For the first time in more than two centuries as an American state, the legislators of South Carolina will try to remove an elected representative from the State.
Wednesday, the Senate dominated by the Republicans decided to hold an audience to decide whether the treasurer of the republican state Curtis Loftis should bedeleted from the officemore than $ 1.8 billionaccounting errorThen omit to report the problem to the General Assembly. Loftis says that the attempt to avoid it is politically motivated.
Loftis can be deleted if two thirds of the Senate and the Chamber vote against him. During a hearing of April 21, senators will present their case and loftis or his lawyer will have three hours to answer. The house would then follow suit with its own audience.
Money that did not exist
A58 pagesThe report published last week on the accounting error said that the books of South Carolina have been inaccurate for 10 years and continue not to be corrected. The state paid millions of dollars to medical-legal accountants who finally determined that the missing money was not in cash that the State has never spent, but was rather a series of errors in the balance of books and the displacement of the accounts from one system to another which has never been reconciled.
The State must “do not consult the current budgetary surveillance – the banking and investment functions of our State – to a continuous incompetence. In short: if the treasurer cannot keep track of the treasure, then he should not remain treasurer, “the senators wrote in their report which included more than more than600 pagesExhibitions.
Loftis replied by stressing that he has won four elections since 2010 and qualified the investigation in the Senate to seize power so that they can obtain support for a bill so that the treasurer has become a position appointed.
“The financial threat of South Carolina is not mismanagement or missing money.in a declaration.
The origins of error
The problems started as the State changed computer systems in the 2010s. Once the process was finished, workers could not understand why books were more than a billion dollars. A fund has been created to cover the accounting error and over the years, it has been added on paper to maintain balanced state books.
The error was revealed after the general controller Richard Eckstromresigned in March 2023on a different accounting error andIts replacementreported the mystery account.
The report indicates that Loftis not only ignored or failed to find errors made by his office, but also rejected or slowed down attempts to investigate the problem.
“The treasurer tried to cover them. He covered him for a better part of seven to eight years,” said Republican senator Stephen Goldfinch.
A Senate subcommittee held audiences to question Loftis under oath. They were controversial. Loftis criticized the papers, accused senators of a witch hunt and threatened to get up and leave.
Strength test with senators
A decision that particularly angry the senators occurred after a legislator asked Loftis why he had not submitted reports on state finances, as required by law. The treasurer said he would publish an online report that may include bank account numbers and other sensitive information.
The senators were in tumult the next day. They said that the report could easily be published without information that would allow cybercriminals to empty state accounts.
They had the Governor and the State Police Head to find Loftis and demand that he do not publish the report. The treasurer said he was simply following the Senate instructions.
“His volatile temperament and his angry behavior degrade those responsible for working with him to obtain the financial situation of Southern Carolina,” the senators wrote in last week’s report.
The report also indicates that Loftis is responsible for millions of dollars to spend thanks to its lack of surveillance and a subsequent lack of cooperation investigating the account.
What happens next?
The Senate approved Wednesday what is called the audience of “referral to the address” by a vocal vote without opposition. The legislators have never crossed the constitutional measure of its conclusion.
The future of the resolution is a little more cloudy in the House, where no republican has come out to force the dismissal of the treasurer for force.
Republican governor Henry McMaster has also suggested that the abolition of loftis is too drastic, but the governor has no major role in the process.
This story was initially presented on Fortune.com
