Scout picked NC over SC for headquarters. That’s our fault.

For decades, attracting a major corporate headquarters to South Carolina was the destiny of the state’s political leaders. The Legislature passed legislation giving special tax breaks and incentives to anyone who establishes a major headquarters here.

No bits of any significant size. And one of our important corporate headquarters – for a company that did almost all of its business in our state – was lost when SCANA Corp. executives drove the electric utility close to bankruptcy with their illegal scheme involving the VC Summer Nuclear Plant.

But the search continued – apparently, until this month.

As recently as April, a spokesperson for Governor Henry McMaster confirmed that South Carolina wants to host Scout Motors’ new global headquarters, telling The Post and Courier’s John McDermott: “Our state doesn’t have a single Fortune 500-style global headquarters and the high-paying careers that come with one. That could change if Scout sets up its headquarters in the same state as its manufacturing plant, but “We understand that other states are eager to take jobs and investment from South Carolina if we allow them.”

South Carolina made its proposal – which we can only imagine would have been quite expensive, considering our state had spent a then-record $1.3 billion to build roads and a training center and had given out tax breaks to lure the Scouts’ first manufacturing plant to the town of Blythewood, just north of Columbia – but we couldn’t come out on top.

That honor went to Charlotte, which offered a promised 1,000 high-paying jobs for an as-yet-unreported sum and the prestige of a global headquarters. Well, Charlotte probably doesn’t have that much of a reputation given its abundance of corporate headquarters.

Granted, South Carolina cannot compete for a company that wants to locate its headquarters in an internationally renowned city near other corporate headquarters and a major international airport.

So perhaps Mr. McMaster was just accepting reality last week when he refused to give up on Charlotte and instead focused on the $2 billion investment and 4,000 jobs the scouts promised to bring to Blythwood. “It would be nice to have a headquarters, staffed with executives and white-collar people, but we want to put people to work and make those cars,” he said. “We are a manufacturing state,” he said.

And really, it’s a huge deal to get those manufacturing jobs. We hope they’ll prove worth the hefty cost. We also hope that legislators did not pass the record-breaking $1.3 billion stimulus package with the expectation that corporate headquarters would automatically follow suit. If anyone did this, it should be another lesson about making sure they know what they are getting in return rather than just assuming the best when they spend our tax money.

But we should not abandon the idea of ​​corporate headquarters. Instead, we should focus on the components we lack. There’s definitely interest in the No. 1 thing we’ve heard in the past that SC politicians talk about: lower taxes. But there is an even greater focus on a place where executives and their top staff will want to live and raise their families and that can supply the workforce through excellent schools and a safe and inviting community.

Back in April, Scout said he was looking for financial incentives, labor availability, salaries, local real estate conditions, quality of life, visibility for the company’s brand and proximity to the Blythwood plant. When it announced its decision this month, the company said Charlotte “stands out for its combination of workforce strength, business climate, livability, strategic location and the adventurous spirit of the Scout brand.”

We have no doubt that South Carolina offered an attractive stimulus package: after all, this is something that the Commerce Department and, when necessary, the legislature do consistently – even when they shouldn’t. And if by “salary” you mean the company is looking for lower wages, then we well know that South Carolina is the leader in that metric.

We’re not sure what that “adventurous spirit” means, but it may refer to the law that allows North Carolinians to buy Teslas in their home state, and will likely be amended to allow them to buy Scouts – our Legislature refused to allow both this year after the objection of automobile dealers. And as we’ve noted, there’s not much we can do about strategic location or visibility.

But there are things we can do about quality of life and workforce strength. South Carolina has taken several steps to improve the workforce strength after kids graduate high school, and that’s good. But unless we focus as much on reforming our K-12 education system as we focus on job training after high school, we will never have the workforce or quality of life we ​​need.

Yes, the legislature has made progress on pre-kindergarten education and is working to raise teacher pay to combat the national teacher shortage. But lawmakers are still unwilling to make the systemic reforms needed to ensure that all children get a good education, no matter where they live.

This starts with acknowledging that the Legislature – not the local school districts created by the Legislature to do its job – is responsible for providing a good education to all children. This is a mental shift that, once accomplished, will naturally lead to changes that will put the needs of children above the needs of the sometimes greedy, sometimes simply unprepared or incompetent local officials who currently run schools on behalf of our Legislature.