SC has 1 requirement to be comptroller general: Be a voter. Will $3.5B blunder change that?

To be in charge of Mississippi’s accounting, that person must be a certified public accountant, have a master’s degree in business or public administration, or have at least five years of experience in a high-level management position.

In Alabama, a comptroller must have at least 10 years of accounting experience and be a CPA.

In South Carolina? Candidates for the state’s top accountant only need to be a registered voter.

South Carolina is hardly the only state that doesn’t require work experience to be a comptroller.

But after the current officeholder disclosed a decade-long $3.5 billion accounting error, some South Carolina lawmakers say it’s time to reconsider strengthening the requirements to hold the state’s four-year, $151,000-a-year elected position that is charged with paying vendors, fiscal oversight and compiling annual financial reports.

Fourteen states reported they have minimum work experience, education or certification requirements to fill the comptroller role, according to a 2020 survey by the National Association of State Auditors, Comptrollers and Treasurers.

South Carolina is one of 22 states that require no professional or educational background, the association’s survey found. Eight of those states, including South Carolina, pick their comptroller through statewide elections.

On April 30, current Comptroller Richard Eckstrom, who was last reelected in 2022, will officially step down after legislators started a pressure campaign when Eckstrom disclosed that he overstated the state’s cash position for 10 years, eventually admitting to a $3.5 billion error, which did not affect the state’s budget or spending.

Since the disclosure, lawmakers have sought to cut Eckstrom’s salary, strip his office responsibilities and, more seriously, move the office from one that is currently elected every four years to an office under the governor’s Cabinet. They have not, however, had serious conversations about adding work or background requirements.

Lawmakers get to pick Eckstrom’s successor, currently between a former lawmaker who owns land and restaurants and a longtime state budget employee.

In the last year, lawmakers raised salaries for all elected statewide positions — for example, lawmakers raised the comptroller salary from $92,000 to $151,000 — in an effort to compete with the private sector and attract more people to run.

Because the role is elected now, “that’s something that the voters have always been able to pass some sort of judgment on,” said state Sen. Larry Grooms R-Berkeley, who led the charge in the Senate to to investigate the $3.5 billion error and remove Eckstrom for willful neglect of duty.

Lawmakers will pick next comptroller

The General Assembly is charged with picking Eckstrom’s successor to finish the rest of his term, which ends in January 2027.

Two names have surfaced as the top contenders.

Former state Rep. Kirkman Finlay, a Richland County Republican who served in the House for 10 years, is lobbying for the job. House members helping to whip votes for Finlay said he has the votes to win an election by a joint assembly.

Finlay, a large land owner, with a bachelor of arts degree from the University of Virginia, runs Columbia-area establishments Doc’s BBQ, Pawley’s Front Porch in Five Points and Millstone at Adams Pond. He sat on the budget-writing House Ways and Means Committee for six years.

Senators, instead, want Mike Shealy, a longtime Senate budget advisor, who mainly worked under the chairmanship of the late Sen. Hugh Leatherman. Shealy now works for the state Department of Administration as director of statewide leadership and special projects. The 40-year state employee also has worked for the state budget office and as a state revenue forecaster.

Despite questions about qualifications — Eckstrom who is a certified public accountant — lawmakers say it’s too late in the session to pass legislation that would add permanent requirements for the comptroller.

“I think this is a scenario (where) we don’t have a lot of time, we don’t have but two candidates,” said House Minority Leader Todd Rutherford, D-Richland, who has endorsed Finlay’s bid. “So I think it’s a situation where people are just voting for the person that they know who they believe can go in and run the office, not necessarily do the numbers themselves, but at least run the office.”

Rutherford said he anticipates potentially adding a CPA requirement for the job in the future, but said a potential draw back comes with making that requirement for a job that pays only $151,000 a year.

“You don’t want to say that it has to be a CPA, and then the position is vacant because nobody wants to run for it,” Rutherford said.

Qualifications are on the mind, however, of senators who investigated Eckstrom’s error.

A Senate Finance Committee panel wants to attach a one-year law to the state budget this year that would keep the comptroller general’s salary at $1, instead of $151,000, unless the person is a CPA or has 10 years of governmental accounting experience.

“We just believe it’s good public policy that the comptroller be a CPA or have at least 10 years experience in government accounting,” said Grooms, when asked if the proposal was in response to the Finlay’s candidacy.

Job requirements have been added before

Adding requirements for an elected position isn’t unprecedented in South Carolina.

When lawmakers in 2018 wanted to make the superintendent of education an appointed position instead of elected statewide, they added a state law requiring a master’s degree in education or financial management. Voters opted to keep the superintendent an elected position, but the master’s degree requirement remained.

Gov. Henry McMaster, who could appoint a comptroller if the General Assembly adjourns the session May 11 and does not have a sine die agreement in place — a resolution that dictates what lawmakers can take up after session ends — without picking a new top accountant, has said he would want someone with accounting or finance experience and is “not political.”

House budget Chairman Bruce Bannister, R-Greenville, defended having someone with political connections in the role.

In addition to the comptroller’s responsibilities, that person also sits on the State Fiscal Accountability Authority, a panel which acts as oversight on state spending and facility improvements and leases, with the governor, treasurer and each chamber’s respective budget chairs.

“I would personally like to see somebody that understands the politics of the state to have that position,” Bannister said. “They also have a large staff of accountants. So the idea that the comptroller should be an accountant is, I think, a little naive about what the role of that office is because the comptroller is the head of that agency. It’s really more of a political person than maybe you would think.”

Senate Majority Leader Shane Massey, R-Edgefield, said there have been conversations among senators about putting minimum qualifications into permanent law, but that’s as far as it’s gone.

“I’m hopeful that we can we can move this into the (governor’s) Cabinet and have it as a position that’s nominated by the governor and with advice and consent (of the Senate),” said Massey, who added more qualifications, such as a CPA requirement, makes sense.

“You give the governor some direction as to the type of candidates he could have to fill that role and then you also have things for the advice and consent process to scrutinize, but I think that would be reasonable.”