It is the job of any hometown paper to watch out for the hometown, and so I respect the advocacy of The Greenville News on a variety of issues over the last few months -- and on the venture capital issue most recently. It is important though in that advocacy not to paint pictures that don't exist, and it seems to me the last couple of articles that have caught my eye have centered on an expression of fear that the Upstate has lost its voice in Columbia.

On this front, I cannot speak for the General Assembly, but let me speak very specifically for the administration and offer two thoughts -- first generally, and then specific to venture capital.

I have many great friends in the Upstate, and as a businessperson a particular affinity for this part of South Carolina because it is the epicenter of business in our state. Any of my friends would say that while I have my share of faults like any human -- one that I do not have is thinking regionally. For good or bad on every issue, I look statewide at whether I believe that issue, or item, helps or hurts our state as a whole.

That means when we issued vetoes at the end of the session last year, the highest concentration of vetoes was in my old hometown of Charleston because I thought that's where the items in need of veto happened to be. In keeping with hometown papers watching out for the hometown, the Charleston paper ran the front-page headline entitled "Hurricane Mark" the day after those vetoes.

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In that same regard, when I challenged the deal that had been struck between Clemson and a private developer on ICAR, some feared it might be driven by the regionalism that has plagued our state. In fact, anyone familiar with the deal would say that our involvement made the deal better for Clemson, the Upstate and the state as a whole -- and that I was simply doing what I always try to do in watching out for the taxpayer.

If I did otherwise on any of this, and looked at only one part of the state, I would not only be unfair to those other regions but I wouldn't be true to a good part of why I ran in the first place. I ran on an agenda of change and a break from the parochialism that has plagued our state for years.

On the specifics of the venture capital board, this office is responsible for approximately 1,800 statewide appointments. Jamie Bach, who is the daughter of Don and Lisa Van Riper and a Greenville native, handles appointments for me.

In this case, she very reasonably presumed that since Jim Ritchie of Spartanburg drafted the bill, and is an unofficial member of sorts, that Spartanburg was covered. She figured that the rest of the Upstate would be covered in two ways. One, she had good reason to believe Hayne Hipp would be appointed. Two, Rep. Dan Cooper, who represents Anderson, could make one of the seven appointments and she anticipated he would appoint someone from Anderson or elsewhere in the Upstate. With that thinking in mind, she selected Charleston, Florence and Columbia for the three spots we had to cover the statewide board.

Let's now fast forward to the day after I saw the Greenville article. I thought indeed this present configuration did not make sense so I picked up the phone and asked our Columbia appointee if he would step down. He graciously said yes, whereupon I picked up the phone and called John Warner in Greenville who has been integrally involved in venture capital issues and asked if he would serve.