Comptroller says account will be online

By ROBERT MEYEROWITZ

Once the state gas tax increase went into effect on the first day of July, money began to flow from it and vehicle sales tax and registration fees through various state agencies to the State Treasurer, en route to…

To where, precisely, is the question.

The money is supposed to go into the new Infrastructure Maintenance Trust Fund (IMTF). From there, it can be used for road “repairs, maintenance, and improvements,” which is what many assumed or hoped would happen, or to pay down bond debt.

Now, state Comptroller General Richard Eckstrom says he plans to make the flow of that money transparent by putting the IMTF account online, “as another step in his efforts to bring greater transparency to government in South Carolina,” writes Eric Ward, the comptroller’s public information director.

Eckstrom’s aim is to have the account posted in the next month, Ward said, adding that it will be “in a format that will allow taxpayers and other interested parties to track the fund’s specific sources of revenue and the detailed expenditures made from the fund.”

To do that, the comptroller will need new accounting procedures, Ward said. It “will involve tracking the revenue sources and uses for the IMTF in more specific detail than would be available using the state’s existing accounting structure for other special revenue funds.”

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