Episode 28, the Talking South Carolina Podcast Interview with Frank Knapp, of the SC Small Business Chamber of Commerce.

Episode transcript:

Angela Barrett – “Hey, thank you so much for joining me today.”

Frank Knapp – “Azure, thank you very much for the opportunity. I appreciate this.”

Angela Barrett – “Yeah. Well, I am excited. I was going through all of your accomplishments, over the years, and we don’t have enough time to go over all of those, but, let’s first talk about you being the president, CEO, and founder of the South Carolina Small Business Chamber of Commerce. So tell me all about that and what it entails.”

Angela Barrett – “And going forward, plans. Things of that nature. So it’s sort of a three part question.”

Frank Knapp – “Yeah, sure. So, I co-founded the Soccer Small Business Chamber of Commerce back in the year 2000. So we’re on a 25th year. So doing this for a long time, and we I co-founded it with some others because we realized that there was no organization that was representing the general interests of small businesses and only small businesses.”

Frank Knapp – “In the South Carolina legislature, we had plenty of trade associations, which we do still. But they have a narrow interest. We wanted to have one that could, address a lot of different issues in the General Assembly. So, you know, we just, took the chance and and launched it. And we were, you know, we’ve been very, very successful for a small operation, covering a lot of different issues.”

Frank Knapp – “And our first issue was that, small business owners who are mostly, as you know, pass through, businesses. So they’re a profit from their business flows directly into their personal tax returns, and then they pay the tax, at that level as a, personal tax return. So in South Carolina, the tax return back then, the tax rate for a small for a small business owner, that was the S-Corp LLC or sole proprietor was 7% because that was what they were paying.”

Frank Knapp – “As individuals. Corporations were already paying 5%. And we just thought that that was unfair, and that we ought to have parity with C corporations. And so we launched a campaign early in our, existence, to, to get the, income tax, state income tax on profit from small businesses, reduced to 5%. Took us a several years to do that.”

Frank Knapp – “And we had to, you know, had fights, a battles to get that done. But we did get it done. And it eventually dropped to 5% that the General Assembly said, this is such a good idea. We’ll drop it again. So I think they dropped it to 3% for a profit, to a pass through small business owner.”

Frank Knapp – “And, so that’s that was where our first major achievement.”

Angela Barrett – “So what are you guys like currently right now working on? I know that you and I had to do something not too long ago to get together, and we had some big things going on down at the statehouse, so we weren’t able to get together. But, what kind of, what’s the agenda right now? What are you working on?”

Frank Knapp – “So right now we have several issues, and some of them are very big. When we’re working on the issue of energy in South Carolina. I know that your listeners have heard a lot about the future energy needs of the state, because with our growing, and so the question that is, how are we going to generate new energy?”

Frank Knapp – “You and how are we going to where are we going to locate it? What kind of energy generation is that going to be? Who’s going to pay for it? You know, all those are important questions we have been involved since 2002, in intervening in, utility rate hikes, on electricity and gas with, our investor own utilities.”

Frank Knapp – “Back then it was electric or gas. Now it’s Dominion and then Duke is the other one. That is a you know, that’s their own utility that are regulated by the state through the Public Service Commission. We’ve intervened 11 times in rate hearings since 2002. And, we you know, we know how the system works. We know how utilities really make their money.”

Frank Knapp – “They really make their money from building things. And because they get this guaranteed rate of return. So they like to build new generation or transmission or something they like, just like the, And so this last year, there was a big push in the House to pass this 90 plus page bill. It was like an omnibus bill for for energy.”

Frank Knapp – “And a lot of different things were thrown in there, and we opposed it. Not because we don’t understand that we’re gonna need new generation of energy here, just, for us in the future. But because that bill had like three anti-consumer provisions in it. And so we fought that law with some other consumer groups. And we stopped it in the Senate.”

Frank Knapp – “And then the Senate said, well, we still need to address the issue so that this past summer, late in the summer, they started putting a, a Senate special committee on the, future of energy needs in South Carolina. So we were participating in that and still participating in that. The House has reintroduced that 90 plus page bill.”

Frank Knapp – “So we are, again fighting that in the House. But at the end of the day, we have to say what’s causing the energy generation needs. And right now in South Carolina, the utilities admit this. About 65% of our new energy needs in the state are driven by data centers. Data centers are what the, big tech uses to for them to do all the AI.”

Frank Knapp – “Okay. Right. And they are energy hawks. They consume so much energy. And actually they could they consume a lot of water, too. That, and they don’t bring a lot of economic value to the state. They don’t ha that many high paying jobs, you know. And, and so it doesn’t seem fair that, that all ratepayers are saddled with the responsibility of paying for your generation, that most of it is going to these data centers, that they really are benefiting from.”

Frank Knapp – “So that is a big battle right now in the South, General Assembly, as of how much more generation do we need? We and right now, just we need some, where is it going to be located? And what kind of generation is it going to be? I mean, you got gas plants or proposed gas plants out there.”

Frank Knapp – “We you know, they’re the solar people. There were solar out there. And now there’s a there’s a, push to reassess whether we we can get the private sector to complete the two failed nuclear plants up in Fairfield County, to generate actually, and then the last thing is who pays for it? Well, the who pays for it is should be important to everybody, all your listeners, whether they’re riff gas customers or business customers.”

Frank Knapp – “Who’s going to pay for this new generation? Because if, if when we say go, are we’re going to build new generation. Your rates are going up. And who we have been in this since 2002 to keep the rates as low as possible for small businesses. So we know the rates are going to go up if you have new generation.”

Frank Knapp – So that new generation better benefit everybody. If it’s not it’s only benefiting data centers that we shouldn’t have to pay for it. That’s the bottom one right?

Angela Barrett – “Well, and you know, I know that you’re looking at this small business end of it, but as you know, or a residential I mean, it is astronomical. The amount that we pay now versus what we did, you know, 4 or 5 years ago. I mean, it’s just crazy. We moved. And I’m not the only one in a fairly new subdivision, or part of a subdivision.”

Angela Barrett – “And the difference we pay from where we were. Now, mind you, we downsized is almost double what we used to pay in a house twice as big. Because now we are. It’s sort of not in the town, but just on the outskirts. But then we use this. You get your first bill, especially in the winter with the gap, the natural gas, and you’re like, oh, okay, beans and rice.”

Angela Barrett – “It is this month. But so yeah, anything that we can do to keep that from the small for the small businesses as well as the residential, that would be great. But, you know.”

Frank Knapp – “Angela, let me just say also that people listening may go, well, I like I, I like this convenience of being able to ask by phone for some detail thing, and it gives it right over on your computer and you’re using chat, you know, and.”

Frank Knapp – “Here’s the thing. We do not need to have any data centers that are supplying that, computation that enables you to benefit from AI. We don’t have to have them in South Carolina. If we did have one in South Carolina, you would never know.”

Angela Barrett – Right?

Frank Knapp – “Because. Because they’re everywhere else. So the issue becomes is why do we even need a data center here that really is going to drive up our need for more generation, and that everybody pay for that so that Google can make more profit? We don’t they know they’re in Georgia, they’re in North Carolina, they’re everywhere else. And we are getting the benefit from them right now.”

Frank Knapp – “You try to get use AI. As a service. Now, it doesn’t say, oh no, you live in South Carolina, you can’t do this, right?”

Angela Barrett – “Yeah. And I, you know, that’s a whole nother topic. Last stand right there in the middle. I’m like, wow, this is great. Wow. This is pretty scary. So that’s a whole nother oh, another topic. But yes, I agree that, whatever is to benefit, you know, the state is where we need to go for sure. So I think a so now you just tell me you had a guest on your podcast, which we’ll get to in just a minute, but this has to do with the at the statehouse about maybe some electoral reform kind of thing that you all have going.”

Angela Barrett – Is that something you guys are working on as well?

Frank Knapp – “Yeah. Yes. This is our second year of supporting something called instant runoff voting. Your listeners may recognize the terminology of, ranked choice voting. Ranked choice voting in South Carolina. We call it instant runoff voting. And there are 150 municipalities of South Carolina for their local elections. Require a majority vote, whether if somebody if the candidates are three candidates and nobody gets 50% plus one, you have a runoff.”

Frank Knapp – “Those runoffs are just as expensive of doing the election in the first place. So we like majority vote winners. I think that’s the best. That’s that’s really what democracy is all about. So why, if there’s a better way for people to go to those local elections and those parties and vote end up with a majority vote winner.”

Frank Knapp – “Oh, well, having a runoff, that the city would save money. The voters would not have to go back to the polls again. The there would be less staff time. Well, that’s what instant runoff voting is. It is an election method that allows the voter it put all the candidates on the ballot in. Most of our cities are all nonpartisan.”

Frank Knapp – “So they put everybody’s name on the ballot, and you rank order your your pick for that office. And then all the votes are counted. If nobody gets that 50%, they then go to the candidate voters who voted for the candidate, they got the least number of first place votes, and they take those voters, take the second choice and put it back in the system and recalculate.”

Frank Knapp – “And eventually what you end up with a consensus majority vote winner and is isn’t that nice? Is it that vice that we can end up with somebody that most people like, save the city money, taxpayers money? Nobody has to go back to the polls in two weeks. It’s it’s it’s as if things work. Over 50 municipalities, counties and even states use instant runoff voting.”

Frank Knapp – “We just think it’s an option that the municipalities ought to have. They don’t have to use it again. A lot of them, are using, what they’re using now, they would continue if they want to use is to run up voting. Fine. If they want to do plurality voting, 118 municipalities is allowed. Use plurality voting, meaning whoever gets the most votes, even though it’s about 50 wins.”

Frank Knapp – “We just don’t think that’s really a great way when you have more than 50% of the of your voters not wanting you, but you still win. All right. So that’s it. We’re proposing that, that the, the powers of the state be given the option of using this method. They don’t have to, forced to they but they can’t.”

Frank Knapp – The municipalities a municipal sociation supports it. We just now have to continue to push forward.

Angela Barrett – “So it wouldn’t necessarily be, it would be up to each, municipality to decide. And not a state.”

Frank Knapp – It’s not a state mandate. It’s simply.

Angela Barrett – Mandate. You know.

Frank Knapp – “There are three options now for how a municipality could conduct, their voting this would simply add a fourth.”

Angela Barrett – “Gotcha, gotcha. Well, I, I did listen to that. And I thought, well, that’s interesting. So, so now you also have the agency and, I do know through that agency, it took me a while to get through it again. We would we would be here all day to all of your accomplishments. But I know that you, created and hosted, a radio talk show, I think, you need to know now what was.”

Angela Barrett – And that was that ran a long time.

Frank Knapp – “Where I was. Ran for ten years, as well. You need to know if I was, radio talk show, I guess, on, about the. When I first started, it was a three hour program. That was a lot of work. Then a job to two. And, they went down to early one hour, but it ran for a long time, and I would just have guests on, that wanted to talk about, current events, either locally or statewide or nationally and, you know, so it was a lot of fun.”

Frank Knapp – “But I ended that in December of 20, 2016.”

Angela Barrett – “And I understand you, interviewed Hillary Clinton.”

Frank Knapp – “I did, that was the when she was running for president. You know, we are when you have a talk show, radio talk show, you want to get up and I knew the people who were running her campaign in South Carolina. And I said, hey, you know, I’d love to have, Senator Clinton on, and, and chat with her for a while on my show.”

Frank Knapp – “And they put it together. She was actually in Texas and driving along, and she was making two calls that day. And one was to me, and really, what I really wanted to talk to her about was, the issue of offshore drilling for oil. We were at the Small Business Chamber of Commerce, was heavily involved in opposing, offshore oil drilling along the East Coast.”

Frank Knapp – “We just thought it would be a disaster for our tourism economy. And so, I wanted wanted to query her, because she had not taken a position. So I asked you that question, and she basically said, yeah, yeah, she would she would be opposed to, permitting offshore oil drilling in the Atlantic so that, that did make some headlines.”

Frank Knapp – That was that was fun.

Angela Barrett – “Yeah. You have heard. Yeah. And you’re right, you know, when you have a show for or against you, makes no difference if there’s a good interview is a good interview. And the, there was a radio talk shows, small business forum that I think you had and you hosted as well. And that was sort of the same.”

Angela Barrett – No.

Frank Knapp – “And the answer may be yes to your question. So I’m, I’m not placing exactly,”

Angela Barrett – “What that was. You got last a very long, at least according to what I saw. It was, about a year, year and a half. It was just another talk show. I think it was.”

Frank Knapp – “Twice I started out doing a commentary, 92nd commentary before the radio show. And and that that was, that was simply that straight commentary that was recorded and provided to radio stations that they produced so that,”

Angela Barrett – “I gotcha, I gotcha. Now, what was there was some television for you, the capital view, that you were part of. Tell me about that. Well.”

Frank Knapp – “I had a friend who was the, head of public relations for, Shotgun Educational Television. And I had been the lobbyist, for an organization called Common Cause, South Carolina. So I was a lobbyist at the state house, and, John and I were friends, and John went, took this new job at ETV. And this was at the time the soccer ETB was trying to increase their budget to get money for, expanding, their, instructional television.”

Frank Knapp – “And they needed a new facility and they needed, new towers, and they needed, you know, so they needed an infusion of money. It was also a time when we did have great budget surpluses in South Carolina. And so there they wanted to do a, a public affairs show, where there would be interviews with members of the General Assembly.”

Frank Knapp – “And it was called Capital View. And they just need somebody to pull it off. So just like doing that, I had, had a relationship with a lot of legislators, and, had a little background in public relations. And so he said, hey, you want to come, you know, work with or work with TV and being the produce this public affairs show.”

Frank Knapp – “And I said, sure. And that’s what it was. I mean, literally, we, I whenever General Assembly and I would ask legislators, if they’d like to be on the show, I do like a 15 minute interview, aired, and I would schedule that I, we would, they would come over to the TV game in the green room.”

Frank Knapp – “I did my best PR and try to explain to them what ETV wanted to do, what it is doing, and what it wanted to do. If it had the money and we’d, they’d go into the studio. Tom Fowler, was that was the actual host. He’d do the interview, thank them. They’d leave, we would package up, interview with, with another 15 minute interview with another legislator and the TV network, could be divided up geographically, so that we could actually run an interview of, of a legislator from, from Greenville just in Greenville, at the same time running an interview with from Charleston, just in Charleston.”

Frank Knapp – “And it was great. I mean, that worked out very well. And, we were very fortunate that, that I think give a lot of credit to that program and our efforts that, ETV got the budget they needed, to, acquire, new facility. And we. So now they’re located down there near the football stadium. And, and resources to expand their structural television.”

Angela Barrett – “Yeah, that’s pretty cool. And again, we’ll get to your podcast. It to me sounds maybe like platforms a little bit like the platform that maybe you’re doing that. But we’ll get to that in a minute. But I am dying to know about this album. Our present concert. Hugo.”

Frank Knapp – “You might you might remember when Hurricane Hugo visited South Carolina and I was, 19. What was to help me out? I’m getting old there. I forget the dates.”

Angela Barrett – 90

Frank Knapp – “I like the 89. It was, there’s like 89. It was, And there was a lot of consternation because there was a lot of damage in South Carolina. Yeah. The hurricane that came just directly into South Carolina, went up by 26, did it right on 77. It went up to Charlotte, just like that.”

Angela Barrett –

Frank Knapp – Go and and.

Angela Barrett – Without power for a very long.

Frank Knapp – “Yeah. So we’re trying to figure out how can we help ETV help. So I as I said, I had the idea that the group Alabama had a scheduled concert at, in Columbia, and at the Coliseum, you’ll call seeing the years anymore for that. And I said, well, would be cool if we could get them to do a telephone.”

Frank Knapp – “So I called the people, with Alabama. I pitched them the idea of doing a live, show on ETV network and have it as a fundraiser so people could donate money for Hurricane You relief. And so that’s what we did. So I produced that, that three hour program for HIV. And we raised, you know, about money back in those days, for Hugo relief, it was a lot of people were involved in it.”

Frank Knapp – “A lot of people donated a lot of time and effort. But, yeah, it was it was definitely a highlight of my, of my activities. When I was with ETB.”

Angela Barrett – “Yeah, that is pretty cool because we all did raise quite a bit of money. So now let’s get to your new endeavor here. The Batman podcast, right?”

Frank Knapp – Yep.

Angela Barrett – “So tell me, what is the platform for that? I know that what? I’ve seen you again got, you know, a lot of the House members and Senate members, a lot of the legislation members. So tell me what the the backbone is and what the platform is, no pun intended.”

Frank Knapp – “Well, you know, every all politicians for how long have always said small businesses are the backbone of our economy, right. How many times right from every politician that is out there campaigning. It just it just was that I thought, that the small business chamber Congress, to do a podcast. My goodness, everybody else is doing a podcast.”

Frank Knapp – “We’ve never done it. I had never done a podcast. And so, we’ll put it together. And the thought was that we would do these 15 to 30 minute interviews with members of the General Assembly, and not not a gotcha. Not a hard hitting thing is simply, hey, let’s have a conversation. Let’s find out a little bit about these people.”

Frank Knapp – “And and a little bit what their interests are, what, what issues they’re working on at why, and, you know, so it’d be a very friendly, educational, conversation that their constituents probably didn’t know anything about with their legislators. So that’s what it is. We so we launched that in January, this year. And I’ve been very fortunate, to have have so many legislators so far be willing to go, come on it and have a conversation.”

Frank Knapp – “Senator Brad Hotto from Beaufort saying your massive, from up ends in the Saluda, Edgefield area. We’ve had, David Hyatt, who is the House majority leader. We so at Brad Hotto is that House, my Senate minority leader, you know, had new senator, Senator Art, on and the podcast you listen to about the election reform is Jermaine Johnson from, Richland County.”

Frank Knapp – “Right? So, you know, it’s it has been interesting and and I think David enjoyed it. I know I have enjoyed it. And so then, as you know, you’ve got to packages podcasts up and that but release them posted online. And so everybody and Wednesday I have a new podcast with a member of the Soca General Assembly.”

Angela Barrett – “Yeah. So that was what I was going to ask. So, you’re coming out twice a week, but that. Right?”

Frank Knapp – Yes.

Angela Barrett – “And of course, I think I saw, where RSS and Amazon, those are the places. There were a couple others that I heard. I think that you can listen to those.”

Frank Knapp – “Yeah. YouTube and, and it’s the, the technology now. It’s so cool. You know, you do it one time and you find a platform, that helps distribute it to other platforms. That’s what rss.com does. Right. And so it’s easy, you know, I do it, I upload it, put all the information on about it, set the schedule for it is kind of got to be released and that’s it.”

Frank Knapp – I’m done. And then that platform distributed to all the other platforms.

Angela Barrett – “Right? Right, right. Yeah. It is pretty neat how, all that works, but, To, to a week, like, I can’t imagine all the right now. Right now I have two week. Because I have two different ones. May not be forever, but we’ll see how that goes. But, that’s all the support.”

Frank Knapp – “I was warned that the two might be pushing that, but the ability, you know, I’ve done I done radio, a long time. I didn’t, I know I didn’t see it as really going to be an obstacle. Obstacle was just getting setting up. Okay, let’s talk talk with members Joe Selby, but we’re doing over zoom. That’s where it’s done.”

Frank Knapp – “They’re not done in the studio, so they could do it from their bedroom. If you want to. So far they’ve been very good. I think it’s been well received by those members. And, and we are, you know, building an audience. If anybody wants to check that out, they can go to our, our website, which is South Coast Small Business Chamber of Commerce, and scroll down a little bit on the homepage and you can you can see the big link to the podcast.”

Angela Barrett – “Yeah. Yeah. Well, it’s a lot of fun. Again, I didn’t get to listen to the one, and I sort of glanced at what some of the other topics were. But pretty interesting. Now, bird in the back room. Those guys, they are, I don’t think current legislation, but at least one. Have you listened to that one yet?”

Frank Knapp – Urban.

Angela Barrett – In the back.

Frank Knapp – “I live it and see, I’m old friends with Vincent. And, so, in fact, I talked to him before I went to him. Before I started my podcast. I got advised, he said it told me how Joel and he got started. And, I took his advice was very good. And so, yeah, I, I listen to their I really I don’t hear all of them.”

Frank Knapp – “Yeah. What did it do some of them, and this is not, this is like, negative toward, that podcast or any podcast other significant length. My impression is that people’s attention cannot last more than 30 minutes.”

Angela Barrett – I agree.

Frank Knapp – “And and they don’t they’re not in the car. They’re listening to podcasts. The car, they’re out of the car before 30 minutes and they never hear the end. I would, after my podcast between 15 30 minutes and so say they’re shorter. Sometimes they’re longer but no longer than 30 minutes. And, I, I respect my my, guest’s time, and it makes me be more efficient in, and how I talk to them.”

Frank Knapp – “And I just think it’s better for the listener. They help encourage them to, to, listen to more of the podcast if they’re not so.”

Angela Barrett – “I, I yeah, I agree, I agree. And speaking of that, we’re at our time. And I just want to thank you very much for taking time out of your day and, and and coming on, because I know you’re busy and, but I am looking forward to your podcast and catching some of those, because I think, what you’re doing is important on all aspects of everything you have going for the small businesses, because I am one of those that believe that small businesses are the backbone.”

Angela Barrett – “And, without them, you know, just building big.”

Frank Knapp – “You know, big.”

Angela Barrett – College corporation.

Frank Knapp – And everything.

Angela Barrett – Absolutely as. Right.

Frank Knapp – “So we’re, I to have you on my podcast to.”

Angela Barrett – Sales. Wonderful. Thanks a lot. Have a great day.

Frank Knapp – All right. Thank you.