The package will max out the state’s highway bonding capacity for a decade, leaving our state unable to borrow road money if we actually need to.

The debt service on the bond package, projected at $30 million a year, will have to come out of the state’s highway repair fund.

That would be dangerous under normal circumstances, since the fund already is inadequate to keep up with our crumbling roads and bridges, but it’s downright irresponsible under the current conditions: The agency has so mismanaged its cash flow that it had to get an advance on its federal highway funds this summer just to pay bills for work already done. And despite assurances that the problem had been cleared up — at least until next summer, when it’s likely to recur — it is now projecting more negative cash balances this month and again in December.

And we cannot ignore the circumstances under which this ill-conceived package was thrust upon our state: Instead of being advertised in advance, as such matters are supposed to be, the package was added to the agenda at the last minute, at a meeting in the Lowcountry that, like most out-of-town meetings, was not attended by many of the watchdogs who show up for the normal Columbia meetings.

Today, at a regularly scheduled meeting in Columbia, Commissioner John Edwards will propose that the board rescind its approval of the package. When he made a similar motion in August, Commissioners Sara Knuckles and Clifton Parker voted with him — one vote short of a majority.

The good thing about the refusal of commissioners Eddie Adams, Craig Forrest, Harrison Rearden and Danny Isaac to admit their mistake and abandon this package is that it is fueling support for dismantling the unaccountable commission and turning control of the agency over to the governor. But as much as we need to make that policy change, we

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