Companies Make $7,000 Per Meeting In Dirt Road Paving Project In S.C.

A plan to pave dirt roads in South Carolina leads to engineers and consultants cashing in.

According to The State, three companies in South Carolina tasked with paving dirt roads in Richland County, which includes the state capital of Columbia, are being investigated for charging the state $7,000 to attend a public meeting. Thirteen of the meetings were held in March and April of 2015 and attended by employees of the Dennis Corp., a local engineering firm and two consulting companies, P.J. Noble and J.B. Ladner.

Dennis had previously been contracted to hold seven public meetings to inform Richland County residents about the effort to pave hundreds of county maintained dirt roads. One meeting was scheduled for each county council district where paving would take place.

But after those seven were held — at a total cost of nearly $54,000 — 13 more meetings were scheduled: 12 in the Lower Richland area and one in the Irmo area. The contract guaranteed the program managers a $7,000 fee for each of the additional meetings, said Michael Niermeier, director of Richland County’s transportation department.

The State has requested a copy of Dennis’s contract with the county, which put the company in charge of paving 560 dirt roads from 2015 to 2017. Efforts to reach the Columbia-based Dennis Corporation and the two consulting firms for comment were not successful.