Transparency
About 1,800 payments from 2020–21 are missing from the posted registers
What the records show
The county numbers its checks and electronic payments in order. Lining up every posted register shows six stretches in 2020 and early 2021 where blocks of numbers were used but appear in no register now on the county's site:
- June 11 to June 30, 2020: about 115 checks and 38 electronic payments
- July 23 to August 6, 2020: about 75 checks and 32 electronic payments
- August 6 to September 3, 2020: about 253 checks and 114 electronic payments
- September 24 to October 23, 2020: about 192 checks and 87 electronic payments
- December 10, 2020 to February 4, 2021: about 428 checks and 210 electronic payments, with no register at all for January 2021
- February 4 to February 25, 2021: about 152 checks and 76 electronic payments
That is roughly 1,215 checks and 557 electronic payments. Shorter gaps of one or two weeks also turn up in other years, about 4,200 checks in all since 2011, but none as long as these.
The question
Will the county post the missing registers so the public record is complete?
Source: Transparency in Spending, registers dated 6/11/2020, 6/30/2020, 7/23/2020, 8/6/2020, 9/3/2020, 9/24/2020, 10/23/2020, 12/10/2020, 2/4/2021 and 2/25/2021. The full list of missing number ranges is in our data notes.
County credit-card spending has no public detail
What the records show
County purchasing cards are paid off in lump payments to the bank, so the registers show only the bank's name, not what was bought. Those payments ran about $20,000–$55,000 a month before 2020 and about $110,000–$175,000 a month since. By fiscal year: FY2021 $1.09MFY2022 $1.63MFY2023 $0.98MFY2024 $1.21MFY2025 $1.20MFY2026 $1.78M. Yearly totals bounce partly because of which months' payments landed in posted registers. Over the same years, the number of paper checks the county issues fell by more than half.
The question
Will the county post monthly card statements showing each purchase, the merchant and the department?
Source: payments to "WELLS FARGO BANKS" and "BANK OF AMERICA NA" in the county's registers; see Where the money goes.
Purchasing and procurement
Who runs county purchasing?
What the records show
The county's Purchasing department spent $46,559–$79,087 a year from FY2013 through FY2023. Starting with the FY2024 budget, its line is zero; Finance's spending rose by about $98,000 that year, which suggests the work moved there. Separately, the outside auditors found in FY2024 that the county had not followed its own procurement code on federal ARPA purchases: a winning bidder did not get the required written notice, and a sole-source purchase was made without the required written justification. In FY2025 the bid-notice problem was fixed, but the sole-source documentation finding repeated. The auditors questioned no costs.
The procurement code in the county's online Code of Ordinances dates from 1998, with a few later amendments. It requires sealed bids for contracts of $20,000 or more and puts a purchasing manager in charge of county buying. In January 2026 council replaced it (Ordinance 677, adopted 6–0 on January 20, 2026). The new code requires informal quotes for purchases from $10,001 to $49,999, formal bids or proposals at $50,000 and up, legal review of sole-source purchases over $25,000, and a council vote on how any construction project over $500,000 is bid. The new code was not yet in the online Code of Ordinances as of its last update in March 2026.
The question
Who is responsible for county purchasing now, and which ARPA purchases did findings 2024-002 and 2025-003 involve? With the Purchasing department's budget at zero since FY2024, who has been filling the purchasing manager role the code requires?
Sources: FY2015–FY2027 budget books (department tables); FY2025 Annual Financial Report, pages 134–137; Ordinance 677 in the January 5, 2026 council packet, adopted at the January 20, 2026 meeting; Code of Ordinances, Chapter 2, Article V.
The countywide radio system
What the records show
On May 15, 2023, council, meeting as the Committee of the Whole, voted 6–0 to set aside $10,366,737 of federal ARPA money for a new countywide radio system. The vote set aside funds; it did not choose a vendor. The committee report says five vendors answered the county's request for proposals and lists Kimball Communications first and Rock Communications ("Fleet Talk") second. Rock Communications has since been paid $10,877,533 in total, which includes about $0.8 million paid since July 2025 that may be ongoing service or parts.
The question
How was the vendor chosen? Where are the proposal scores, the signed contract and any change orders? What is the system's total cost, and how much was paid from sources other than the ARPA set-aside? Is this one of the purchases the auditors flagged?
Sources: June 5, 2023 council packet, pages 17–18; payments to Rock Communications, September 2023 to October 2026.
Large payments without a public description
Two $2.6 million wires to a law firm
What the records show
The county wired $2,594,367.62 on September 30, 2022 and $2,626,019.28 on May 3, 2023 to Graybill, Lansche & Vinzani, a law firm the county has paid for legal work since 2018. The county's land holdings grew by $2,601,505 that year, so the first payment may have been a property purchase closed through the firm. We could not match the second payment to anything in the annual report.
The question
What were these two payments for, and where are the council approvals and supporting documents?
Sources: registers dated 10/6/2022 and 5/4/2023; FY2023 Annual Financial Report, capital assets note.
A $3 million wire to MMR Pickens LLC
What the records show
On July 19, 2023 the county wired $3,000,000 to MMR Pickens LLC. It is the only payment ever made to this company, and we found no public description of it.
The question
What was this payment for, and when did council approve it?
Source: register dated 7/20/2023.
An $848,935 wire to The Hendricks Firm
What the records show
The county paid The Hendricks Firm LLC about $50,000–$150,000 a year from FY2020 through FY2025. On October 21, 2024 it also wired the firm $848,934.58, many times its usual annual total.
The question
What was this payment for?
Source: register dated 10/31/2024.
Cash paid to private companies
What the records show
Beyond tax breaks, the county has made direct payments to companies it recruited: $2,250,000 to FN America (October 2024 and December 2025) and $1,250,000 to ElringKlinger (April and July 2025). Economic-development grants are sometimes state money passed through the county.
The question
Where are the incentive agreements, and what jobs and investment did each company promise? Do the agreements let the county recover money if targets are missed? How much of each payment was county money?
Sources: registers dated 10/31/2024, 12/29/2025, 4/3/2025 and 7/24/2025.
The FY2026 budget
Budget changes during FY2026
What the records show
On June 1, 2026, council voted 5–0 to amend the FY2026 budget (Ordinance 682). Across all county funds it raised budgeted spending from $109.1 million to $130.8 million, covered mostly by $25.2 million drawn from reserves. Finance staff gave the usual reasons: purchase orders carried over from the year before, grants that arrived mid-year, land, building and equipment purchases council approved after the budget passed, and higher legal fees, including legal fees for economic development.
In the General Fund, the largest changes were:
- Building Maintenance: +$3,612,849. Its equipment and construction line went from $65,000 to $3,158,264. Council minutes from that year mention repairs to the Administration Building roof and work on EMS stations.
- EMS: +$1,443,264.
- Account 01930: +$1,336,900. The monthly report calls this account the "Contingent Fund"; the amendment labels the money SCORF, the South Carolina Opioid Recovery Fund, which passes on opioid-lawsuit settlement money. By May 28, $1,706,110 had been charged to the account, $323,622 more than the amended amount.
- Economic Development: +$1,029,077.
- Emergency Management: +$725,963.
The county's largest construction payee in FY2026 was M B Kahn Construction, paid $6,596,106 (and $1,386,299 the year before). We did not find the project named in the 2025–26 council agendas and minutes we searched. The FY2025 audit lists about $9.4 million in unfinished construction contracts as of June 30, 2025.
The question
What did the $3.6 million Building Maintenance increase pay for? Which project is M B Kahn Construction building, and what was its contract? How was the opioid settlement money in account 01930 spent, and what covered the $323,622 above the amended amount?
Sources: Ordinance 682 in the June 1, 2026 council packet, with the vote recorded in the July 6, 2026 packet; Monthly Financial Report, period ending May 28, 2026; payment registers, July 2024 to June 2026; FY2025 Annual Financial Report, note IV.F.
Same-amount payments worth checking
Identical amounts paid twice
What the records show
Equal installments are common, so these may be fine. Each is the exact same amount to the same payee within a few weeks, and an invoice would settle it:
- Wells Fargo (purchasing cards): two wires of $132,202.57 on the same day, November 26, 2025
- AVTEC Inc: $164,826.35 on July 28, 2016 and again on August 4, 2016
- Trojan Technologies: $109,332.60 by electronic transfer on February 15, 2024, then by paper check on March 14, 2024. A later payment of exactly twice that amount suggests installment billing.
The question
Were these separate invoices, or was a payment made twice and later recovered?
Sources: registers dated 11/26/2025, 7/28/2016, 8/4/2016, 2/15/2024 and 3/14/2024 (the county's site labels this one "03/14/2023").
Covered on the overview page
Budgets, reserves and audits
Every final amended General Fund budget from FY2011 to FY2025 planned to draw down reserves, and 11 of the 15 ended with a surplus instead. The county's reserve has stayed at 7–11 months of spending, against a common minimum of two. And FY2023, FY2024 and FY2025 each had material weaknesses in financial reporting. See the overview for the charts and the full audit table.
What came back clean
Tests that found nothing unusual
- No bunching under bid limits. Under the old code, contracts of $20,000 or more needed sealed bids. From 2011 until the code changed in January 2026, payments just under $20,000 were about as common as payments just over it. The new limits are too recent to test.
- Same-day groups of payments were mostly routine. They were mainly refunds to tax-sale bidders (one check per property) and utility bills. A few contractor groups were not checked one by one.
- No weekend checks to vendors. The only weekend-dated payments are wires to the banks that run the county's purchasing cards.
- Low bonded debt. Bonds and notes come to about $250 per resident. That figure does not include pension or retiree-health obligations.
How to ask for these records
Anyone can request county records under the South Carolina Freedom of Information Act. A written request to Pickens County naming the specific record (for example, "the signed contract and proposal evaluation for the countywide radio system") is the fastest route. The county may charge search and copying fees and must respond within the timelines in S.C. Code § 30-4-30.
If the county answers any of these questions, we will post the answer here with the date.