{"id":2029,"date":"2011-05-16T08:00:00","date_gmt":"2011-05-16T12:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/2011\/05\/do-you-miss-him-yet-brad-lofton-in-sc.html"},"modified":"2011-05-16T08:00:00","modified_gmt":"2011-05-16T12:00:00","slug":"do-you-miss-him-yet-brad-lofton-in-sc","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/2011\/05\/do-you-miss-him-yet-brad-lofton-in-sc.html","title":{"rendered":"Do you miss him yet? Brad Lofton in SC"},"content":{"rendered":"


\n<\/a>
\nHe may be gone, but he’s still up to his old tricks, and he’s using us for a reference.<\/p>\n

\nAdva Saldinger wrote in The Sun News 8 May 2011,
\n
\nLofton hits ground running in new post; CEO asking taxpayers for $1.6 million<\/a>:<\/p>\n

\nThe new Myrtle Beach Regional Economic Development Corp. president and
\nchief executive is by many accounts aggressive and personable, and he
\nsays, ready to take charge and bring much needed jobs to the area quickly.<\/p>\n

\nBrad Lofton said he will bring 500 jobs in the first 18 months, and an
\naverage of 500 jobs each year over the next five to 10 years.\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

And a pony!<\/p>\n

\nHas anybody verified the jobs Lofton claimed he brought to Lowndes County?<\/p>\n


\nEvery time I tried to pin him or VLCIA down on that the dates shifted.
\nWell, I guess we can just look in their minutes…
\noh, right!
\nthey won’t release those to the public!<\/a>
\nTwo VLCIA board members have since gone on record as being for publishing
\nthose minutes
\n
\n(Roy Copeland)<\/a>
\nor at least not opposed
\n
\n(Tom Call)<\/a>.
\nI’m not sure I asked Norman Bennett about that, but I’m scheduled to see him
\nMonday, so I’ll ask him then.
\nMary Gooding still refers me to her chairman, Jerry Jennett,
\nwho still has not called me back.<\/p>\n

\nThe South Carolina newspaper’s hagiography of Lofton includes
\nnot a word about being fired from Effingham County.
\nI guess like
\nhistory changes the closer you get to Valdosta<\/a>
\nhistory changes the closer you get to Myrtle Beach.<\/a><\/p>\n

\nThe hagiography also says not a word about the biomass plant apparently
\nnever going to be built because it has no business model and Ashley Paulk
\nhas told them to move on.<\/a><\/p>\n

\nBut apparently the biomass plant still has at least one believer,
\neven on the Lowndes County Commission.
\nThe SC newspaper said:<\/p>\n

\n
\n<\/a>
\nCrawford Powell, former chairman of the Industrial Authority and a
\nLowndes County Commissioner, described Lofton as intelligent, capable
\nand instantly likeable.<\/p>\n

\n“He did a good job of diversifying the base of what we have here and
\nkind of shifted the mindset to hey we need to compete with anyone we
\nwant to compete with,” Powell said.<\/p>\n

\nLofton’s work to bring a Home Depot distribution center, which has more
\nthan 300 employees and is growing to the Valdosta area was particularly
\nimpressive, Powell said.<\/p>\n

\nIn Valdosta there was controversy over a biomass plant, which Lofton
\nsaid was his greatest challenge.<\/p>\n

\n“It was stressful because there was some vocal opposition,” he said. “We
\nhandled it professionally. You have to treat everybody the same because
\nthey’re all constituents.”<\/p>\n

\nPowell said that there was conflict around the project but that the
\nplant had all of the necessary environmental approvals.<\/p>\n

\n“Visionary people often have problems selling that vision because so
\nmany people around them say we’ve never done it like that,” Powell said.\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Um, no, it was because so many people researched it and found problems with it
\n
\nand never got their questions answered.<\/a>
\n
\n<\/a>
\nAnd also because Lofton and Ricketts alienated so many people, such as
\n
\nthis group of people I arranged for them to meet in June 2010.<\/a>
\nThe problem was not so much Lofton’s personality as his inability
\nto hear any views that didn’t come from VLCIA personnel or their
\nown paid “experts”.<\/p>\n

\nI spoke to Crawford Powell and Roy Copeland
\nThursday at the Wiregrass Solar commissioning
\nceremony, and wondered when we would see them quoted in
\nthe local newspaper.
\nPowell said the local paper didn’t do enough interviews.
\nI told him one way that has worked in the past to persuade the VDT
\nto do some things was for LAKE to do them first, so maybe I should interview
\nhim. He said we could schedule a time for that.
\nSo I’ll get back to him about scheduling that.
\n(I also mentioned to the VDT that Powell apparently wanted to be interviewed
\nby the VDT.)<\/p>\n

\nI mention Roy Copeland because the SC newspaper also quoted him:<\/p>\n

\n
\n<\/a>
\nIn his five years in Valdosta, he brought in a Home Depot distribution
\ncenter, auto-parts manufacturing, pharmaceutical manufacturing, a John
\nDeere irrigation manufacturing plant and a bread manufacturing plant.<\/p>\n

\n“I think it’s a tremendous gain for you guys and a significant loss
\nfor us,” said Roy Copeland, a board member of the Valdosta-Lowndes
\nCounty Industrial Authority. “He’s competent, he’s personable and he’s
\na go-getter.”<\/p>\n

\nCopeland also described him as relentless in his pursuit of new
\nindustry. Once a company would show some interest Lofton would look
\nafter all the details and see the project through to completion.<\/p>\n

\n“If you’ve got him on your team he’s not going to give up,” Copeland
\nsaid. “I think there are numerous situations when we needed someone at
\nbat at a critical time and Brad is capable of hitting a homerun.”<\/p>\n

\nCopeland said that the Myrtle Beach EDC will have no regrets with bringing
\nLofton in because his combination of skills and aggressiveness is unique.\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

When I spoke to him Thursday, Roy Copeland said he stood by what he said.
\nFair enough; everybody’s got an opinion.
\nAnd Copeland did not praise Lofton for any of the more questionable
\nprojects, nor even for projects that haven’t happened yet.<\/p>\n

\n
\n<\/a>
\nHowever, what Roy Copeland did praise Lofton for were project management skills,
\nnot public-facing executive director skills.
\nAs far as aggressiveness, I suppose
\n
\nridiculing the NAACP<\/a> could be considered aggressive,
\nalthough Lofton didn’t seem quite so aggressive when the local NAACP
\npresident called him on it
\nat a VLCIA board meeting<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\nAh, but the big item is:<\/p>\n

\nThe EDC needs additional resources including a closing funds for
\nincentives, more developed land and buildings for businesses and some
\nadditional staff members.<\/p>\n

\nTo that end, the EDC asked Horry County Council for a huge increase in
\nfunding, from $300,000 a year to the $1.6 million that would come from
\na dedicated mill.<\/p>\n

\nHe has been in this position before. When he led the Industrial Authority
\nin Valdosta, he worked with the county commissioners to pass a dedicated
\nmill for economic development.\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Actually,
\n
\nGary Minchew took credit for that last,<\/a>
\nalthough what Powell said is no doubt also correct.<\/p>\n

\n
\n<\/a>
\nHowever, VLCIA then used its dedicated 1 mil, or about $3 million a year
\nin tax money, to issue about $15 million in bonds and other debt for which
\n
\nVLCIA will end up paying back about 56% more than the principle.<\/a>
\nAnd what did VLCIA do with all that money?
\nIt bought land, most of which is still sitting there unused;
\n577 acres of it according to their own agendas.<\/p>\n

\nYep, up to his old tricks.<\/p>\n

\nHorry County Council voted to give the mill for economic development
\non first reading and it will be back up for consideration at Tuesday’s
\nmeeting.<\/p>\n

\n“I think the entire council recognizes the desperate need we have for
\neconomic development and jobs in Horry County,” said Horry County Council
\nChairman Tom Rice.\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The article says:<\/p>\n

\nAccountability and results are written into Lofton’s contract, which has a clause that says the EDC board can terminate the contract if he doesn’t bring 500 jobs in the first 18 months.<\/p>\n

\nThat provision is there to guarantee that the board wouldn’t have any monetary or legal ramifications for ending the contract if he hasn’t demonstrated he can do the job, Wendel said.\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Maybe the EDC board won’t, but how will Horry County not have any monetary ramifications if it’s passed a tax for the EDC?
\nFor that matter, VLCIA’s debt appears to be
\n
\nco-guaranteed by Lowndes County<\/a>.
\nHorry County Council might want to investigate whether the 1 mil Lowndes
\nCounty dedicated to VLCIA actually brought in jobs or not.<\/p>\n

\nOr they can be charmed by how personable and likable he may seem;
\nit’s their county. In our county, we’ll be paying off Brad Lofton’s debts
\nfor a long time.<\/p>\n

\n-jsq<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

He may be gone, but he’s still up to his old tricks, and he’s using us for a reference. Adva Saldinger wrote in The Sun News 8 May 2011, Lofton hits ground running in new post; CEO asking taxpayers for $1.6 million: The new Myrtle Beach Regional Economic Development Corp. president and chief executive is […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[97,120,14,2,41,19,88,2951,22,3,133,178],"tags":[4565,728,1747,4564,623,714,8704,4567,4566,8701,876,4562,2625,847,7,4561,8863,183,2428,4563,6,8749],"class_list":["post-2029","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-activism","category-biomass","category-economy","category-government","category-health-care","category-history","category-lowndes-county-commission","category-naacp","category-politics","category-transparency","category-vdt","category-vlcia","tag-aggressive","tag-bonds","tag-brad-lofton","tag-co-guarantor","tag-crawford-powell","tag-debt","tag-economy","tag-environmental-justice","tag-environmental-racism","tag-georgia","tag-health","tag-horry-county","tag-industrial-authority","tag-jobs","tag-lowndes-county","tag-myrtle-beach","tag-naacp","tag-roy-copeland","tag-south-carolina","tag-tom-rice","tag-valdosta","tag-vlcia"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2029","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2029"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2029\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2029"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2029"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2029"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}