FLORENCE, S.C. (WBTW)-The special primary for state house district 63 in Florence county is less than two weeks away.
That seat came open after representative Kris Crawford resigned in December.
Three republicans, Jay Jordan, Elijah Jones and Robby Hill are running for that position.
One of the candidates may have some issues to clean up if he wants to head to Columbia.
That candidate is city councilman Robby Hill and after doing some digging News13 found that councilman owes the government tens of thousands of dollars in back-taxes.
“I want the opportunity to bring my business approach and common sense governance ideals to the state house in Columbia,” said Robby Hill.
That was Robby Hill speaking about his campaign for statehouse representative. He says he hopes to run the state’s government like a business, but news13 found his business, an IT company called Hillsouth, has four outstanding liens, totaling more than $53,000.
“What do you know about that,'” asked News13’s Jana Jones.
“Again, I had a person who was not doing the best work with handling our books back then and I am very sure that we have since paid those taxes off,” said Hill.
According to tax liens, they are not paid off. Hill blames a former accountant.
“I trusted a particular person in my business who I actually terminated about a month ago.”
But news13 found the problem has been going on for years. The most recent lien still active dates back to 2012.
“How can the public trust you, being a part of a business if you don’t pay your own taxes” asked News13’s Jana Jones.
“As we know, taxes are very important to all of us, and I would just like to put out there that I operate multiple companies and I will show you my personal tax information and I will make it public if we have to.”
We checked the status of the other candidates if they had outstanding liens and we didn’t find anything. Robby Hill reached out to news13 with a statement late Wednesday afternoon.
In it, he says his company pays its taxes, the South Carolina department of employment mis-classified his company and his company is on a payment plan to pay the money back.
