Follow-Up File: The “Quinnovista” Deal

By FITSNews ||  Multiple S.C. lawmakers applied intense pressure on the University of South Carolina’s Board of Trustees in an effort to have “Republican” consultant Richard Quinn hired to promote the school’s botched “Innovista” research campus.

Ultimately, that effort was unsuccessful – although the University will be benefiting from Quinn’s talents anyway.

As reported on FITS last week, the veteran GOP message man has been hired to promote the failed “Innovista” project, but he’ll be getting paid (we’re told) with private funds, not public dollars.

Quinn has been hired by local businesswoman Cathy Novinger of the firm Novinger QTR Consulting.  His tab will be picked up by what Novinger refers to as the “Midlands Business Leadership Group,” an assemblage of “local CEOs” who are supporting the project, which has drained millions of taxpayer dollars while failing to achieve any of its objectives.

“Innovista is our Boeing,” Novinger told FITS.

Really?

Innovista received a $154 million taxpayer-funded bailout from the City of Columbia, S.C. last month– which of course is on top of the $150 million tax dollars it has already wasted.

(For the latest on this ongoing taxpayer disaster, click here).

Novinger declined to disclose how much Quinn was being paid – or who was paying him – although she said that none of the firms involved in her business coalition were being paid with public money.

Obviously, it’s sort of hard to verify that without being told the members of the coalition, but oh well …