South Carolina's Books Are Still Broken. Here Is How I'll Fix Them.
What I will do in my first 100 days as Comptroller General
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.