S C T E CHN I CA L CO L L E G E S Y S T EM ’ S
F I R S T 5 0 Y EAR S
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The 1990s
A H I G H E R R O L E I N E D U C A T I O N
a plant in the southern United States, government leaders across
the South turned giddy. In South Carolina, folks said, “If we could
get BMW, we can get Mercedes.”
Dr. JimMorris recalls, “Mercedes came in and Mercedes, I felt
all along and I think the governor felt all along, was using us. That
they would not dare follow BMW to South Carolina.”
Mercedes pressed South Carolina for every incentive possible
and the governor, toward negotiations’ end, declined a request
they made. “I never thought they would come,” said Morris. “But
we played the game fully. They couldn’t follow BMW. Their ego
wouldn’t let them.”
Former U.S. Senator Hollings said Alabama cut a deal with
Mercedes. “They bought 1,000 Mercedes school buses. We
couldn’t match it.”
Mercedes ended up in Alabama.
Dr. Lex Walters, president of Piedmont Technical College
from 1968 to 2008, recalls those days when the chance to score
two glittering automakers set developers’ hearts aflutter. “Mer-
cedes kept wanting more and more incentives and Governor
Campbell finally said that when you look at the total economics
of what they’re wanting, we just can’t afford to do that.”
And a bit of politics reared its head. Walters again, “There is a
degree to which you can respond to the needs of a new employer
and keep other employers happy. Because they’ll say, ‘Look, you
didn’t offer that to me, and you’re offering that to some third par-
ty coming in now. That’s not fair.’”
BMW, though, was the real deal, a crown jewel in the training
system’s treasury of triumphs. Top-of-the-line training helped
snag that manufacturing beauty, and it validated everything. Ed
Zobel, longtime legislative liaison for the system, remembers the
exhilaration of success. “When BMWrolled into town, I got a bus
and took the staff I worked with at the State House up there and
showed them what the training had done.”
BMW showered beautiful Bavarian light on South Carolina
and that illumination helped people forget a dark, sordid time
that dominated headlines a few years earlier in 1990—and not
just any headlines. The national media came calling, among
them NBC’s “Nightly Report” as Ed Zobel recalls.
A ROCKY START IN THE STATE HOUSE
Several years before BMW would make a splash, how were
things in South Carolina? Well, let’s put it this way: things could
have been better at the State House. Walter Edgar in
South Caroli-
na, AHistory:
“In the spring and summer of 1990 South Carolina
was rocked with a series of scandals involving public officials. In
May, the president of the University of South Carolina resigned
amid charges that he misspent university funds. Two months lat-
er, on July 18, the U.S. attorney for South Carolina announced
that a federal grand jury was investigating a number of legislators
for allegedly taking bribes or using drugs. The code name for the
government’s sting was, appropriately, ‘Operation Lost Trust.’”
Dr. James Holderman, president of the University of South
Carolina, would resign in 1990, and the State House atmosphere
would change dramatically. The technical college system wasn’t
affected by the scandals, but it had to deal with those who were.
Key legislation and funding were needed. System presidents
would have to work with Holderman’s successors. How might
that go? Dr. Morris had already seen how Holderman wanted
total control of a merger between the tech system and the uni-
versity. Holderman, however, had tribulations aplenty in 1990,
and down the road, a president who had attended a community
college would take USC’s reins. Might he be more receptive to
a collaborative effort? Meanwhile, did major league trouble lie
ahead?
In 2010, the
Charleston Post & Courier
revisited “Lost Trust”
twenty years after it made headlines. “Drugs and booze flowed
freely among a boastfully corrupt group of South Carolina law-
makers who called themselves ‘the Fat and Ugly Caucus.’”
“They were known to cut deals in the halls of the legislature,
