In 2021, the state had federal money to spend and a good reason to spend it. The pandemic had sent more than $48 million in education relief into South Carolina. In March of that year, the Governor’s Office handed the University of South Carolina $6 million of it to build Apple computer labs around the state, in the places where the internet runs thin and a child’s homework depends on a signal that is often not there.

Some of those labs opened. There are iCarolina labs today on university campuses, in local libraries, and at Benedict College. That part worked, and it mattered.

Two of the labs never opened at all. The state spent $635,600 getting them ready.

Here is where that money went. The university paid $190,200 to lease space in the USC/Columbia Technology Incubator, a downtown building, and another $409,400 on a services agreement with the Incubator to hire staff, market the lab, and fit out the rooms. The lab never opened. The City of Columbia later cancelled the lease on the building.

The second lab was smaller. The university signed a three-year, $36,000 lease with the South Carolina Research Authority for a room at the McNair Center to hold an Apple lab. After the university stopped running online classes in that room, the lab sat unused.

Add it up and you get the same $635,600. Two leases, a staffing contract, and not one open lab.

Put it in terms you live with. You hire a contractor to put a new roof on your house. You pay him up front. The shingles get delivered and stacked in your driveway. Then the roof never goes on. The contractor got paid. The supply yard got paid. You are still standing in the kitchen with a bucket every time it rains. That is the $635,600. Everyone in the chain got their money, and the thing the money was for never showed up.

None of this is hidden. It comes from a public audit. The Legislative Audit Council, the legislature’s own auditors, reviewed this grant at the request of a bipartisan group of senators and found $1.7 million in questionable transactions inside it. The empty labs are the first $635,600 of that.

The university disputes the findings. Its president has said the spending was necessary, reasonable, and appropriate, that the office made its best efforts, and that some of the money went to outside organizations not under the university’s legal authority. He is entitled to that, and it deserves a fair hearing. But best efforts describe the trying. What this grant was meant to buy was open labs for children without the internet, and these two never opened. And if part of what went wrong is that the money flowed out to organizations the university could not fully control, that points straight at the problem rather than away from it.

So how does $635,600 walk out the door with nothing to show for it, when no one set out to waste a dime? I doubt a single person at USC did. The answer is older than this grant, and Milton Friedman put it best. There are four ways to spend money. When people spend their own money on themselves, they watch the price and they watch what they get. When they spend their own money on someone else, they still watch the price, but they care less about the result. When they spend someone else's money on themselves, they stop watching the price but still mind what they get. And when they spend someone else's money on someone else, they watch neither, because they have no reason to.

That is the box this money sat in from the start. It was not the university’s money. It came from Washington, though it started in your paycheck and mine. It was spent by one set of hands, routed through a nonprofit, on labs for children none of those hands would ever sit a child down in front of. Nobody in that chain was spending his own money on his own house.

So nobody stood at the end and asked the one question that decides everything. Did a lab open. Of course the shingles ended up in the driveway. That is what the fourth box does, every time, in every government, to anyone who stands in it. Not a character flaw. A structure.

And that is the whole difference between that money and yours. When it was yours, it sat in the first box. You watched the price and you watched what you got, because you earned it and there was never a dollar to spare. The morning a roofer left your shingles in the driveway and drove off, you would have been on the phone before lunch. You counted every dollar of that money when it was yours. The minute it left your hands, nobody counted it again.

That is the job I am running for, and it is why I am going to write this every week. Every story will come from a public document you can pull up and read yourself, the way I pulled this audit. No anonymous sources, no rumors, no guessing at what anyone meant. The record, in plain words, with the math shown.

Because the labs that never opened are one small piece of something bigger. Money in South Carolina has a way of vanishing the moment it leaves the state’s own books and moves somewhere harder to watch. At a university. At a charter school office. At an agency you have never heard of. And in the end, in the state budget itself. Different places, same disease.

The cure is the same every time. Somebody has to keep the count, stand at the end, and say what your money bought.

Next week: The Eight Who Never Worked.

---

Source: South Carolina Legislative Audit Council, A Review of the Office of Economic Engagement of the University of South Carolina and its Affiliation with the USC/Columbia Technology Incubator and the South Carolina Research Foundation (December 2024). Read it: https://lac.sc.gov/node/271

My name is Mike Burkhold. I started a company in Charleston in 2009, and I have spent fifteen years making complicated financial information simple enough for people to act on. I am running for Comptroller General, the office that keeps the state’s books. I went looking at how the state handles your money, found enough that I could not stop looking, and decided to show the rest of you what I was seeing.

Here is the one idea under everything I write. South Carolina has built a system where almost no one pays a price for losing track of the public’s money. So the money gets lost. Sometimes it slips out the door through a private nonprofit. Sometimes it piles up in an account no one counts. Different places, same disease, and the cure is the same every time. Fix the system.

So here is what you can expect, and what you will never get.

Every piece starts with a public document you can read yourself. A real audit, a real budget, a real contract. I show you where it is so you can check my work. I do not use anonymous sources or rumors. If I cannot point you to the record, I do not write it.

I am hard on the system and easy on the people. The folks in these stories mostly did what the rules in front of them rewarded. That is not the same as saying no one ever does wrong. People do, and when someone breaks the law, we already have offices built to answer it. Prosecuting wrongdoing is the Attorney General’s job and the courts’, not the Comptroller’s. Mine is the books, the system that is supposed to track the money long before anything reaches a courtroom. So when I point at a broken rule instead of a person, it is not because I am soft on bad behavior. It is because that rule is the part this office is built to fix.

There is a second lane I stay out of. I do not decide what the state spends its money on. The legislature does that, and the people elect them to do it. I am not here to second-guess whether a dollar goes to a road or a classroom. Plenty of people will argue that out, and they should. My question is narrower, and it never changes. Once the legislature decides, is the money tracked, and can the people who spent it account for it? I keep the count. I do not pick the winners. That makes me an ally to anyone who wants the books to add up, the legislators and the Governor included, not a threat to anyone doing the work in good faith.

I write plainly. If a thing can be said over a fence, I will not say it from a podium. Money stops being complicated the minute someone is willing to explain it to you honestly, and that is the whole job here.

That is also where the name comes from. The work of this office, stripped down, is counting. Counting what came in, counting what went out, and being able to say with a straight face that the two add up. For too long nobody did that counting and stood behind it. I intend to.

The office is also the last hand the money passes through on its way out. When an agency goes to pay a bill, the money does not move until the Comptroller General signs the warrant for it. The job before signing is to make sure the payment is documented and going where the legislature sent it. That is counting with the power to stop a dollar that cannot account for itself.

I do this because I believe it matters and because I believe it can be fixed. South Carolina is a great state that continually underperforms. It has the potential to be the best run and the freest in the country. We do not get there by shouting that things are broken. We get there by identifying problems and then solving them.

Here is the part that is yours. Nobody asked you whether to send this money. It came out of your check before you ever saw it. The least anyone owed you was to know where it went, and for a long stretch no one could tell you. That is what I write about.

So read one piece. If it leaves you a little surer about where your money went, subscribe. It is free, and I will keep showing you, every week, for as long as it takes.

The Proof Isn’t There Yet

Earlier this month, the SC Daily Gazette reported that South Carolina’s State Treasurer has refused to sign off on long-term construction loans for our state’s universities. He wants proof the books are fixed before he puts his name on anything.

He is right to ask. So am I. So are you.

South Carolina hired an outside firm to track the cleanup of its financial records. That firm, Forvis Mazars, released its findings on March 9th of this year. Here is what they found: the most important piece of the cleanup, confirming that the state’s records actually match what the banks show, is still not finished. A dozen other fixes are written down on paper but have never been tested under real conditions. Those tests can’t happen until the next annual financial report is produced. That report may land on the next Comptroller General’s watch.

So when the Treasurer asks for proof, this is the answer the record gives him: the work isn’t done.

How did we get here? It starts with decisions made long before the errors became headlines.

Subscribe now

The Comptroller General who ran this office for years pushed his staff to publish the state’s annual financial report faster than any other state in the country. Not because faster meant more accurate. Because being first qualified for a national award, a certificate from the Government Finance Officers Association. His team would race to close the books in November. The forensic review later found that this pressure likely contributed to the errors. The award was real. The numbers behind it were not.

Since that Comptroller General stepped down in 2023, the office has had no elected leader. The annual financial report has taken eight months to produce in each of the past two years, two months past the national standard. The office’s own records say why: it had to wait for outside forensic help before it could publish. A clean set of books doesn’t require a forensic firm to close. This one did.

Proof isn’t a press release. It isn’t a list of policies written on paper. It is a signed record, line by line, showing what was fixed, who did the work, and who independently confirmed it was right. People’s names attached to specific claims. If something turns out to be wrong later, everyone can see exactly who said it was done and when. Nobody has signed their name to that record yet. South Carolina is being asked to take the office’s word for it. After everything that has happened, that is not enough.

One more thing voters deserve to hear plainly. When financial controls are weak for a decade, one forensic review rarely finds everything. The errors that made headlines, the $3.5 billion restatement, the $1.8 billion balance, were not theft. They were the product of a system that went unwatched for too long. A system like that doesn’t give up all its problems at once. There are likely more accounting errors and mistakes still waiting to be found. Anyone telling you the books are completely clean right now is getting ahead of what the evidence shows.

That matters for every taxpayer in this state.

When lenders can’t trust a state’s books, they charge more to lend. South Carolina’s credit rating, the score that determines what interest rate the state pays to borrow money for roads, schools, and public buildings, could come under pressure the longer this goes unresolved. Higher borrowing costs don’t appear on a bill with your name on it. They show up as roads that take longer to fix, school budgets that come up short, and projects that get pushed back another year. The money to cover higher interest has to come from the same place all state money comes from, the people who live and work here and pay their taxes in good faith.

The Comptroller General’s office exists for one reason: to make sure the public’s money is counted honestly and reported plainly. Not reported fast to win an award. Not reported late because the underlying numbers weren’t ready. Reported accurately, on time, by people who stand behind what they sign. When that office works the way it should, the Treasurer doesn’t have to demand proof. The proof is already there, in public, for anyone to read.

South Carolina has not had that in a long time.

What this state needs is a Comptroller General hired by voters who answers to voters when the job isn’t done. Someone who will open the books on day one, say plainly what they find, good news or bad, and post every open item in plain English where anyone can see it.

No award-chasing. No waiting for an outside firm to tell the office what it should already know. No keeping problems inside the building until they become headlines.

The Treasurer shouldn’t have to guess whether the books are right. Neither should you.

The books belong to the people. All of them. Always.

Leave a comment

What I Will Do First as South Carolina’s Comptroller General

I am the Republican nominee for Comptroller General of South Carolina. I have spent a career building organizations, solving hard operational problems, and creating accountability in environments where it had been absent. That background is why I got into this race - because the problems facing this office are not primarily accounting problems. They are organizational and structural ones, and they have gone unresolved long enough.

Here is what I intend to do about them.

Close the open audit recommendations.

Independent reviewers commissioned by the General Assembly identified specific reforms that remained incomplete or unproven at the time of their final report. Those findings do not expire. My first commitment is to produce a clear public accounting of exactly where each recommendation stands - which are genuinely complete, which are complete on paper but untested in practice, and which remain open. That report will go to the General Assembly and to the public. South Carolina has earned the right to know that number.

Require agencies to close their books every month.

State agencies are currently not required to reconcile and certify their financial data on a regular cycle. That gap makes errors harder to catch and easier to accumulate. The Comptroller General has the authority to change that. Establishing a mandatory monthly financial close - with defined standards and real consequences for agencies that do not comply - is one of the most direct structural reforms available. It does not require new legislation. It requires will. I intend to use it.

Build a public transparency dashboard.

Citizens should not need an accounting background to understand how South Carolina spends their money. A public dashboard showing agency spending, contract activity, and financial reporting status in plain language is achievable with current technology. Transparency of that kind changes behavior. When data is visible, the incentive to keep it accurate increases. That benefits agencies doing their jobs and creates pressure on those that are not. I intend to build it.

Rebuild the office’s capacity to do its job.

The Comptroller General’s office today operates with a fraction of the staff it had when it was functioning at full capacity. That is not a sustainable condition for an office responsible for the integrity of state financial reporting. One of my first acts will be an honest assessment of where the critical gaps are, followed by a plan to fill permanent roles where the need is ongoing and bring in contractors where the need is immediate.

None of this is complicated in concept. All of it requires sustained attention and willingness to hold the line when agencies push back. The General Assembly did the hard work of demanding accountability after the restatement and commissioning the reviews that identified what needed to change. That work deserves a finish.

I intend to deliver it.

I was reading FITSNews one evening about a year ago, not long after writing a check to the state, not a small one, when I saw a headline about South Carolina losing $3.5 billion in a financial restatement. I assumed it was a typo. I went back and read it again. It wasn’t.

That was stunning enough. Then I found out it wasn’t even the whole story. Investigators had also uncovered questions surrounding a separate $1.8 billion tied to conversion and accounting entries during the state’s transition from its legacy STARS accounting system to the current SCEIS platform. Two massive accounting failures. Billions of dollars. And most South Carolinians had no idea either had happened.

I spent the next month trying to understand what was going on. What I found, or rather what I couldn’t find, changed everything. There are bits and pieces of financial information scattered across state government, but nothing comprehensive, nothing current, and no meaningful public tracking of whether the spending is producing results. I couldn’t find a clear picture of where the money goes. I’m not sure anyone can.

That is why I am running for Comptroller General.

Lawmakers in Columbia want to eliminate the income tax. I support that goal. Families should keep more of what they earn, and a disciplined government should always aim to reduce the burden on its citizens. Every dollar taken from families and businesses is a dollar that isn’t being invested, hired, or grown. And unlike the corporate incentive giveaways that have become our substitute for a competitive tax code, broad tax relief doesn’t pick winners. It lets everyone compete on a level playing field. If we want to recruit businesses the way Tennessee, Florida, and Texas do, we need a tax code that competes, not a system of handouts that rewards whoever hires the best lobbyist.

But before South Carolina eliminates the income tax, lawmakers and taxpayers deserve a clear answer to a basic question.

Where is all the money going?

South Carolina manages more than $40 billion a year in taxpayer funds. I have spoken with legislators and business leaders across the state, and the consensus is striking. The big errors are almost certainly not the only errors. When billions of dollars can remain misclassified or misunderstood inside the state’s financial reporting process for years, it is a strong indication of poor management and an understaffed office operating without adequate oversight. Large accounting failures rarely occur in isolation. They reveal deeper weaknesses in internal controls, reconciliation processes, and financial discipline.

Those numbers caught headlines for obvious reasons. But those errors are not the fire. They are the smoke.

In business, no responsible CEO would make major strategic decisions without clean financial statements. No board of directors would approve major capital moves if the books were unclear. State government should meet the same standard. South Carolina manages tens of billions of taxpayer dollars each year. Before lawmakers decide which taxes to eliminate, they deserve a complete and reliable picture of how that money moves through the system.

Right now the House and Senate are in the middle of budget season, making decisions that affect every taxpayer in this state. They are debating spending priorities, evaluating tax reform proposals, and weighing choices that will shape South Carolina’s future. Legislators take this work seriously. But even the most diligent lawmaker can only make decisions based on the information available. When the numbers are unclear, every decision becomes guesswork.

A budget is nothing more than a list of priorities with dollar signs attached. Legislators cannot set those priorities responsibly unless they can clearly see where the money is going. Right now that level of clarity does not exist.

The good news is that this problem has a solution. Fix the financial systems. That work begins with three straightforward reforms.

Reconcile the Books and Implement a Monthly Financial Close

The priority must be a full reconciliation of the state’s financial records. Treasury balances, agency accounting systems, and the enterprise accounting platform must align so every dollar moving through state government can be tracked and verified.

Private companies close their books every month. South Carolina should operate with the same discipline. Today the state primarily compiles its financial picture once a year through the Annual Comprehensive Financial Report. That approach leaves lawmakers and agency leaders working with outdated information. A state managing tens of billions of taxpayer dollars should close its books monthly, providing a current and reliable view of revenues, expenditures, and cash balances.

Regular reconciliations and monthly financial closes create accountability. They force agencies to maintain clean records, allow leaders to identify problems early, and prevent small accounting errors from becoming billion-dollar surprises.

Build a Taxpayer Transparency Dashboard

Citizens deserve to see how their money is spent. South Carolina should operate a public financial transparency system where taxpayers can view state expenditures in real time. Vendors, contracts, agency spending, and program costs should be easily searchable by anyone with an internet connection.

Several states already operate systems like this. Transparency changes behavior. When spending becomes visible, waste becomes harder to hide and leaders become more careful with every dollar.

Give Lawmakers the Data to Make Real Budget Decisions

Once the financial systems become reliable and transparent, the legislature can finally answer the question that matters most: where should we cut?

Tax reform cannot happen in a vacuum. Eliminating the income tax will require thoughtful decisions about spending priorities and efficiencies. Lawmakers cannot make those decisions responsibly without accurate data. Clean books create clarity, and clarity is what allows policymakers to make bold reforms.

None of this is complicated. Every well-run organization in the private sector already operates this way. South Carolina should expect the same from its government.

I went looking for the numbers to make the case for tax reform, and they weren’t there. That is the problem I am running to fix.

My priority as Comptroller General will be straightforward: fix the books. Reconcile the accounts, build transparency into the system, and give lawmakers and citizens a clear picture of where every dollar goes.

South Carolina can eliminate the income tax. We should. But first we need to know where the money is, and right now, we don’t.

Today I am pleased to announce that Charleston businessmen Ben Navarro and Austin McCombs have joined our Executive Leadership Council.

Their decision to serve strengthens this effort in meaningful ways. Both have built complex organizations, managed significant capital, and operated in environments where financial discipline, transparency, and performance are foundational. Their experience reflects the seriousness of what we are undertaking.

They join a Council intentionally assembled to support a clear objective: establishing a CFO standard for the South Carolina Comptroller General’s office.

South Carolina manages more than $40 billion annually in revenue and expenditures. That scale requires more than statutory compliance. It requires timely reporting, rigorous internal controls, modern financial systems, disciplined reconciliations, liquidity awareness, and clear communication to stakeholders. In any enterprise of comparable size, those responsibilities would fall to a chief financial officer operating with executive authority and accountability.

That is the model we intend to apply.

The members of this Council reflect that standard of leadership.

Dan Adams is the founder of The Capital Corporation and has directed more than 200 merger and acquisition transactions across multiple industries. His career in investment banking and private equity has required rigorous financial analysis, disciplined valuation, and governance structures where clarity and accountability are essential. His experience strengthens the Council’s focus on capital discipline and operational oversight.

Philip Garland served as Global Chief Information Officer at Willis Towers Watson and as U.S. CIO and Partner at PricewaterhouseCoopers. A CPA with more than four decades of leadership in enterprise transformation, cybersecurity governance, and finance-technology integration, he brings rare expertise at the intersection of accounting rigor and large-scale systems modernization. His background is directly relevant to strengthening South Carolina’s financial infrastructure.

Mikee Johnson is a respected South Carolina manufacturing leader and former chair of the South Carolina Manufacturers Alliance and the State Workforce Investment Board. His experience in workforce alignment, operational leadership, and long-term business stewardship reflects the discipline required to balance growth with fiscal responsibility. He brings a strong grounding in the realities of payroll, production, and economic development across our state.

Austin McCombs is the Co-Founder and Chief Executive Officer of Gnosis Freight, a Charleston-based logistics technology company pioneering Container Lifecycle Management®. Since founding the company in 2017, he has led its rapid growth, including institutional investment from Vista Equity Partners. His expertise in data architecture, operational transparency, and scalable systems aligns directly with modernizing how South Carolina tracks and communicates financial performance.

Ben Navarro is the founder of Beemok, a private investment firm dedicated to disciplined, long-term capital allocation and the building of enduring institutions. Over the course of his career in financial services and investment leadership, he has overseen enterprises operating at national scale, grounded in governance, operational rigor, and sustained performance. His work reflects a philosophy of stewardship — that capital, when deployed thoughtfully, should create lasting value and strengthen the communities it serves across South Carolina.

John Regan is a Founding Partner and Chief Investment Officer of PermCap, managing more than $5 billion in assets for endowments and families. As a former Senior Investment Officer at Cornell University’s endowment, he helped guide restructuring following the 2008 financial crisis. His institutional asset management background reinforces the Council’s emphasis on liquidity planning, fiduciary discipline, and long-term financial stewardship.

Chad Waldorf is an entrepreneur and former Deputy Chief of Staff to Governor Mark Sanford, where he helped write South Carolina’s first working Executive Budget. As chair of the GEAR Commission, he identified more than $500 million in savings and supported structural administrative reform. He brings practical experience bridging private-sector discipline and public-sector execution.

Bud Watts is Chairman of CommScope and former founder and leader of Carlyle’s Technology Buyout Group. With decades of experience in public company governance and private equity investing, he brings disciplined capital allocation judgment and board-level oversight developed in highly scrutinized financial environments. His leadership reflects both operational rigor and long-term strategic perspective.

Collectively, this Council represents experience and excellence in capital markets, enterprise governance, digital transformation, executive budgeting, and operational restructuring and entrepreneurial spirit. These are leaders accustomed to environments where numbers must reconcile, financial statements must withstand scrutiny, and stakeholders expect transparency.

That mindset is essential.

Establishing a CFO Standard in Government

A modern CFO does more than compile financial statements. The role includes safeguarding assets, enforcing internal controls, managing liquidity, overseeing procurement compliance, communicating financial performance, and providing leadership with accurate and timely data for decision-making.

Applying that model to the Comptroller General’s office benefits both taxpayers and the legislature.

Taxpayers deserve accurate, timely, and understandable information about how revenue is collected and how expenditures are managed. Strong monthly closes, prompt reconciliations, and modern reporting dashboards create clarity. Clarity builds confidence.

Legislators deserve reliable data when crafting budgets and evaluating policy proposals. Timely revenue tracking improves forecasting. Transparent expenditure monitoring identifies variances early. Clear liquidity reporting supports prudent fiscal planning. When financial information is dependable, decisions improve.

Beyond tracking dollars, we must measure performance. Public appropriations should be paired with measurable outputs. Understanding what results are achieved for each dollar spent strengthens accountability and informs future allocation decisions.

Routine, structured, and candid discussion of financial performance benefits everyone. Transparency should not be reactive. It should be institutionalized.

The Responsibility of an Elected Comptroller General

The Comptroller General is elected by the people of South Carolina. That carries both authority and responsibility.

The office should serve as the primary communicator of the state’s financial performance to its citizens. Financial reporting should not be designed solely for auditors or internal processes. It should be presented in a manner that is accurate, accessible, and useful to anyone seeking to understand the stewardship of public funds.

Clarity does not mean simplification at the expense of substance. It means presenting reliable information in formats that allow engagement at multiple levels. Some citizens will seek high-level summaries. Others will examine detailed line-item data. Both should be available.

The office must also ensure that all expenditures comply with established procurement requirements and internal controls. Vigilance in monitoring purchases protects taxpayers and reinforces trust. Waste, fraud, and abuse should be identified quickly and addressed directly, with transparency about both the issue and the remedy.

An elected Comptroller General should speak candidly about financial trends, risks, and performance. That communication should be steady, factual, and constructive. When citizens have reliable information presented openly, confidence strengthens and public debate improves.

South Carolina is financially strong. But strength must be reinforced by disciplined systems, modern reporting, and executive-level oversight that matches the scale of our state’s growth.

This Leadership Council reflects a commitment to that standard.

You can learn more about our Executive Leadership Council here:
https://www.burkhold.net/leadershipcouncil

If South Carolina is to become the most transparent and best-run state in the country, the place where the money flows must be governed with precision, discipline, and truth in numbers.

We need the support of South Carolina voters to make this happen.

—
Mike Burkhold

South Carolina stands at a moment of real opportunity.

Our state is growing. Families and businesses continue to choose South Carolina because they see promise and stability. But opportunity only lasts if the fundamentals are sound. Nothing is more fundamental than how a state manages its money.

In 2023, South Carolinians learned that the state could not account for $3.5 billion in its financial records. Months later, another $1.8 billion discrepancy came to light. What followed was confusion, delayed explanations, and finger-pointing across agencies. These episodes did not just expose accounting errors. They revealed a deeper failure of ownership and accountability.

For too long, the Comptroller General has been treated as a passive accounting function rather than a financial leadership role. Recording transactions and closing the books while assuming problems will be caught later is an outdated model. It does not work in a state managing roughly $40 billion a year.

South Carolina needs a Comptroller General who functions more like a chief financial officer.

A CFO does not wait for annual reports to discover problems. A CFO demands clarity, asks hard questions, and intervenes early when numbers do not align. Most importantly, a CFO owns the outcome.

South Carolina’s challenge extends beyond one office. Our executive branch is highly fragmented, with authority spread across independently elected offices and agencies that often operate in parallel rather than in coordination. This structure creates inefficiency, slows decision-making, and blurs accountability.

When authority is diffuse, responsibility becomes optional. Each office controls a piece of the system, but no one owns the whole. When failures occur, the response becomes explanation and redirection instead of correction.

That dynamic was on full display in 2023. Systems were blamed. Processes were questioned. Audits arrived after the fact. What was missing was clear ownership.

Fraud and financial mismanagement thrive where oversight is distant and accountability is blurred. When citizens cannot clearly see where money goes, or when explanations arrive years later, confidence collapses. Once trust erodes, every public function suffers.

Transparency should not be just a slogan; it is the foundation of public trust.

South Carolina does not yet have the level of transparency that earns trust. Today, too much financial information is delayed, fragmented, or difficult for lawmakers and citizens to understand. That gap creates risk and invites error. More importantly, it allows unelected bureaucracies to control the financial narrative instead of the people’s elected representatives. When legislators lack timely, clear data, meaningful oversight becomes impossible.

Modern financial systems can provide real-time visibility into spending. Every dollar can be traceable. Every contract can be tied to purpose and performance. Irregularities can be flagged early, before they become crises. But those tools only matter if the state chooses to implement them and lead around them.

Technology alone, however, will not fix a cultural problem.

South Carolina needs clear standards of stewardship, clear lines of responsibility, and leaders willing to accept accountability rather than deflect it. The Comptroller General’s office should function as an active financial steward, delivering timely, intelligible information that lawmakers, reporters and citizens can use on a daily basis.

Getting this right is not about politics. It is about fundamentals.

A state cannot promise efficiency if it cannot track its dollars. It cannot promise restraint if it cannot control spending. And it cannot promise accountability if no one is clearly accountable.

South Carolina’s future is full of promise. Realizing that promise starts by managing our money professionally, transparently, and responsibly, and by ensuring someone owns the outcome.

Mike Burkhold is a Charleston businessman and the founder of Equiscript, a healthcare technology company serving hospitals and health centers nationwide. He is running for South Carolina Comptroller General to bring transparency and accountability to the state’s finances. Married to his wife Melanie for 30 years, he has two children, lives on Sullivan’s Island and attends St. Andrews Church in Mt. Pleasant.

We have reached a point where most taxpayers view politicians and non-taxpayers as total grifters.

That belief did not appear overnight. It was earned through years of waste, opacity, and a governing culture that tolerates failure without consequence. And it is dangerous. Once trust collapses, self-government soon follows.

Recent reporting out of Minnesota exposed widespread fraud in taxpayer-funded daycare programs. Millions of dollars flowed to shell entities. Addresses overlapped. Payments repeated. Obvious red flags went ignored. The money vanished, and taxpayers paid the price.

This was not an isolated failure. It was a predictable outcome.

The fraud mattered because it was foreseeable. The patterns were obvious. Any competent financial system should have flagged them immediately. Either public employees ignored clear warnings, or no one bothered to look.

Both explanations point to the same problem.

And Minnesota is not alone.

We have seen billions stolen through pandemic relief fraud. We have seen abuse of public credit cards, rigged contracting, and nonprofits created solely to siphon taxpayer dollars. In South Carolina, the state lost track of $3.5 billion. Later, another $1.8 billion discrepancy surfaced. These are not accounting quirks. They are systemic breakdowns at the core of government finance.

Each scandal generates headlines. Then the system moves on.

Taxpayers do not.

Every failure reinforces the same conclusion: no one is watching the money, and no one is held responsible when it disappears.

That belief corrodes a free society.

Most taxpayers do not object to paying taxes that genuinely help people in need. They understand that a strong society protects the vulnerable. What they object to is being asked to fund systems that leak, enable fraud, and refuse to police themselves.

That is the real risk we face.

When trust in the safety net collapses, the entire system becomes undermined. People stop believing aid reaches those who need it. Support erodes. Legitimate programs lose public backing. The people who suffer most are not taxpayers, but the very individuals those programs were designed to help.

A system that tolerates fraud does not protect the vulnerable. It betrays them.

Self-government depends on earned trust. When citizens believe the rules apply evenly and public money is handled honestly, they comply willingly. They pay taxes. They follow the law. They accept outcomes they may not like.

When that belief breaks, everything changes.

Taxes feel like extraction. Laws feel arbitrary. Elections feel suspect. Civic engagement gives way to anger or apathy. Government increasingly relies on enforcement and bureaucracy because consent is gone.

That is how self-government erodes without a single vote being cast.

This cannot be fixed with better messaging or new slogans. It requires radical change across every level of government.

Transparency must be unavoidable. Every dollar traceable. Every payment tied to a contract. Every contract visible. Fraud must be detected before money leaves the door, not after journalists uncover it.

Accountability must also be real. There is a clear legal line between negligence and criminal facilitation. Honest mistakes should be corrected. Gross negligence should carry professional consequences. But when public employees knowingly ignore red flags, approve improper payments, or enable fraud through willful inaction, that is not incompetence. That is facilitation. And it should carry criminal penalties.

Bureaucrats do not get immunity because fraud occurred on their watch instead of at their direction. Stewardship of public money is a legal and moral duty.

Public trust has a tipping point. Once enough taxpayers conclude the system is irredeemably rigged, compliance gives way to resentment and consent gives way to coercion. Every unpunished scandal pushes us closer to that line. All evidence suggests we are already there.

If defenders of the status quo believe this system is acceptable, they should say so plainly and explain why taxpayers deserve less accountability than shareholders do.

That is why the Comptroller General’s office matters. It cannot function as a passive bookkeeper or a shield for bureaucratic failure. It must act as an independent financial watchdog with the authority to expose fraud, identify who allowed it, and impose consequences.

As SC Comptroller General, I will demand radical transparency, modern fraud detection, and clear responsibility. When taxpayer dollars disappear, the public will be told what happened, who failed, and what will change.

Enforce accountability now or accept the collapse of public trust.

A republic cannot function when citizens believe the people in charge are looting it.

Once that belief hardens, it does not come back.

Moving past the politics and finally fixing South Carolina

I know you’re frustrated. I am too. South Carolina is full of hardworking families who do things right, play by the rules, and still feel like the system is rigged against them. It doesn’t have to be this way. We can do better. Not with more empty slogans or complacent politicians who are comfortable with the way things are, but with real leadership, discipline, and vision. If we’re willing to expect more from our government and ourselves, we can build something better. That starts by being honest about where we are and bold about where we can go.

Here’s the truth - South Carolina is broken. We are one of the highest-taxed red states in America, yet we rank near the bottom in education, infrastructure, and income. Agencies operate without oversight. Judges are picked by a handful of legislators behind closed doors. Bureaucrats answer to no one. Lawsuit abuse drives up costs for every family and business, and our own financial systems are so broken we lost track of $3.5 billion. Meanwhile, too many politicians look the other way, more focused on protecting the status quo than fixing it. It doesn’t have to be this way.

Imagine a South Carolina where families keep more of what they earn, where schools are strong and steady, and where young people can afford their first home without leaving the communities that raised them. Students graduate into an economy with real opportunity and a clear path to build their lives here. Top companies from around the country choose to relocate not because we hand out incentives but because executives know South Carolina is the most business friendly state in the Union and they want to raise their families here. Local businesses thrive because government does not stand in their way. Roads get built. Agencies do their work without drama or hidden agendas. The state runs with discipline and transparency, and citizens trust the institutions that serve them. It feels like the South Carolina our forebears imagined when they risked everything for freedom 250 years ago.

South Carolina stands at a unique point in time. Our population is growing faster than almost any state in the country. Prosperity is rising. New families and new businesses are choosing this place because they see stability and promise. And we are reaching this moment just as the world enters an age of rapid technological advancement and emerging artificial intelligence. Few states are prepared for this shift. We can be. This combination of growth and innovation can create a golden era for South Carolina if we choose leadership, discipline, and a clear vision.

This future is not out of reach. It is achievable. It belongs to us if we choose it. South Carolina has the people, the strength, and the momentum to shape its own course. We are not waiting on Washington. We are not dependent on shifting national trends. We can build a government that reflects our priorities and protects our freedom. If we demand clarity, discipline, and accountability, we can create the strongest model of self-governance in the country.

To reach this vision, we must follow a clear path. Each step builds on the others. Together they create a state that is free, well run, and stable.

South Carolina’s Path Forward: An Eight Point Plan

1. Financial Transparency. The first step is financial transparency. Nothing in government improves until the truth about how money is spent comes into full view. We cannot fix problems we cannot see. When every financial transaction is visible, citizens gain power, agency leaders gain discipline, and the old habit of hiding waste or failure comes to an end. Transparency lets us measure outcomes. Outcomes let us measure efficiency. This is the foundation of everything that comes next.

2. Government Efficiency and Modernization. A clear financial picture gives us the ability to improve efficiency. With honest numbers, we can modernize technology, realign agencies, and build systems that serve citizens instead of bureaucracies. When leaders know their work is measured and visible, performance rises. Accountability becomes real. This is how a government becomes lean, responsive, and trustworthy.

3. Primary and Secondary Education Reform. Education shapes the future of our state. Our primary and secondary schools should be on a path to become top ten in the country, anchored in strong leadership and real accountability. School choice is essential. Families deserve the freedom to select the school that best fits their children, whether public, charter, private, or home based. Choice strengthens students and strengthens communities.

4. Higher Education Reform. Our colleges and universities should be the most efficient and least expensive in the nation. They should reflect the conservative values of the taxpayers who fund them and the South Carolina families who entrust their children to them. They must prepare students for productive lives, not ideology or debt. South Carolina should be the first state to break the back of crushing student loans by driving down costs and demanding real accountability. When higher education respects families and students, the entire state grows stronger.

5. Housing Affordability and Family Stability. Young families are the lifeblood of a healthy society. In South Carolina, young adults should be able to buy a home, build equity, and step into the freedoms and responsibilities of adulthood. Homeownership is the engine of real wealth. When young people cannot afford to stay, the state loses more than talent. It loses its future.

6. Tax Competitiveness and Economic Freedom. Low taxes are a hallmark of a disciplined state. South Carolina should compete to have the lowest tax burden in America. That does not happen through slogans. It happens through responsible budgeting, controlled spending, and financial and operational management that protects every dollar a citizen earns. States that trust their people with their own money grow faster and stronger.

7. A Pro-Business Climate Without Special Favors. Top companies should want to move to South Carolina not because we hand out taxpayer funded incentives, but because South Carolina is the most business friendly state in the Union and because executives want to raise their families here. A clean, predictable environment where rules are fair and government is stable attracts good companies and good jobs. Prosperity should be shared with the people who have lived here for generations and built the culture we treasure.

8. A Fair and Independent Judicial System. South Carolina cannot become the best run state in the country without a legal system that is clear, predictable, and independent. Families and businesses must know that judges apply the law evenly and that decisions rest on facts, not political influence. Today too much power over judicial appointments rests with a small group of legislators, blurring the separation of powers and creating the appearance of favoritism. A fair legal system protects rights, strengthens confidence, and gives businesses the stability they need to invest, hire, and grow. If South Carolina wants the strongest business climate in the nation, we need courts that every citizen and every company can trust.

South Carolina can achieve this. We can build a state that becomes the national model for pro-business, conservative families who want stability and opportunity. We can do it while ensuring that the prosperity of tomorrow is shared by the people who have lived here for generations. South Carolina can grow without losing its character.

Our future is bright because we control our destiny. While other states drift toward centralized control and economic stagnation, we can choose a different path. We can choose freedom, order, and transparency. We can be the state that proves a disciplined government and a confident people can outperform the chaos playing out across the country.

This vision is not abstract. It is a governing framework. If I were running for governor, this is the standard I would hold myself to. Every policy, every reform, every decision would be measured against whether it advances this vision of a freer, stronger, more accountable South Carolina.

That is why repairing the Comptroller General’s office matters so much. It is the first structural reform required to achieve this future. A state cannot promise efficiency when its financial systems are broken. It cannot promise low taxes when it cannot track its own dollars. It cannot promise accountability when no one can trust the books.

Fixing the Comptroller General’s office is the foundation. It is where discipline begins. It is where transparency becomes real. It is where South Carolina proves that it intends to govern itself with competence and integrity.

A free state.A well run state.A state rising to its promise.

This is the South Carolina we can build. And it starts by fixing the place where the money flows.

Last week, at the invitation of Virginia Secretary of Finance Steve Cummings, I spent a full day in Richmond meeting with leaders from across that state’s financial infrastructure. These were not ceremonial handshakes. These were working meetings—substantive, focused and highly instructive.

I met with teams overseeing budgeting, taxation, regulatory oversight, accounting and administration. What I found was a modern, integrated and disciplined approach to managing public money. And it made me even more certain of one thing: South Carolina is ready for change.

Teamwork and Talent Matter

What stood out most in Virginia was the cohesion. From top to bottom, everyone I met shared the same mission—being responsible stewards of the taxpayers’ money. No silos. No blame games. Just a united focus on efficiency, transparency and performance.

That mindset doesn’t happen by accident. It is baked into the culture. The Secretary of Finance meets quarterly with department heads to review budgets, resolve audit findings and keep teams on track. There is accountability at every level. And it works.

That is what I want to bring to South Carolina. As Comptroller General, my job is to revitalize and modernize a critical finance function and to do it in close partnership with the legislature, the governor and the treasurer. I want to build an office that operates with precision, earns trust and gives lawmakers the clarity they need to govern wisely.

This Is Bigger Than One Seat

I am not running for this office because I want a long political career. I am running because the system needs to be fixed and I have the skills and mindset to do it.

If part of that fix means rethinking whether this seat should remain an elected position then I welcome that conversation. In other states like Florida, voters elect a Chief Financial Officer with broad oversight. In Virginia, the Secretary of Finance is appointed by the governor and oversees all fiscal functions. Either model can work but both reflect a commitment to modern coordinated financial management.

What matters most is that we have a structure that delivers results and earns the public’s trust. That structure needs to be part of a bigger conversation focused on delivering value to citizens not maintaining fiefdoms or political turf.

Public Service Starts with Leadership

One of the most inspiring parts of my trip was seeing the caliber of leaders who had left high-paying private sector roles to serve the people of Virginia. They brought with them a culture of excellence and a belief that good government is possible when the right people step forward.

We have that kind of talent in South Carolina. We just need to encourage more of it. I am stepping up because I believe in servant leadership. I see a seat that has not been led this way in a long time and there is a lot to fix. Not just the systems and operations but also the teamwork and coordination across agencies.

My goal is not what is best for Mike. It is what is best for South Carolina. I want to rebuild the Comptroller General’s office into a trusted partner, a respected institution and a model for modern financial leadership. Then I want to help figure out what structure will best serve the next generation.

A Moment of Opportunity

The $3.5 billion error exposed just how outdated and fragile our current systems are. But we are not starting from scratch. We are starting from a place of strength. We have smart people, a strong economy and the will to do better.

Now we need to modernize our expectations. We need to align talent. We need to redesign the systems that manage $40 billion of taxpayer money. And we need leadership that sees the big picture, listens well and gets the details right.

South Carolina’s future is full of promise. But to get there, we need to treat government finance with the same rigor, discipline and urgency as any top-performing business.

That is why I am running. Not to keep a seat but to serve the mission.

Mike Burkhold

Republican Candidate for Comptroller General

Subscribe now