Research

  • Why don’t more counties control local road funding?

    Despite the gas-tax-hike having passed in 2017, an alarming number of South Carolina’s roads and bridges are still crumbling. As bad as things are for state roads and highways, locally managed roads are sometimes in the worst condition, as they receive far less attention than big and costly transportation projects.   As lawmakers gear up for a new road funding bill heading into next year, it...
  • Delegation influence reaches state airports

    By now, if you’ve been following the Policy Council’s latest research, it should come as no surprise to hear that legislative delegations (the group of state lawmakers representing a particular county) play an oversized role in filling important state and local positions, which has an effect on everything from education policy to the roads we drive on.  But this power extends far beyond the more predictable...