AvCraft: Signing Blank Checks -Opinion.

Wait, we just gave $100,000 to who?

That was the startling reaction of several Horry County Council members on Thursday, after the announcement that AvCraft Technical Services would be adding 150 jobs with the help of $100,000 in county incentive funds and another $100,000 from the state.The company’s expansion is great news. The area needs jobs, particularly ones that pay well, as the AvCraft jobs promise to do. But the jarring revelation that those entrusted to hand out the county’s money didn’t even know where it was going is hard to fathom.

County Councilman Carl Schwarzkopf told reporter Adva Saldinger that the news that the money was going to AvCraft “sure gives me second thoughts.”

Councilman Marion Foxworth also said he didn’t know where the money was going and theorized that the vote on the deal would have been different had all of the council members been aware of the recipient. Both Schwarzkopf and Foxworth, as well as Councilman Paul Prince, said they will make sure and ask where the money is going in the future.

Well, that’s good news. Better late than never, perhaps. But it’s galling to think that our elected leaders didn’t think to ask for more details this time before pledging $100,000 of our money. It’s not fair having second thoughts when it doesn’t look like there were any first thoughts involved, at least for some councilmen.

Isn’t this exactly what executive sessions of council are for? Council Chairman Tom Rice said that there weren’t any executive sessions used in this instance. The secret meetings can be overused by elected bodies, but discussions of the specifics of pending economic development agreements are specifically exempted. Perhaps a quick two-minute get-together of the council would have been advisable, if for nothing else than to share with the whole group the name of the company involved. As for Rice, he knew who was getting the money, and he said on Friday that he “was kind of surprised to find out” that his fellow council members didn’t. The information was available, he said, if they had only asked.

Councilman Gary Loftus echoed that sentiment, saying that he didn’t think anybody was actively trying to hide anything from other council members. “All they had to do was ask,” he said.

For Prince and Schwarzkopf, the lack of specific knowledge of this project seems particularly strange, as both were in attendance at the council’s Economic Development Committee meeting on Nov. 29, when the incentives were discussed. Of course, the expansion was only referred to via an alias at that meeting, and neither council member apparently was curious enough to figure out what company that alias project was.

The use of a pseudonym in public discussions of these sort of incentives is understandable, so as not to telegraph pending business decisions to competitors, but surely the council members in charge of approving such incentives should take the time to learn all the details they can. Not that it would have been that hard to unravel. The super-secret codename for the AvCraft expansion (the second incentive package for the company) was AV2. The either apathetic or overly trusting approach to handing out tax money on display last week is even more frustrating when we take into account that the County Council had to break its own rules to hand out this money.

The council’s approved policy for such incentives requires a $2.5 million investment to trigger the county’s cash. In this case, AvCraft is planning only a $1 million expansion, so the council had to approve a special variance just for this company – a company that some council members didn’t bother to learn the name of.

We have no reason to distrust the vetting of AvCraft done by the Myrtle Beach Regional Economic Development Center or by the state Commerce Department. It’s wonderful that these jobs are planned for our area. We couldn’t be happier about that. But in the future, we wish some of our council members would do their own jobs and perform some very simple due diligence before giving away our money. Knowing the name that will get filled in on the check shouldn’t be too much to ask.

http://www.thesunnews.com