South Carolina has $1.8 billion but doesn’t know where the money came from or where it should go

COLUMBIA, S.C. (AP) — South Carolina has collected about $1.8 billion in a bank account over the past decade and state and private accountants are still trying to figure out where the cash came from and where it was supposed to go.

“It’s like going into your bank and the bank president tells you we have a lot of money in our vault but we just don’t know who it belongs to,” said Republican Sen. Larry Grooms, who is leading a Senate panel investigating the problem.

It’s the latest trouble with the state’s books and the two agencies, typically led by elected officials, that are in charge of making sure government accounts stay balanced.

Last year, the elected comptroller general — the state’s top accountant — resigned after his agency started double posting money in higher education accounts, leading to a $3.5 billion error that was all on paper. The problem started as the state shifted computer systems in the 2010s.

The latest issue appears to involve actual cash and elected Treasurer Curtis Loftis, whose job is to write checks for the state.

Investigative accountants are still trying to untangle the mess, but it appears that every time the state’s books were out of whack, money was shifted from somewhere into an account that helped balance it out, state Senate leaders have said.

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