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Gliders and bubbles and lasers, oh my Everything from drones to dinos to be found at Toy Fair 2015 C2 SERVING SOUTH CAROLINA SINCE OCTOBER 15, 1894
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Getting back on the right path Juveniles get help readjusting to society after stints in DJJ BY MATT BRUCE matthew@theitem.com A.J. was 14 when he got sent away. His sentence came down a few days before Christmas Day 2013 and dashed any hopes the Sumter teen had of spending the holidays with his family. A.J. had already spent 45 days at Midlands Regional Evaluation Center but knew his stay was being extended when officers let him know he couldn’t be released to await trial. “Usually you go home after you finish your evaluation,” he said. “But they told me I wasn’t going to be able to do that because I was detained, so I already knew I wasn’t about to go home no time soon.” As it turned out, A.J. was right. He was ordered to spend 12 months in the custody of South Carolina’s Department KEITH GEDAMKE / THE SUMTER ITEM of Juvenile Justice and would At the office of their attorney, Calvin Hastie Sr., Kaleem Sims and Richard Conyers talk about turning their end up serving about eight lives around after spending time at the Department of Juvenile Justice. months before he was released
on probation last August. A.J. was convicted of taking part in an attempted armed robbery that occurred when he was 13. He maintained he never had a weapon, but prosecutors accused one of the members of his group of wielding a gun during the robbery. Under South Carolina’s “hand of one is the hands of all” doctrine, a person who participates in a crime can be charged with any crime that subsequently occurs during the initial offense because the individuals are acting as a group. So in A.J’s case, he was charged as if he was holding a gun during the robbery attempt even though he insists he was just there and never touched a weapon. He became one of 4,000 juveniles under community supervision when he began his sentence. A.J. served out his time
SEE DJJ, PAGE A8
HOW DO WE ADDRESS OUR AGING HIGHWAYS?
States seek alternatives for roadway funding BY DAVID A. LIEB The Associated Press
J
EFFERSON CITY, Mo. — Touted as one of the first interstate highways, a 200-mile
span of Interstate 70 between suburban St. Louis and Kansas THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
City stands as a prime example
A car zooms by a large pothole on Oakland Avenue in Highland Park, Michigan, on Feb. 18. Lawmakers and governors across the country must confront how to address an aging network of roads, highways and bridges during an era in which federal money for such projects has remained stagnant or declined.
of the challenges facing the nation’s roads. Built in the 1950s and ’60s with a 20-year-life expectancy, the four-lane highway is crumbling beneath its surface and clogged with traffic as it carries more than 30,000 vehicles a day on many of its rural stretches, requiring more frequent repaving. The cost to rebuild and widen it is estimated at $2 billion to $4 billion — as much as five times the projected yearly construction and maintenance budget of Missouri’s transportation department. And there is no easy way to pay for
it. The state fuel tax hasn’t risen in about 20 years, and voters defeated a 1-cent sales tax for transportation. Gov. Jay Nixon has since floated the idea of hiking the gasoline tax and reviving a previously failed plan to turn I-70’s reconstruction over to a private entity that could charge tolls estimated at up to $30 per car. As legislatures convene across the country, lawmakers and governors are confronting similar realities in
their own states: how to address an aging network of roads, highways and bridges during an era in which federal money for such projects has remained stagnant or declined. Figures compiled by The Associated Press show the total amount of money available to states from the Federal Highway Trust Fund has declined 3.5 percent during the fiveyear period ending in 2013, the latest year for which numbers were avail-
able. During that span, the amount of inflation-adjusted federal highway money dropped in all states but Alaska and New York. In response, states have tried to devise ways to fill the gap. Governors and lawmakers in several states are proposing new taxes, tolls and fees to repair a road system whose historical reliance on fuel taxes no longer
SEE U.S. ROADS, PAGE A11
Loss of federal money only small part of S.C. road funding woes BY JEFFREY COLLINS The Associated Press COLUMBIA — The amount of money South Carolina gets from the federal government for roads has dropped since 2008, but that is only a small part of the funding problems for a crumbling highway system. Figures compiled by The Associated Press show the total
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amount of money the state has received from the Federal Highway Trust Fund dropped by nearly $43 million, or more than 6 percent, during the fiveyear period ending in 2013, the latest year for which numbers were available. Lawmakers trying to figure out how to get more money toward roads said that is still a significant amount — enough to maybe add an
extra lane to 15 or 20 miles of interstate or repave a lot of secondary roads. But there were bigger problems. Road funding has never matched the state’s growth with a gas tax that remained unchanged for nearly 30 years while road construction prices have risen considerably and vehicles are burning a lot less fuel. The management of the De-
partment of Transportation has come under fire too for relying on political pressure instead of objective rankings to decide what gets built and repaved and what doesn’t. South Carolina was the tenth-fastest growing state in population during the past decade, and road spending went up 28 percent in that time. But 32 other states increased road funding at high-
er rates from 2003 to 2013. Lawmakers have promised to do something to get more money to roads this session as business leaders have increased pressure by warning South Carolina’s economic growth could slow down if congestion increases while the condition of the highways decreases.
SEE S.C. ROADS, PAGE A9
DEATHS, A11
WEATHER, A12
INSIDE
Sarah J. Barkley James Phillips Wayne D. Barrineau Sr. Elihu McDowell Sr. Jack L. Gardner Waterman Jacob Davis
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