Shad White has been sworn in as the 42nd State Auditor of Mississippi. White was selected by Governor Phil Bryant to take over after State Auditor Stacey Pickering announced his decision to head the Veterans Affairs board.
White was sworn in by State Supreme Court Chief Justice William L. “Bill” Waller, Jr. in the Old Mississippi Supreme Court Chambers in the Capitol.
RELATED: Shad White announced as new State Auditor
At 32 years of age, White has never held a political office before but said that he wants to continue the good work of Stacey Pickering and added that he wants to work on cybersecurity in the state.
“If you look at all of the other State Auditor’s Offices around the country, they have realized that there is a ton of very sensitive financial information flowing through those offices and that they have got to become leaders in their state governments to protect that data because cybersecurity is just an escalating issue every single day that goes by,” White said.
White added that he cares greatly about public education and wants to ensure that the dollars get as close as possible to the children that need them and that there is as little waste as possible.
During the selection process, Governor Bryant said that he wanted to ensure the State Auditor that he chose would be in it for the long run and not use the office as an immediate stepping stone to a higher office.
“I’m 32 so I’m young and there’s always the chance that this will open doors way later on and then when that happens I will evaluate that, but I am running for the State Auditor’s office in 2019, I plan on being there for a while,” White said. “You have to think about this Governor as well, he did this for over 11 years, he personally thinks of this office differently from every other office, he personally thinks that what he did in that time was very important and he is right about it. He wanted someone who is not going to treat it like a pit-stop. He wanted somebody who thought of this thing as being very important.”
