Report Calls for Outsting of S.C. Comptroller over $3.5B Error

COLUMBIA, S.C. (AP) — South Carolina's state comptroller should be fired over a $3.5 billion accounting error and the office he runs should be gutted, lawmakers investigating the mistake said in a report Wednesday.

Republican Comptroller General Richard Eckstrom has attracted mounting scrutiny since he first told lawmakers last month that he had unintentionally exaggerated the state’s cash position by $3.5 billion by overstating the amount the state had sent to colleges and universities. 

A $12 million coding error in 2007 got compounded by a shift beginning in 2011 from one accounting system to another, Eckstrom has said. The reporting confusion then led to a double counting of state cash transferred to colleges and universities. By 2017, the sum of overstated funds had grown to $1.3 billion. That number has nearly tripled in the following years as South Carolina sent more and more money to higher education. 

In its Wednesday report, the Senate Finance Constitutional Subcommittee concluded Eckstrom failed to do his job properly and should be removed from office. In South Carolina the comptroller — the state's chief accountant — is elected. 

The panel recommended that Eckstrom's office be dismantled and that its duties be transferred to one or more other agencies.

The comptroller general oversees the state's annual financial report. That includes determining which cash expenditures to include or exclude in the year-end report, a process also known as “mapping,” according to Department of Administration Executive Director Marcia Adams. The task got more complicated during a gradual shift to a new statewide information system between 2011 and 2017.