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How SC's $3.5 billion mistake could impact you

SC's comptroller general told lawmakers on Thursday that the annual budget report was off by billions. Still, officials say there won't be much impact.

COLUMBIA, S.C. — Thursday's Senate Finance Committee meeting ended on an odd note as State Comptroller General Richard Eckstrom told lawmakers the budget was off by $3.5 billion.

Many in South Carolina are scratching their heads after A $3.5 billion mistake, was announced. The issue was brought up on Thursday during a Senate committee meeting by State Comptroller General Richard Eckstrom. He says money that was given to colleges and universities from the state was not reflected on the state's annual budget report.

"When the accounting entries were made to show that money had been transferred to the colleges and universities, those transfer entries did not get carried forward," Eckstrom said.

According to Eckstrom it's a complicated error that can be traced back to a change in accounting software in the early 2000s.

"The accounting system relieved the state of their cash. The entries that relieved the state of their cash got ignored. They [were] programmed to be ignored," he said. "When those should've been carried over to the financial report, they weren't. It wasn't any human judgment involved. The system was just following programming that was going on."

So, what does all this mean for your money? According to Frank Rainwater at the state's Revenue and Fiscal Affairs Office, not much.

"There should be no impact on anyone, certainly not on the budget process, not on the tax rebates that everyone received," Rainwater said. "This is simply a reporting issue in the state's financial statements, but it doesn't have an effect on the operations."

However, state legislators are perplexed that an issue could go on this long. A special committee was announced on Thursday that's tasked with investigating the mistake. State Senator Stephen Goldfinch is one of those selected and he shared his vision with News19.

"The bottom line is, we have a lot of questions," he said. "I want to know why it happened, how we prevent it from happening again, who's responsible, where we go from here."

A date for that meeting is not set yet, but the state's board of economic advisors will meet on Feb. 15 to discuss the state's finances and what to do with the budgeting mistake.

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