State’s Military Base Task Force to Release New Study on Vast Economic Impact of Military in South Carolina

Nov. 8, 2012
For Immediate Release

The S.C. Military Base Task Force will release a new study on the economic impact of the military in South Carolina at a news conference at 9:30 a.m. Tuesday, Nov. 13. 

The news conference will take place in the Conference Room of S.C. Comptroller General Richard Eckstrom’s Office, on the third floor of the Wade Hampton Office Building at the State Capitol Complex in Columbia.

Comptroller General Eckstrom, who serves as chairman of the Military Base Task Force, will lead the news conference. Also attending will be Task Force Maj. Gen. William “Dutch” Holland (USAF Ret.), who serves as executive coordinator of the Task Force; S.C. Adjutant General Robert Livingston; George Patrick (USAF Ret.), who serves as deputy secretary of the S.C. Department of Commerce; and other officials from the state Department of Commerce, which conducted the study on behalf of the Task Force. 

The study details a multibillion-dollar impact of the military supporting tens of thousands of jobs across South Carolina, concentrated in the state’s four military installation communities: Beaufort, Charleston, Columbia and Sumter. 

The study also comes at a critical time when U.S. military spending, already being reduced by several hundred billion dollars, could be cut even more drastically under a series of automatic federal spending reductions, known as sequestration, that are scheduled to begin in January 2013. 

Sequestration, along with feedback on the issue to Chairman Eckstrom and Executive Coordinator Gen. Holland from members of South Carolina’s congressional delegation, will be discussed later in the week at a meeting of the full Military Base Task Force. The Task Force meeting will take place at 2:30 p.m. on Thursday, Nov. 15, in Room 252 of the Edgar Brown Building (corner of Sumter and Pendleton streets at the Capitol Complex). 

Paper copies of the study’s executive summary will be available at the news conference Tuesday; digital copies of the full study will available when the news conference takes place. 

For more information, contact Eric Ward, public information director in S.C. Comptroller General Richard Eckstrom’s Office, at (803) 734-2538 or eward@cg.sc.gov.

###

View full press release PDF.