University won't give up financial papers

Despite calls from some of the state's top legislators for South Carolina State University to turn over financial documents on millions in unaccounted for money for the James E. Clyburn University Transportation Center, school officials refused to provide the information Wednesday.

The newspaper filed an official request Wednesday under the state's Freedom of Information law to compel the university to release public financial documents that could explain how about $25 million for transportation programs has been spent since the center was launched more than a decade ago.

The law allows university officials to wait up to 15 working days to say whether they intend to grant or deny the request. A denial could spark an extended and costly legal debate.

More than $50 million has flowed through the transportation center since its 1998 launch, but university leaders only have been able to account for about half of that money.

Senate President Pro Tem Glenn McConnell said Tuesday that the university's refusal to provide public information to the newspaper gave him "an Arctic chill."

McConnell, R-Charleston, is one of nine legislators who supported a request for an investigation into the transportation center by the Legislative Audit Council, the state's watchdog group. The council's Governing Board last week agreed to quickly begin the investigation.

State Sen. Robert Ford, R-Charleston, who initially called for the audit council investigation, and Rep. Gilda Cobb-Hunter, D-Orangeburg, also said S.C. State should not withhold public documents.

But as the state's watchdog agency is gearing up to launch an investigation into how the university spent the transportation center money, it remains unclear how much of a paper trail exists.

University officials for months have given varying explanations on which records the university has kept and where they are stored.

The newspaper's investigation on the transportation center, published June 14, revealed that 12 years after the center was launched, no transportation research was under way.

S.C. State President George Cooper and Dale Wesson, interim director of the transportation center, have said they have been in their positions a short time and can't explain how money from federal grants for transportation programs over the past 12 years was spent.