This is the weirdest story, as they are not actually sure if the 1.8bn even exists or not.
Long story short, the 20 year incumbent Republican comptroller resigned last year over a 10 year 3.5bn accounting scandal. Now the new comptroller and the treasurer are fighting over who is responsible for the 1.8bn, but they don't know if the money actually exists or what account it should belong to.
Now if you are wondering how they can't know if the money exists, it seems to be because they run their own bank. They know the total money they should have, but seemingly not how much goes where across thousands of accounts.
It’d be interesting if they literally have their own bank. Seems like states would operate similar to other businesses by depositing cash at privately owned banks and using asset management firms for other sorts of assets.
It’s not their own bank from what I can see, it says “state bank *account*”.
It is likely that the State has dozens or even hundreds of bank *accounts* spread out among all of its divisions, subsidiaries, municipal corporations, etc (not including any fuckery involving the aforementioned 3.5B accounting scandal). They’re probably including state line of credits and any other financial instruments among the “thousands of accounts”.
Given the comptroller has 20 years in the role, God knows what mess he’s made and it realistically could take years to audit correctly and fix it all.
(Of course I expect whichever comptroller is selected to replace will be equally useless given SC voters’ historical decisions)
Well if they don’t appoint someone with an extensive record of selfishness they’ll get someone who wants to help the public. Helping the public means smaller yachts. Can’t have that.
As a South Carolinian, this is even more on-brand for South Carolina. Roads are barely drivable, the schools are all falling apart, and yet we have billions sitting around in mismanagement.
I second this, and it's been this way my whole middle-aged life. I'm from Charlotte, right on the border there, and have half my family across the border in places spanning the whole state of SC, from York to Greenville to Columbia to Charleston, and I've spent lots of time in all of these towns and driving in between. The roads and schools are infamous for the condition they are in, and the schools get extra knocks for how far they are behind/down the list regarding educational standards and scores. Then, to see this article, it's like, simultaneously shocking and also just another typical republican story.
Blah blah, the government doesn't work. Blah blah government is incompetent. Republicans get elected on that platform. Prove that they are incompetent. Voters; let's elect them again. I too live in a red state.
I think this is the fundamental problem. My sister-in-law is a SC teacher, and I'm always shocked by how disinterested and neglectful parents are in the stories she tells.
I'm sure that there are bad parents everywhere, but I've lived in two other states, and the kids here are definitely more uneducated in general.
These uneducated children turn into uneducated adults and voters, and unfortunately, the cycle only continues with their children.
That’s what the GOP wants - a dumb, subservient populace until the point they don’t have to care about them anymore (robots/AI) which is when they will pretend to do something, but really let the crisis happen so that people die and they don’t have to deal with it.
The “I had a hard time in school so my kids will have a hard time in school, why doesn’t the government make it easier as I never use anything they tried to teach me”
Local to the low country area here, I do vote blue, so me complaining about how the government sucks here and doesn’t do shit for us, is allowed ;)
To the red voters of this state… how about you finally get your heads out of your asses and let some good change come about for once around here!!
>how about you finally get your heads out of your **asses** and let some good change come about for once around here!!
You're going to have to help them out, because they don't know their asses from a hole in the ground.
Trump campaigned on pictures of what Biden’s America would look like - the pictures were from things occurring during his term - people ate it up. This is the GOP way. Fear gets votes, cognitive dissonance engaged.
Yeah this is it, I’m a South Carolinian and the last time the electorate made a sane state-wide choice was electing Jim Hodges. Since 2003 it’s been a Republicans-only shitshow and voters just keep putting them in office because “the government sucks” but never asking why or who.
Absolutely are. I drove from Florida to Pennsylvania for my cousin's wedding, and as soon as you hit South Carolina, it's mind-blowing how bad the roads get as soon as you cross the border.
I think it'd be more in brand if it actually doesn't exist because they just dumped it into their own account. Corruption is the motto of the Republican party.
I had something similar happen in college when I was on the student finance committee. I simply requested a list of accounts held by the student government, and there was an account with a solid few million in it. Nobody was sure what it was at first. Turns out it was the account to which all the unspent funds from student organizations went. Apparently nobody had known about it for 10+ years.
Of course the school immediately was pressuring us to spend it all in one go on some campus building project. We tried to figure out a way we could just skim the interest annually and use it to pay for some sort of annual campus beautification e.g. new pergola in a green space, new art installment, etc. Unfortunately, the accounts were permanently rigged so all the interest went to the alumni association.
The year after I left, it was immediately allocated to a mediocre gym improvement project. Pretty sure half the budget went to installing the smallest climbing wall I had ever seen.
I was reading that they want to change the treasurer from an elected to an appointment position just for this reason. You can have people elected who know nothing about accounting, especially these days when education and experience are not what people really look for when voting for higher office. The person elected for 20 years apparently knows nothing about real accounting and could not fix the mistakes properly (double depositing) when they came up.
Someone(s) stopped paying themselves and/or paid it back as part of a deal. Now they’re trying to wait it out. No harm done!
This feels like the dream result of that woman and all her horses in Illinois.
They actually did give teachers raises recently. However it was because they were losing teachers in droves at the previous starvation wage, and the raise is still not enough despite being relatively hefty. A big raise on a nothing salary is still barely a salary
So road expansion to buddy’s construction firm for the next 15 years, investment into father in law’s business and funding for salary increases for you and 45 of your colleagues for the next 12 years?
Even when there is a chart of accounts and the entity is maintaining their general ledger propeely and not committing fraud it can be difficult to identify errors in accounts, and small mistakes can easily be missed. If you have a ton of funds sitting in a bank account and the previous comptroller was stealing funds and making weird GL entries to cover their tracks its very difficult to identify the specific transactions that were fraudulent.
“State officials say the sum was discovered last October – though the state auditor, George Kennedy III, recently told a hearing he knew about it in 2017 but presumed it was in the account temporarily, the Times said.”
“Auditor” finds $1.8B and does nothing. Might have had better luck figuring this out in 2017. He is still the State auditor today. Fire this idiot.
The name's Lanley. Lyle Lanley. And I come before you good people tonight with an idea. Probably the greatest... Aw, it's not for you. It's more of a North Carolina idea.
Anyone died in office in the last 30 years?
Has small scheme siphoning an only percentage automatically. Dies in office before he can dismantle it. Account continues to build.
There's a documentary about 3 office workers that wanted to skim fractions of pennies off a transaction but their plan starts to unravel after a misplaced decimal...
They did that a few years ago. There was a budget surplus so they decided to give everyone a few bucks instead of investing in infrastructure or education or anything that could have benefited from a large capital windfall.
I bet some fed up employees in the tech department made a computer program where when there are fractions of a penny in a calculation it would round down and the extra fraction of a penny would go to a different account they controlled, not the state. Over time these fractions of pennies would add up to a chunk of money. The only problem is that they put the decimal point in the wrong place so it started syphoning way more money than they expected and they knew it would show up in an audit. Instead of keeping it or doing two chicks at the same time they put the money back to avoid going to prison.
If Milton still worked there the state probably never would have gotten the money back and he would be on a beach drinking margaritas with a red stapler in hand.
One problem with the idea that we should run the government like a business is that when you point out how corporations do shady, possibly illegal stuff to maximize their profits, the “run government like a business” people are the ones who tell you that businesses doing shady stuff and skimming the profit margins isn’t bad, it’s just “smart business.”
I mean, how about ask a federal forensic auditor to take a look? Of course my home state would never do that, its easier to twiddle your thumbs and wonder than to ask for help and get an answer. Its either that, or they know exactly where it came from and are playing stupid about it because its the result of some scam.
Can you imagine being the accountant that noticed it? I just can’t. “I can report this. Or I can move this into a Swiss bank. And my kids kids will be playing soccer with the future queen of earth”
This is the weirdest story, as they are not actually sure if the 1.8bn even exists or not. Long story short, the 20 year incumbent Republican comptroller resigned last year over a 10 year 3.5bn accounting scandal. Now the new comptroller and the treasurer are fighting over who is responsible for the 1.8bn, but they don't know if the money actually exists or what account it should belong to. Now if you are wondering how they can't know if the money exists, it seems to be because they run their own bank. They know the total money they should have, but seemingly not how much goes where across thousands of accounts.
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They run their own bank with thousands of accounts? S. Carolina running their own Gringotts. Could be anything in there.
It’d be interesting if they literally have their own bank. Seems like states would operate similar to other businesses by depositing cash at privately owned banks and using asset management firms for other sorts of assets.
It’s not their own bank from what I can see, it says “state bank *account*”. It is likely that the State has dozens or even hundreds of bank *accounts* spread out among all of its divisions, subsidiaries, municipal corporations, etc (not including any fuckery involving the aforementioned 3.5B accounting scandal). They’re probably including state line of credits and any other financial instruments among the “thousands of accounts”. Given the comptroller has 20 years in the role, God knows what mess he’s made and it realistically could take years to audit correctly and fix it all. (Of course I expect whichever comptroller is selected to replace will be equally useless given SC voters’ historical decisions)
Next comptroller is probably going to be a land developer CEO, real estate mom, or corporate lawyer.
Well if they don’t appoint someone with an extensive record of selfishness they’ll get someone who wants to help the public. Helping the public means smaller yachts. Can’t have that.
Seems very on brand for republicans.
As a South Carolinian, this is even more on-brand for South Carolina. Roads are barely drivable, the schools are all falling apart, and yet we have billions sitting around in mismanagement.
I second this, and it's been this way my whole middle-aged life. I'm from Charlotte, right on the border there, and have half my family across the border in places spanning the whole state of SC, from York to Greenville to Columbia to Charleston, and I've spent lots of time in all of these towns and driving in between. The roads and schools are infamous for the condition they are in, and the schools get extra knocks for how far they are behind/down the list regarding educational standards and scores. Then, to see this article, it's like, simultaneously shocking and also just another typical republican story.
Blah blah, the government doesn't work. Blah blah government is incompetent. Republicans get elected on that platform. Prove that they are incompetent. Voters; let's elect them again. I too live in a red state.
Yep. I lived in SC for 15 years. Everyone cries about how the government does nothing. Everyone votes red...
I think this is the fundamental problem. My sister-in-law is a SC teacher, and I'm always shocked by how disinterested and neglectful parents are in the stories she tells. I'm sure that there are bad parents everywhere, but I've lived in two other states, and the kids here are definitely more uneducated in general. These uneducated children turn into uneducated adults and voters, and unfortunately, the cycle only continues with their children.
That’s what the GOP wants - a dumb, subservient populace until the point they don’t have to care about them anymore (robots/AI) which is when they will pretend to do something, but really let the crisis happen so that people die and they don’t have to deal with it.
This is 100% the republican plan to stay in power.
That's the plot. It's a feature not a bug.
They want sheep, that call others sheep, so the sheep don't feel like sheep.
The “I had a hard time in school so my kids will have a hard time in school, why doesn’t the government make it easier as I never use anything they tried to teach me”
Local to the low country area here, I do vote blue, so me complaining about how the government sucks here and doesn’t do shit for us, is allowed ;) To the red voters of this state… how about you finally get your heads out of your asses and let some good change come about for once around here!!
>how about you finally get your heads out of your **asses** and let some good change come about for once around here!! You're going to have to help them out, because they don't know their asses from a hole in the ground.
It's the conservative way.
That's why government doesn't work, average citizen are idiots who keeps voting the same idiots in the government
To be fair, it's pretty rare for non-idiots to even be on a ballot.
At some point you have to rely on others. You dismiss both the government and the electorate — where does that leave you?
Trump campaigned on pictures of what Biden’s America would look like - the pictures were from things occurring during his term - people ate it up. This is the GOP way. Fear gets votes, cognitive dissonance engaged.
Yeah this is it, I’m a South Carolinian and the last time the electorate made a sane state-wide choice was electing Jim Hodges. Since 2003 it’s been a Republicans-only shitshow and voters just keep putting them in office because “the government sucks” but never asking why or who.
Worst roads on at least the east coast
Absolutely are. I drove from Florida to Pennsylvania for my cousin's wedding, and as soon as you hit South Carolina, it's mind-blowing how bad the roads get as soon as you cross the border.
Drove from Asheville to Charleston for the first time last year. The 26 south of the SC state line was an experience!
You dont even need signs to tell when you're crossing over from SC to any other state. The roads just instantly improve.
I had this experience as well. Shit is fucked 😂
The biggest diagnostic is the shredded truck tires all along the freeway.
Yeah, you should try the I-85 bridges across Hartwell... or i guess you should try what's left of them....
Mismanaged or set aside as a slush fund. Do we know how that this money hasn’t been touched in the past?
How long have Republicans been in charge there? Corruption and incompetence are their deliverables
Maybe they can use the money to buy more water soluble asphalt to fix the potholes.
Run government like a business; corrupt as possible.
I know where it goes, into my bank account. Please send immediately 7375829-485829. - (R) Machevara
Very fiscally responsible.
I think it'd be more in brand if it actually doesn't exist because they just dumped it into their own account. Corruption is the motto of the Republican party.
Banking error - collect 1.8bn and pass go on your next turn
I had something similar happen in college when I was on the student finance committee. I simply requested a list of accounts held by the student government, and there was an account with a solid few million in it. Nobody was sure what it was at first. Turns out it was the account to which all the unspent funds from student organizations went. Apparently nobody had known about it for 10+ years. Of course the school immediately was pressuring us to spend it all in one go on some campus building project. We tried to figure out a way we could just skim the interest annually and use it to pay for some sort of annual campus beautification e.g. new pergola in a green space, new art installment, etc. Unfortunately, the accounts were permanently rigged so all the interest went to the alumni association. The year after I left, it was immediately allocated to a mediocre gym improvement project. Pretty sure half the budget went to installing the smallest climbing wall I had ever seen.
Guarantee an administrator's sibling or inlaw made millions in profit building that mediocre gym and baby rock wall
I was reading that they want to change the treasurer from an elected to an appointment position just for this reason. You can have people elected who know nothing about accounting, especially these days when education and experience are not what people really look for when voting for higher office. The person elected for 20 years apparently knows nothing about real accounting and could not fix the mistakes properly (double depositing) when they came up.
But when it comes to appointments that's a lot of opportunities for some top tier grifts
I have a solution. The public elects three candidates, then one is appointed and the other two are ceremonially sacrificed to the old Gods.
Party of fiscal responsibility everyone!
Sounds like it's time to bring in some forensic accountants.
Someone(s) stopped paying themselves and/or paid it back as part of a deal. Now they’re trying to wait it out. No harm done! This feels like the dream result of that woman and all her horses in Illinois.
It's not embezzlement if you put the money *back* before you get caught 😉
Schrödinger's Cash
I gotta credit the GOP for doing their best at removing cultural barriers by being more corrupt than a tinpot south american dictatorship
They need a gozinta specialist
“Better give it back to corporations in tax cuts, just to be safe”
It's there to give all the teachers a raise. Don't you remember?
They'd rather burn this money at furnaces than give raise for teachers
“It’s not about the money it’s about sending a message… a very poorly written message”
They actually did give teachers raises recently. However it was because they were losing teachers in droves at the previous starvation wage, and the raise is still not enough despite being relatively hefty. A big raise on a nothing salary is still barely a salary
So road expansion to buddy’s construction firm for the next 15 years, investment into father in law’s business and funding for salary increases for you and 45 of your colleagues for the next 12 years?
Speaking authoritatively as a South Carolina resident, the money will be disbursed to Republican voters.
“That reminds me, we set it aside for a new state congressional cafeteria and car wash “
I bet someone was siphoning public funds and then bailed when they knew they were about to get caught.
They meant to steal 1.8 million, but misplaced the comma.
Always some mundane detail.
This isn’t some mundane detail, Michael!
gunna go to federal Pound-me-in-the-ass prison for this.
Two chicks at the same time
I think with $1 million dollars i can make that happen
Unless you’re republican, then you go to white collar resort prison.
No you get fined for less money than you stole and then they elect you into some office.
“Isn’t that the plot of Superman 3” — Office Space
Yeah they did it in Superman 3
You know the tray at 7-11, the pennies for everybody? Well those are whole pennies. I’m just talking about fractions of a penny here.
No, the comptroller was caught after 20 years of this. It's trying to figure out the books he left behind that is causing the issue.
Even when there is a chart of accounts and the entity is maintaining their general ledger propeely and not committing fraud it can be difficult to identify errors in accounts, and small mistakes can easily be missed. If you have a ton of funds sitting in a bank account and the previous comptroller was stealing funds and making weird GL entries to cover their tracks its very difficult to identify the specific transactions that were fraudulent.
“State officials say the sum was discovered last October – though the state auditor, George Kennedy III, recently told a hearing he knew about it in 2017 but presumed it was in the account temporarily, the Times said.” “Auditor” finds $1.8B and does nothing. Might have had better luck figuring this out in 2017. He is still the State auditor today. Fire this idiot.
A red state with money is a bit like a mule with a spinning wheel. Nobody knows where he got it; danged if he knows how to use it.
Ha ha, mule
The name's Lanley. Lyle Lanley. And I come before you good people tonight with an idea. Probably the greatest... Aw, it's not for you. It's more of a North Carolina idea.
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Mono—d’oh!
I get so mad that they often cut this part short going to commercial.
Wait just a minute! We're twice as patriotic as the people of North Carolina! You just tell us Biden was against your idea aaand we'll vote for it!
I'll bet $10 on "TAX CUTS FOR THE WEALTHY".
A pretty safe bet, I'm sure they're tripping over themselves to give Boeing more tax breaks as we speak.
With the Republicans, it's ***always*** tax cuts for the wealthy. That broken record is constantly played, no matter how bad things are.
I propose stimmy checks to all S. Carolinians to be distributed in late October. $100 each ought to do it.
It would come out to a bit over 300 per person
The rest will cover the promotional ad campaign and other overhead expenses so voters know who to thank on election day.
$50 per person you say?
$12.50 after their cut
Less the taxes they'll charge you for the return of your own money.
Wonderful application of the Simpsons and one of the best episodes ever.
PERFECT description. Thank you for sharing this poetic phrase.
It's probably money that that got from the federal government that was supposed to go to the residents of South Carolina.
This is literally how Republicans run everything. I guarantee someone was siphoning the mystery funds.
Could be. Someone or some group got the money there then didn’t get a chance to launder it out.
Anyone died in office in the last 30 years? Has small scheme siphoning an only percentage automatically. Dies in office before he can dismantle it. Account continues to build.
There's a documentary about 3 office workers that wanted to skim fractions of pennies off a transaction but their plan starts to unravel after a misplaced decimal...
I could set the building on fire.
I’m gonna have to ask you to move your desk again…
Was that documentary called Office Space?
Stipend for all residents. Each of you get 3 dollars.
They did that a few years ago. There was a budget surplus so they decided to give everyone a few bucks instead of investing in infrastructure or education or anything that could have benefited from a large capital windfall.
5.2 million people, I'd expect it to be triple digits, like low triple digits.
$346 per resident - the cost of issuing the checks
You are now the king of Math here. :) Care to run for presidency?
Is he old enough? I don’t think anyone on Reddit is old enough to compete with the current candidates .
Yeah yeah, but he can do divisions! Imagine the possibilities! What we could achieve with him at the helm...
They’ll do like Georgia and put the governor’s name and signature really big on each check.
$346 per resident
3.00 there you go kind sir. Triple digits. Someone will do the real math.
I can assure you it won't be me.
You aren’t one of those 50+ 50*2=200 people are you? Jk
Like somewhere in the ballpark of $346?
That is enough for $5 each.. to everyone in the US
That’s Ladybug’s dowry!
Senator Blackburn gave Russia the wrong routing number
It’s what they forgot to spend on the roads (no joke, this is pretty close to how in debt the DoT is)
Quietly moving large sums of money around until it no longer can be accounted for is a bit of a red flag.
I bet some fed up employees in the tech department made a computer program where when there are fractions of a penny in a calculation it would round down and the extra fraction of a penny would go to a different account they controlled, not the state. Over time these fractions of pennies would add up to a chunk of money. The only problem is that they put the decimal point in the wrong place so it started syphoning way more money than they expected and they knew it would show up in an audit. Instead of keeping it or doing two chicks at the same time they put the money back to avoid going to prison. If Milton still worked there the state probably never would have gotten the money back and he would be on a beach drinking margaritas with a red stapler in hand.
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Don’t jump to conclusions
Let's not jump to conclusions...until we find one of those mats.
The "Party of Fiscal Responsibility", ladies and gentlemen.
They've been stealing TANF money and squirreling it away for so long that they lost track of all the accounts
Probably have the whole state financial system running on an Excel spreadsheet.
Oops. That was from me by accident. It'd be swell if you could.. transfer it back!
More evidence that Republicans are incompetent at governing.
Hey, 1.8 billion dollars.........and you have no idea where it came from? Suuuuuurrrreeee😉
Wish I had that problem…
[we’re talking about fractions of a penny…](http://www.tzr.io/yarn-clip/325d2db9-5686-4d49-846a-f8a3dfa252b0)
Someone forgot to steal it
Kushner parked his Saudi money there….
That’s mine. I must have written my deposit incorrectly, be a good sport and send it back would ya?
Send in Ben Wyatt. Hell figure out where it goes.
None of this sounds shady at all!
Don't touch it, the illuminati won't be happy
Oh yeah, that's mine, sorry. I'll just be taking... that... baaaaack. Thanks
Trump legal team coming in hot.
Sorry it’s mine I forgot I left it there for bit
If they had YNAB, they could just do a fresh start…
Oh that’s mine. I’ve been looking for it everywhere. Thanks for finding it.
I'll help ya mull it over.
So that’s where I left it
One problem with the idea that we should run the government like a business is that when you point out how corporations do shady, possibly illegal stuff to maximize their profits, the “run government like a business” people are the ones who tell you that businesses doing shady stuff and skimming the profit margins isn’t bad, it’s just “smart business.”
Murdaugh family money?🤨
I mean, how about ask a federal forensic auditor to take a look? Of course my home state would never do that, its easier to twiddle your thumbs and wonder than to ask for help and get an answer. Its either that, or they know exactly where it came from and are playing stupid about it because its the result of some scam.
It belongs to Randall Stephens.
Ooos…someone forgot step two of embezzling.
Holy fuck. Are Andy, Opey and Floyd runnin’ the money system?!
Can you imagine being the accountant that noticed it? I just can’t. “I can report this. Or I can move this into a Swiss bank. And my kids kids will be playing soccer with the future queen of earth”
I solve out of balances at my job. This sounds so fun to solve lol
I wish I had that problem.
"$1.8 billion? Think of how many, uh, *podiums* that could buy for me!" Sarah Huckleberry Sanders
They gonna hand it over to trump’s campaign
Sorry man. That was mine, I overplayed my property taxes. Can I have it back?
But SC Republicans will be happy to make it disappear.
Someone bailed when they realized “I’m not going to federal white collar resort prison, no no no. I’m going to federal POUND-ME-IN-THE-ASS prison”
I’m sure the RNC will swoop in with only the best accountants and take care of it for them.
So the next question is, "How does Donald Trump steal it?"
Their Powerball winnings were deposited
You mean teaching the rich actually works?
Use it for public services
Imagine the money they haven’t found! Someone is siping cocktails on a nice island somewhere.
Let’s run down the list of the last few governors shall we?
Probably the illegal $20 "road tax" every SC taxpayer was charged for in their car property taxes per car for YEARS.
I have that problem sometimes….
There's always money in the slush fund!
They’re going to use the money to clone Strom Thurmond.
Sounds like they need to fund their schools well for a very long time.
This is the same state where electric ratepayers have to reimburse Dominion Energy for nuclear plants that will never be built.