Truth in Numbers: Building a CFO Standard for South Carolina as Comptroller General
Taxpayers should expect more from the SC Comptroller General
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.
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Mike Burkhold