot of money, and yet I've written plenty of stories looking at DOT records that there's a relatively slow pace at fixing all these, you know, worst roads. Um, in fact, you know, there that that there's a special fund that was created with this gas tax hike, and you know, as of the end of May of this year, it had over a billion dollars in it. Okay. So, you know, it's like they're collecting the money, but the work isn't getting done very quickly. And um, and I think part of the problem was at the state level, and this there was an audit done by the Legislative Audit Council back in I think 2016, uh, which you know show had a number of recommendations. And one of the things they found was the the department didn't have like a priority of worst first. You would think, well, if you've got a road that has a you know a hundred potholes versus one, guess which road you ought to be doing first? Well, that wasn't necessarily the you know their priority. They had other types of priorities in there. And so one of the things that the policy council, South Carolina Policy Council, which is you know the NERFS parent organization, recommended that you know uh the state at DOT, you know, implement these LAC reforms that were called for back in 2016, including going back to you know a worse first, you know, um at least framework on how we you know fix these fix these roads. Now, supposedly this year we passed another DOT reform law, which, among other things, would uh create a pothole mitigation program which requires DOT to spend $15 million annually from the gas tax hike money for uh supposedly permanent full debt payment uh repairs of quote repetitive potholes, all right? Well, yeah, as I pointed out in the story, as part of that, um uh DOT is supposed to get these, do these permanent repairs within now within seven days of being notified, you know, with certain uh exceptions, uh depending let's say you have really bad weather and they couldn't do it. So I pointed out in the story, DOT tells me they're developing an app that'll make it easier for people to report um, you know, these potholes so they can, you know, make the supposedly make these permanent repairs um faster.

SPEAKER_02 10:35

Yeah, because we had we had talked about how they have to fill potholes in the meantime because you know, you you have the hole until you know they can come and pave. We've seen that happen a lot.

SPEAKER_01 10:46

You know, you know, exactly. And so it it's uh uh our states known as the Palmetto State, I would uh nickname it uh also the pothole state. Uh but it's it's one of these things that it's not a laughing matter when you when you're hit when you your car hits one and it gets you know it gets damaged, or if you even if there sadly if you get injured out of it. So, you know, um as I've said more than once, there's some things in life you can't fake your way through, and you can't fake your way through bad roads, hothole riddled roads. Um they're either getting fixed or they're not. And and so uh until until our state system gets better, my intent is to keep reporting on these issues.

SPEAKER_02 11:40

So uh streamlining the DOT hasn't really helped or well, I mean remember this this uh this law was just new law, it was just passed this year.

SPEAKER_01 11:51

So it's gonna it's gonna take take some time to do it. Um there are other issues there I mean lawmakers passed uh this is another issue, they they passed a separate resolution that would basically take out close to $140 million out of the Capital Reserve Fund, which is one of our two main rainy day funds, although they what they do with the Capital Reserve Fund every year is they rate it, but then replenish it at the same time. So they they rate the existing account but then re replenish that amount immediately and then rate it the next year. Well, um what they did this year is they they uh in years past it was like almost like a slush bond, okay, for lawmakers for the pet projects. They whittled that down quite a bit, and now there's only just a few things they're tapping in this year, big items, but one of them is for um what they call bridge modernization because there have been calls from you know, um certainly from you know McMaster and others that we are aging bridges, you know, need to be replaced at a much faster pace. So uh at least that money is supposed to be earmarked for, you know, our failing bridges uh in this state. And you know, the policy council did its own analysis that last October and looked at a 10-year period and cited federal statistics to show that actually, you know, uh the quality of our you know roads overall had declined, okay, over that 10-year period, while our you know, you know, spending at the state and you know, even the county transportation committee um levels were increasing far beyond the you know pace of inflation. So something's not matching up. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 13:43

That's not good. All right, Rick Brindret of thenerve.org. Thank you so much for that update. And you can go on to that site. It's part of the FC PolicyCouncil.org. The uh the publication version of it.org. Thank you, uh Rick. We'll talk to you next time.

SPEAKER_01 14:01

Thank you very much for having me.