Auditor Shad White appears before a U.S. House Ways & Means Subcommittee to discuss TANF, July 2023 (From Livestream)
- A typically mundane budget hearing exploded Wednesday afternoon over questions about the TANF investigations, Brett Favre and a study on waste.
State Auditor Shad White (R) appeared before a Senate subcommittee chaired by Senator John Polk (R) Wednesday afternoon. What began with perfunctory remarks quickly slid off the normal boring path, with both men accusing the other of playing politics and White calling Polk a “liar,” while threatening him with a defamation lawsuit.
The tension started when Polk, who represents the Hattiesburg area, identified NFL Hall of Famer Brett Favre as a constituent. Polk questioned how White’s office had calculated what Favre owed back to Mississippi in the wake of the TANF scandal and investigation, implying the calculation was faulty.
White deflected the inquiry and offered broader criticism of the Senate’s failure to investigate the alleged fraud itself.
“And I’m just going to be very blunt right now, if your biggest concern is trying to figure out whether we got the Brett Favre demand amount correct down to the penny, I am shocked because I have never once been called before this body to testify before any sort of hearing on the DHS scandal…,” White said. “You should have been asking tough questions about why this money was misspent in the first place…I’ve never been asked a single question about the 7 people who have pleaded guilty to state or federal charges.”
The bulk of the fireworks occurs between the hour and 20-minute mark and the 1:33 mark if you want to watch for yourself.
Senator Polk shifted the conversation to a contract entered into between the Auditor’s office and Boston Consulting for $2 million for the putative purpose of identifying “waste, fraud and abuse.”
The pair quibbled over whether the study was an audit, authorized by law, or a managerial study, which both Lt. Governor Delbert Hosemann (R) and Attorney General Lynn Fitch (R) have argued was illegal.
Auditor White defended both the process used to hire the company that performed the study, Boston Consulting, and the study itself, arguing they had identified $335 million in government waste. He pointed to a list of what he represented as 400 similar studies performed by other state auditors in the last 30 years.
In a terse exchange over whether the contract went through a bid process, White said, “We had an RFP process,” and Polk retorted, “No sir, you did not.”
This prompted White to declare, “You are a liar. You are making this up right now. You are not going to sit here and lie about the state agency.”
White went on to explain that five different firms had submitted bids. Polk followed by asking whether White, or any of his family members, had relationships with Boston Consulting prior to it being selected by the Auditor’s Office for the study.
Auditor White did not take kindly to the implication.
“No, and by the way, if you assert that, I’m going to sue you for defamation.”
White, himself, then volunteered rumors that his wife had been an employee of Boston Consulting, before dismissing them as untrue. He framed Polk’s questions as being politically motivated and suggested the Chairman was carrying Lt. Governor Hosemann’s water.
”This line of questions feels less about policy and more about politics to me. I’ve never been questioned on an audit like this right until the Lt. Governor thinks I might be the thing standing in the way of him and the Governor’s office,” the Auditor said.
There is rampant speculation, much of it fueled by the officeholders themselves, that Hosemann, White and Fitch are all eyeing the Governor’s Mansion in 2027. The Auditor has criticized both Hosemann and Fitch in a series of disputes over policies like DEI and the handling of the TANF scandal investigation and litigation, with both firing back in turn.
While Senator Polk’s volleys at White were direct, the more potentially problematic questions for the Auditor may have come, in unassuming fashion, from Senator Daniel Sparks (R).
Sparks pushed back gently on the idea that the Senate should be holding hearings on the TANF scandal while there is ongoing litigation, before addressing White’s decision to partner with Hinds County District Attorney Jody Owens (D) to prosecute the TANF defendants. Owens has since been indicted on federal bribery charges that could put him in prison for the rest of his life.
Senator Sparks expressed concerns that Owen’s’ own legal troubles could call into question his TANF prosecutions. White argued that the two things are unrelated.
The decision to go first to Owens has been the source of some discord — boiling over in White’s recent book Mississippi Swindle — between then-U.S. Attorney Mike Hurst and White. Hurst currently serves as the Chairman of the Mississippi Republican Party.
Russ Latino
