South Carolina’s top accountant to resign after $3.5B error

South Carolina’s embattled top accountant will step down next month after a $3.5 billion error in the year-end financial report he oversaw, according to a resignation letter written Thursday that was obtained by The Associated Press.

Republican Comptroller General Richard Eckstrom’s decision to leave the post he has held for 20 years came after intense scrutiny of his performance following the blunder and amid rising calls for him to either quit or be removed.

The Senate panel investigating the financial misstatement issued a damning report last week accusing Eckstrom of “willful neglect of duty.” As recently as last week, however, Eckstrom had said he would not resign.

“I have never taken service to the state I love or the jobs to which I have been elected lightly, endeavoring to work with my colleagues … to be a strong defender of the taxpayer and a good steward of their hard-earned tax dollars,” Eckstrom wrote in the letter to South Carolina Gov. Henry McMaster. “They deserve nothing less.”

The governor accepted the resignation, effective April 30.

The Senate report concluded that Eckstrom was solely responsibile for the mapping error, which happened during the state’s transition to a new internal information system from 2011 to 2017. State officials testified that Eckstrom ignored auditors’ yearslong warnings of a “material weakness” in his office and flawed cash reporting.

Eckstrom has said the Annual Comprehensive Financial Report exaggerated the state’s cash balances for a decade by double counting the money sent to colleges and universities. The mistake went unsolved until a junior staffer fixed the error this fall.

Officials have said the overstatement did not affect the state budget.

But lawmakers alarmed by Eckstrom’s inconsistent testimony slammed his failure to fulfill one of his primary constitutional duties: to publish an accurate account of state finances.

A certified public accountant, Eckstrom, 74, spent four years as state treasurer before assuming his current office.