The comptroller general is the South Carolina’s top accountant and chief fiscal watchdog. The winner of this race will oversee state spending and keeps the state’s books.
Republican Mike Burkhold is running against Democrat Tiffany Boozer.
Boozer did not respond to our candidate guide. We will update this page with her answers if we receive them.
Mike Burkhold (R)
How do you plan to eliminate waste and ensure taxpayer dollars are used to benefit SC communities?
First you have to count it. You can’t cut waste out of a budget nobody can read, and right now the state’s books are so hard to follow that most people, including most legislators, can’t tell what a program got, what it spent, and what it has left. The Comptroller General signs off on money before it leaves the Treasury. From that seat, I will put every state transaction online where anyone can look it up. I will publish one page for each program showing what it was given, what it spent, and what is sitting unspent. And when money has sat in an account for years, I will say so, out loud, to the State Auditor and the people who write the budget. Waste hides in the dark. Turn the lights on and most of it stops.
What role does accurate reporting and financial transparency play in public trust?
They are the whole ballgame. A few years ago the state’s books were off by $3.5 billion, and it took years for anyone to notice. Nobody lost a job over it. Every family in South Carolina balances a checkbook, and they know what happens at home if it’s off by $50. You don’t earn trust by saying you’re honest. You earn it by showing your work so plainly that people can check it themselves. This is the public’s money. Reporting it right and on time is the job.
What separates you from your opponent?
Experience running things. I built a company in Charleston from scratch and ran it for seventeen years. I led teams, I hired and fired, I negotiated deals worth real money, and every year the books were mine and so were the mistakes. The Comptroller General runs the office that keeps the books for the entire state government. That is a leadership job, and the question for voters is simple: who has done this kind of work before? My opponent has never run an organization and, by her own account on LinkedIn, has never held a job for more than three years, many of those positions lasted only a matter of months. I don’t say that to be unkind. I say it because the last time this office was held by someone who couldn’t keep up with it, the books were off by $3.5 billion and nobody noticed for years. South Carolina has already run that experiment once.