COLOMBIA, SC (AP) – Some of South Carolina’s oldest and most powerful senators began their campaign on Tuesday to get the state to lend $ 550 million to bring more technology and rail service to the port of Charleston.
They were met with skepticism from other senators who questioned whether the state should let a private company handle the updates, wanted more supervision from the State Port Authority or wondered if the proposal had been fully examined.
Up to $ 550 million would go on new rail lines to allow more containers to go straight from ships to trains, as well as barges that could be controlled by technology to move containers from terminal to terminal. There would be projects to expand roads, add cranes and other infrastructure.
The start of the debate on the proposal he brought the chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, Hugh Leatherman, to the Senate floor. The 89-year-old Florence Republican spent much of the session on the balcony to lessen the risk of catching COVID-19.
“It is not always in a Senate career that you decide on something that will boost the state’s economic engine in the coming decades,” said Leatherman. “Our goal is to be the preferred port on the East Coast, period.”
A new terminal will open soon in Charleston Harbor it is named after Leatherman in honor of his 37 years in the Senate.
The debate is likely to last several days, if not weeks. $ 550 million is about 5% of the state budget that lawmakers have control over spending on, but the state would pay the bonds at $ 43 million a year for 15 years. South Carolina last issued bonds on this scale in 1999, when it borrowed $ 750 million for school buildings.
State Senator Dick Harpootlian, who carefully analyzes how tax money is spent on economic development and private business, has warned his fellow senators to take their time and be careful.
The Columbia Democrat said that only a 45-minute review of the proposal after it was raised on Tuesday left him seeing several warning signs, including how South Carolina planned to make the Port Authority more responsive to state control.
“There is a lot of money at stake here, and believe it or not, there are a lot of lawyers here looking to get a share of the lawsuit,” said Harpootlian.
Currently, the Port Authority is not fully considered a public body or a private company. State Sen. Nikki Setzler said that part of the proposal would require them to tell lawmakers and others about their financial situation, who they hire and fire and how they spend their money.
“They are now going to answer these tough questions about what they did annually,” said Setzler, a West Columbia Democrat who is the 44-year-old oldest senator.
Some senators questioned why the state needed to spend money when a private company could build the railroads. Setzler said that by making the state lend the money to the Port Authority, they could ensure that the tracks could be used by anyone.
Setzler also pointed out that the state spent $ 120 million on tax incentives in 2019 to get the professional football team Carolina Panthers to move their practice fields from Charlotte, North Carolina to Rock Hill, South Carolina.
“We gave the Panthers a pile of money. And this is a private entity, ”said Setzler.
State Sen. Tom Davis told senators that he planned to vote for the bond issue, although South Carolina appears to be ignoring the proposal to build a joint port with Georgia in Jasper County, South Carolina, near the mouth of the Savannah River.
At the port of Charleston, South Carolina needs to continue spending money like $ 400 million to deepen the port of Charleston. There are no bridges to get around the Jasper County site and the railway lines and all other infrastructure can be built to exact specifications out of the box, said Davis, R-Beaufort.
“We have to see the whole board here,” said Davis.
___
Follow Jeffrey Collins on Twitter at https://twitter.com/JSCollinsAP.