If approved by the House, the politician’s removal would mark the first in state history.
Members of the South Carolina Senate voted on April 21 to remove the state’s embattled treasurer for “willful neglect” of his duties, sending the matter to the state House for consideration.
The 33–8 vote followed an hours-long hearing of the full Senate, during which state Sens. Larry Grooms and Stephen Goldfinch, both Republicans, pushed for state Treasurer Curtis Loftis’s removal over a $1.8 billion accounting error.
“The big secret of Treasurer Loftis, the one that he’s kept hidden away, is that there are hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of millions of dollars in errors in the Treasury books today, and he doesn’t know how to fix them,” Grooms said in opening the hearing.
A state Senate Finance subcommittee report released last month said Loftis, a Republican, “failed to maintain the integrity” of South Carolina’s banking and investment records after state officials were alerted to an unexplained $1.8 billion in funds under his office’s exclusive control.
An outside forensic audit determined that most of the funds in question were not real cash but the result of bookkeeping errors that followed the state’s transition to a new accounting system in the 2010s.
Loftis, now in his fourth term, was first elected treasurer in 2010 and has held the office since.
While two other public officials have resigned in connection with the state’s accounting issues, Loftis, Grooms said, “remains defiant and refuses to take responsibility for his failures.”
Loftis, defending his record, likened himself to President Donald Trump, who vociferously denounced various investigations related to his affairs.
“I’m inspired by President Trump, and I, too, will not back down,” Loftis said.
During prior Senate testimony, the treasurer indicated that the inexplicable funds not only existed but had been invested and were generating returns. After the audit, however, he claimed the report “validated what we’ve known all along,” a statement that Goldfinch derided as “a lie.”
The senator accused Loftis of attempting to cover up a serious error that he knew would damage his reputation.
Loftis’s attorneys downplayed the discrepancy as “an on-paper accounting error” and “an honest mistake.”
