The Nerve

By RICK BRUNDRETT Having customers in his Columbia glass art shop posed no public threat, if you ask Tom Lockart of One Eared Cow Glass. Yet after Gov. Henry McMaster put the S.C. Department of Commerce in charge of deciding what businesses are allowed to stay open or which must close when “clarification” requests are […]

By RICK BRUNDRETT Last Tuesday, Gov. Henry McMaster ordered that “non-essential” businesses statewide be closed to the public to combat the spread of the coronavirus, though he included some pretty big loopholes. Take golfing, for example. His “non-essential” list includes various “recreational and athletic facilities,” such as fitness centers, though sports that “involve interaction” of […]

By RICK BRUNDRETT The S.C. Department of Commerce won’t reveal the average wage of workers at the new Juul electronic-cigarette assembly facility in Lexington County, though a $500,000 state grant was approved last year for the project. But Lexington County provided the average annual wage of the promised 520 jobs – $43,407, increasing to a […]

By RICK BRUNDRETT In December 2010, then-Gov. Mark Sanford, along with other state and local officials, announced a $125 million expansion of the Robert Bosch automotive parts plant in Dorchester County, with promises that the project would create 285 jobs. The Nerve revealed several months later that the estimated public costs of the project over […]

By RICK BRUNDRETT The Carolina Panthers’ planned move of its headquarters and training facilities to Rock Hill is part of a larger effort to create 7,000 jobs with an average annual salary of $60,000 – as claimed in a state application for a federal grant to build an interstate interchange that would benefit the NFL […]

By RICK BRUNDRETT With $1.8 billion more in projected general funds in the state budget for next fiscal year, state agencies are hoping to fulfill their growing wish lists. Their taxpayer-funded requests collectively include millions for such things as promoting private sporting events, businesses and products, along with potentially generous handouts to select companies. Consider […]

By RICK BRUNDRETT In announcing in April that DHL Supply Chain, a global logistics company, would locate a $100 million distribution and warehouse park in Dorchester County, Gov. Henry McMaster in a prepared statement said he couldn’t “wait to see what the future holds for this great company here.” In exchange for the planned investment, […]

By RICK BRUNDRETT Interstate 73 isn’t the only nonexistent South Carolina highway that has been heavily subsidized with state tax dollars. From fiscal 2006 through fiscal 2013, S.C. lawmakers quietly appropriated a total of $4 million for the “routing, planning, and construction” of Interstate 74, which runs through parts of North Carolina. The annual $500,000 […]

By RICK BRUNDRETT Some 37 years after the idea was first proposed, Interstate 73 in South Carolina exists only on paper. Yet since 2004, the state Department of Transportation has spent at least $77 million on the project – much of it for design costs and land purchases along the proposed route from North Carolina […]

By RICK BRUNDRETT If the S.C. House of Representatives decided to forgo its entire $22.7 million budget this fiscal year, it could still pay all of its expected bills – with more than $650,000 left over. That’s because the 124-member chamber carried over nearly $23.4 million in general funds into this fiscal year for its […]