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This article is the second installment in our ongoing series – ‘Rebuilding Hampton’ – which covers the significant challenges facing the citizens and leaders of Hampton County, South Carolina. As our media outlet has previously reported, Hampton County is staring down “allegations of fraud, millions of dollars in missing or misspent funds and a habitual failure to report required financial information to the public” – all of which have eroded public confidence in the integrity of local leaders as massive budget cuts have affected critical county services.
FITSNews recently spent some time in Hampton County speaking to community leaders, elected officials – and most importantly to the citizens seeking answers as to how the county ended up in such dire straits.
Additional interviews and articles will be released in the coming weeks as we continue to investigate this story from every angle…
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When Bill Hager decided to run for office in Hampton County, he knew that – as a Republican – he faced an uphill battle. In fact, Hager’s defeat of incumbent state representative Shedron Williams in 2022, marked the first time a Republican had ever been elected to the S.C. House of Representatives from Hampton County.
Hager represents District 122 – which in addition to Hampton County also contains part of Colleton, Jasper and Beaufort counties. He works with all four county councils as well as four airports, four legislative delegations and multiple boards and commissions within his district.
“It’s been rather busy,” he told me.
Originally from North Carolina, Hager has lived in the Lowcountry for the past quarter century. After moving to the area, he quickly became involved in the community by serving on various boards including the Hampton County Economic Development Commission (HCEDC) and the Southern Carolina Alliance (SCA). Hager’s involvement in economic development combined with his engineering background has given him a unique – and practical – perspective on Hampton County’s budget woes.
According to Hager, Hampton’s problems began back in 2014 when laminate manufacturer Panolam shuttered its Hampton County facility, costing the county more than 200 jobs.
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“I believe the county – with the loss of the jobs from (Panolam) – the county continued spending, and this all goes back to 2015 and the county continued spending at a level that they could not afford based on the revenues they were not getting,” Hager said. “And I think we’ve slowly drained our resources trying to maintain a spending level that we cannot maintain until we get some economic development.”
As businesses and industries like Panolam left Hampton County, Hager said local leaders began relying on residential taxes to subsidize core services.
“We cannot fund the necessary services based on residential taxes,” he said. “It’s got to be industrial taxes, industrial level taxes. We’ve got to get some more development.”
According to Hager, the county has some manufacturing jobs, but a good portion of them are low-paying, automated positions. He knows the county needs to attract more higher-paying jobs to fund the tax base – and also to help fund people’s lives.
“I want our folks to stay here,” he said.
Hager also lamented the fact so many county residents must commute to other counties for work.
“We have so many people that have to drive out of (the) county to work,” he said. “It would be nice to have the jobs here so they could be home in the evening with their families. Help raise their children. You know that education will only improve if we can get families involved with helping with that education, right? So, and if they’re not home, they can’t.”
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RELATED | REBUILDING HAMPTON: A NEW SHERIFF IN TOWN
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TRICKLE-DOWN…
As the state representative for Hampton County, Hager knows all too well the impact recent budget cuts have had on essential services – and, in turn, on his constituency. As it relates to emergency services, he said he has gotten many calls about delays in transporting patients.
“It’s affecting people seriously,” he acknowledged.
The recent budget cuts to the Hampton County Sheriff’s Office (HCSO) also greatly concern Hager.
“The word’s got out that the sheriff’s budget’s being cut, and criminals see those things too, and so they know the sheriff’s deputies are not out there patrolling like we need them to,” he said. “We’ve got to find a way to to fund those essential services, even at the cost of things we want to be done. Right? Those things have to come first, right, above all else.”
Hager has been working to secure funding from the state for police services – helping several towns with funding for equipment and with the construction of two new police stations.
“But the county’s got to do their part too… and we can’t depend on the state to fund everything,” he said.
Bringing the conversation back to economic development, Hager noted that as a longtime member of the local economic development commission he brought many development projects to the Hampton County Council.
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“Every time we’d get a project and get to the county council approval level, and something would go wrong,” Hager said. “There’d be an infighting. They couldn’t get along. They couldn’t, wouldn’t agree to the tax incentives. Something would happen, and the projects would never come.”
Improving cooperation within the county council on economic development is key to success, he said, “so that the people that come here see that we are really interested.”
“We got to react very quickly, because these folks are looking all over the country, all over the world, and if we don’t react very quickly to their needs, then that’s somewhere else they they’re not going to waste their time,” he said. “That’s where we’ve got to be very proactive and very quickly react to their needs.”
Hager believes the forensic audit of the troubled county which is being overseen by the South Carolina auditor as part of the state’s annual budget process will provide many answers to the citizens of Hampton County. The state budget – which was signed into law by S.C. governor Henry McMaster in June – included a requirement for the state’s auditor and inspector general to hire an outside firm to audit the county as well as its school district.
According to Hager, the audit encompasses all county finances from 2015 to present, “so it’ll be a very deep dive into the county finances, and we may finally find out where the money was spent.”
Hager doesn’t necessarily believe the audit will find intentional fraud.
“I just think there was misspent money, maybe some entitlements that folks thought they were entitled to spend money on that they shouldn’t have and we may find, we may find some fraud, but I think the majority money was just misspent on projects that maybe shouldn’t have been done,” he said.
Count on our news outlet to continue digging into the mission millions in Hampton County… and be on the lookout for the next installment in this series very soon.
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR …
Jenn Wood is FITSNews’ incomparable research director. She’s also the producer of the FITSFiles and Cheer Incorporated podcasts and leading expert on all things Murdaugh/ South Carolina justice. A former private investigator with a criminal justice degree, evildoers beware, Jenn Wood is far from your average journalist! A deep dive researcher with a passion for truth and a heart for victims, this mom of two is pretty much a superhero in FITSNews country. Did we mention she’s married to a rocket scientist? (Lucky guy!) Got a story idea or a tip for Jenn? Email her at jenn@fitsnews.com.
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