February 10, 2012

Men receive 25 years in prison for armored car heist

Three of the men involved in third largest armored car heist in US history have been sentenced. Darryl Frierson, the Express Teller Armored Car Services employee considered the one who planned the heist in Columbia in 2007, received 25 years in prison. Jeremy McPhail and Dominic Lyde received the same. Paul Whitaker received three years for conspiracy. The judge denied a request to reduce the 25-year sentences already given to Domonique Blakney and Kelby Blakney.The thieves made off with almost $10 million. More than $5 million of that remains missing. But authorities say the heist team underestimated the amount in the truck that day, and they made off with a little more than half of what was there.

Investigators say the six young men, four of whom were college students, then spent a week throwing money around on strippers, tennis shoes and cars, as well as Mother’s Day gifts. [Read more...]

BEA takes dim view, more state cuts to come

The South Carolina economy needs to get stronger, says the state’s Board of Economic Advisors.The BEA is the offical voice of the state in economic matters. Late Friday, the board kept is assessment of the state’s budget the same. That means that, in spite of some positive unemployment and income tax numbers numbers last week, the state’s budget will be cut again.

That is because the unemployment rate improvement partly caused by people just getting out of the workforce…they just stopped looking for jobs. Labor mathematicians call them “discouraged workers.” [Read more...]

Santee Cooper suspends plans for proposed Florence Co. plant

The Santee Cooper board of directors decided Monday to suspend efforts to permit the Pee Dee Energy Campus, a proposed coal-fired plant in Florence County.Santee Cooper spokesperson Laura Varn says the recession has had a severe impact on sales at the state-owned utility.  “Our sales are down 5 percent and industrial sales are down 18 percent.  That’s a major factor altering the long-term need for power.” 

Varn says passage of the cap and trade legislation in the US House is another major reason.   “It poses greater uncertainty for utilities looking to build coal-fired power plants.  There are technology costs and also the carbon tax, which gives us greater pause moving forward.” 

Also, the board sited the fact that Central Electric Power Cooperative, Santee Cooper’s largest customer, intends to gradually reduce its purchase from Santee Cooper by 1000 megawatts beginning in 2013. Central buys from the utility for individual power suppliers all over State Carolina–20 electric cooperatives in all 46 counties. Central currently intends to acquire that power from another supplier. The reduction would take place over a seven-year period. [Read more...]

One local government, citizens welcome transparency tool

In an effort to become more transparent, ten local governments in South Carolina are posting their spending details on the Internet.Last year, state Comptroller Richard Eckstrom unveiled a spending transparency Web site for state government and expanded the transparency initiative to local governments, encouraging them to post their checkbooks on their Web sites.

The town of Turbeville launched their website in May which lets the people see how their dollars are being spent. Pat Goodwin, Town Administrator for Turbeville says it’s been a win-win situation.

“Our citizens and local folks are able to be aware of the spending … keep track of how our funds are spent here in town as well as well as keeping our governmental official accountable,”says Goodwin. “The local citizens are happy about that,because they want to make sure they’re getting the best bang for their tax dollar.”
Goodwin says that the town opted to post their information on the state website as well as on their local website, since their citizens are familiar with going there to get their information. But that’s not the only one who is studying their spending details.He says, “We have discovered that the local high school has been using it to -at the end of the year last year –to show kids how local government works. They used it as a teaching tool. My understanding from one of the teachers is they plan to do thatagain this year.”

In this Information Age, it’s not difficult or expensive to provide people easy access to government spending details.

Godwin explains, “It’s a matter of scanning -the check register that our treasurer prints off for us every month anyway –scanning it -making it a PDF file, downloading it to the website -takes me all of about five minutes.”
The Turbeville Administrator says they now have folks who have become interested in local government —those who may not be able to get to the meetings due of transportation or, work schedules, but by their posting the town’s spending details on the web, they’re able to see them with the click of the “mouse.”

SC Chamber CEO says state must gear for growth

South Carolina Chamber of Commerce President and CEO Otis Rawl says the hot issue in the state and nationwide is health care reform. Rawl says efforts have to be made legislatively and from a business structure standpoint to allow more businesses to provide cost effective health care for employees, keeping in mind that self-employed persons are in need of help in securing reasonably priced health care for themselves and their families.”The state needs to look at some type of comprehensive tort reform initiative that will hopefully reduce some of the cost of health care that is becoming a lot more defense medicine than it is giving the proper care that people need. We’ll also be looking at energy issues to make sure we have a reliable, predictable source of energy for businesses that operate in the state.”

Rawl says job creation in the state which includes attracting new business cannot be obtained on a consistent basis without improvements to our roads, bridges and water systems.”Sometime here pretty quickly we need to look at our infrastructure which is crumbling, and find a way to earmark some funds to improve water and sewer, our roads, and enhance our ports. ” [Read more...]