SC Comptroller General candidate Mike Burkhold discusses fixing state books.

What this episode covers

Full Transcript (Hour 2, Segment 1) (Pledge of Allegiance and "America the Beautiful" playing) Donald Trump (audio clip): America is back! Charlie James: Yes, sir! And we are back. You know, we first really started hearing a lot about the Comptroller General during the—a couple of years ago, I guess, when the $1.4 billion either was or wasn't, was existed or didn't, and people wondered, "What does the Comptroller General do?" Well, Mike Burkhold is running for Comptroller General. He's the man behind the mustache. Mike, welcome to the program. Hope you're doing well, sir. Mike Burkhold: (Laughter) Thank you, Charlie. I appreciate that. Charlie James: So, why did you decide to run for Comptroller General? Mike Burkhold: Well, really following the logic you just gave. I—I had missed this entire debacle, and I had written a—you know, I had wire-in a pretty good-sized tax payment to the state and sat down and was reading the news, and just ran across the story. All—it was all in retrospect, so I kind of saw this process where we found money, lost money, found money, people resigned. And I just got to wondering like, how in the world does this even happen? And, you know, it's 3.5 billion plus another 1.8, and it just was—it was stunning to me. I—I built a business that processes large volumes of transactions, and, um, you know, but from a—from a business owner standpoint, you know, you got to think, "Well, I don't know how big the state budget is, but it seems like an extra 3.8 would have just stuck out, right?" Or 3.5 billion, would just—like you would—you thought, "Well, where did that come from?" Which means that nobody was really paying attention to me. Nobody had their like—nobody was really focused on the books. And then later on it came out that it's—it was a, largely a computer mapping error, which, um, I guess is even more—more disappointing because that's something that is predictable and fixable. And, um, I decided, "Look, this is something I—I know how to fix. I can fix this." And I—people don't understand the budget. As I tried to learn about the budget, it's almost indecipherable. Charlie James: Yeah. Mike Burkhold: Um, I'm a fairly good communicator, and I thought, "You know what? I'm going to go up there, take over the books, and let people know what the status of our state really is." Charlie James: I mean, what you just said—I mean, we—we've had an issue because, remember, Eckstrom put like 55 mil—wasn't it 55 million on the books that he put it down twice? Uh, and that—that hurt our rating and—and all of that. I mean, how closely are the books being watched in Columbia? Mike Burkhold: You know, um, not closely enough. And I—I think just like—I think we've got a sys—a very big systems issue, just to be straightforward about it. I'm—I'm going to try to focus on systems, not on people, right, in my—in my campaign and when I'm Comptroller. Because, you know, yelling about things people should or shouldn't have done is not going to get us anywhere. I think we've got a—a pretty big systems issue. I've seen the way the state closes its books. It's—it's like 1990. I mean, it—it's about 150 Excel sheets that they stitch together. Charlie James: Oh, wow. Mike Burkhold: It's, um—it's—it's not a pretty process that any reasonable person would want to be involved with. But that—what that means is that means that it—the more human interaction with these sheets, it's the more—the more opportunity for errors and things—keystroke errors. And we've just got to modernize our state's systems some. Just—because if we can't see how—what position we're in financially, we can't hold our agencies responsible for performing to goals, right? I mean, it's like a business. If you don't have—don't have good books, you can't tell whether or not you're doing well. Charlie James: So basically, what the Treasurer does is he says, "Where do we keep and invest the money?" What the Comptroller General does, you say, "What happe ...

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