News and Press Releases for August 2007

ANOTHER REMINDER OF IMPORTANCE OF TREASURER’S RACE

August 2, 2007

Columbia, S.C. – Gov. Mark Sanford today called on the General Assembly to make accountability and transparency a priority when selecting a Treasurer, in light of the continued need for responsible leadership at the Budget and Control Board in order to reform the state’s “Competitive Grants” program.

The “Competitive Grants” program has come under scrutiny over the past year for doling out tens of millions of dollars in grants all across the state with little accountability – more often than not on a “who-knows-who” basis rather than on the merits of the particular project. The current director of the Board, with the support of the governor, put a temporary hold on issuing many of the grants. But last month, the Competitive Grants Committee voted to award millions more in grants, going to things like a $100,000 balloon festival and a $98,000 jazz video. News accounts and editorials from across the state have raised concerns about the program, with one editorial in The State newspaper going so far as to call it “the rathole of a political slush fund ironically dubbed the ‘competitive grants’ program."

The governor vetoed the program when it came to his desk, only to have the legislature override the veto. In the governor’s veto message, he noted that not only is the program unaccountable, but that in a little over a year of operation, the program had become backlogged at the rate of five times the allotted money without a merit-based review process.

“We remain very concerned about millions of dollars in grants being awarded through an unaccountable and not at all transparent process, and believe reform-minded leadership of the Budget and Control Board would be a step toward improving that process,” Gov. Sanford said. “The bottom line is that what happens next on that Board not only affects whether $550 million in reforms from the GEAR report will be enacted, but how a program that continues to spend millions via this legislative favor factory continues. This again, too, raises the stakes on who the next Treasurer is, and how important it is for the legislature to have a deliberative process that is open to all, rather than a closed system with only a week to mount a campaign -- thereby guaranteeing an insider the position.