Richard Eckstrom, S.C. Comptroller General

Richard Eckstrom, S.C. Comptroller General

Two issues current in S.C. government circles are the adoption of transparency as a matter of policy and tracking the paths of recession- fighting stimulus money. Among his many continuous chores he performs on behalf of the public, S.C. Comptroller General Richard Eckstrom is both pushing for more transparency in government, and he is tracking the stimulus money as it matriculates through the state.

Richard Eckstrom was born in Duluth, Minn. as the second in what grew to an eight- child family. His older brother was the late David Eckstrom who was chairman of the Lexington 5 School District in Irmo/ Chapin.

Eckstrom’s father was an economist with a PhD from the University of Minnesota. He taught at the University of Maine and at the University of Minnesota before he moved his family to Columbia in 1957 to teach at the USC School of Business. He retired from USC in the late 1960s.

After the 5th and the 6th grades at the Columbia Christian School, Eckstrom went to University High School on the USC campus beginning in the seventh grade and graduating in 1966. He was a championship debater and president of the student body his senior year. For spending money, he delivered newspapers in the Honeycombs, now the demolished men’s dorms that once graced Blossom Street.

Before taking on his paper route, Eckstrom sold Cokes, peanuts, and programs at the Carolina Stadium, now Williams- Brice, during the fall football season.

After high school graduation, Eckstrom went directly into USC with the professed goal of majoring in the social sciences: anthropology, sociology, psychology, and related subjects.

After college graduation, Eckstrom joined the U.S. Navy, where he was accepted for officer candidate school, which was 18 weeks in Newport, R.I. While he was in OCS, Eckstrom toyed with the idea of becoming a fighter pilot. While he was about to start flight school in Pensacola, his older brother David came down to talk him out of flight school and into oceanography.

Even though his field was oceanography, Eckstrom worked in race relations, too, taking full advantage of his college education in the social sciences.

Out of the Navy, Eckstrom returned to Columbia and joined some of his brothers in the tennis court construction business. Their firm was called Tennico, and they built courts wherever they could win the bid, even in Australia. In fact, the city’s courts on Wheeler Hill, the Columbia Tennis Center, were built by Tennico.

While he was working full- time, Eckstrom thought it made sense to go to school full- time, too, just to make the most of his time. He enrolled in the MBA program at USC. He took all the accounting courses offered, so after he earned his MBA, Eckstrom stayed with it to also earn his master of accountancy degree, too.

In 1978, Eckstrom went to work for Peat Marwick Mitchell, one of the Big Eight accounting firms. By 1988, working in both Charlotte and Greenville, one of his big jobs with Peat Marwick was the merging of the two accounting systems at Southern Bank and 1st Union Bank.

Also in that same time period, Eckstrom ran his brother David’s campaign for the S.C. House of Representatives. They lost to David Wright, but they gained a taste for politics.

Working with the Columbia office of Peat Marwick, Eckstrom put together a proposal to audit the state’s books. His proposal was accepted, and he pulled in Peat Marwick players from Atlanta, Charlotte, Greenville, and Columbia for the huge undertaking to audit the books of the State of S.C.

His taste for politics was joined with a taste for government, particularly when he realized the problems in the state’s investment practices with its pension money. The state’s constitution did not allow investments in stocks with state money.

Eckstrom ran for state treasurer in 1993, and he was inaugurated in early 1994 – a year when the Dow Jones Industrial Average tripled. Eckstrom lobbied the Legislature to reconsider its lowreturn investments, but the elected officials preferred the safety of the low returns to the high returns that came with risks. Finally, though, the Legislature put the constitutional amendment on the ballot, and the public voted 74 percent in favor of the amendment.

In 1998, the tech bubble burst, and losses were easy to count. Of course, in the current investment climate, to see a drop of 25 percent over the last two years in the value of a portfolio is not so unusual.

In 1999, Eckstrom left the office of treasurer due to illness, as he put it. The voters got sick of him.

Eckstrom returned to offer himself to the voters as a candidate for comptroller general for the state. He has been the comptroller general since 2002.