State Auditor Shad White is highlighting what he believes to be more than $335 million in wasted dollars by government agencies in Mississippi.
A report dubbed “Project Momentum,” which aims to increase financial efficiency by eliminating unneeded services and expanding the capabilities of state employees, assessed the spending habits of 13 state agencies. White said it is the largest audit of its kind in Mississippi in decades.
White and company brought in a team of experts from Boston Consulting Group who had worked on financial reform projects for other state governments. What was identified, per the state auditor, was exorbitant levels of “fat,” or recurring wasteful spending by the agencies being reviewed.
“We focused on identifying places where technology could be used to eliminate unnecessary functions and we wanted the state, in general, to be smarter about procurement. That’s the buying of stuff. That’s a big focus of this entire report,” White said during a press conference on Monday.
A large swath of spending considered superfluous entailed information technology contracts that cost Mississippi more money than other states, an overabundance of state-funded vehicles, absorbently high insurance costs for government buildings, and large office spaces for small quantities of state employees.
The state auditor also contended that Mississippi could reform Medicaid, and perhaps save tens of millions of dollars, by moving patients receiving long-term care into home-based settings rather than institutions. On education, he advocated for the legislature to ensure that 50% of K-12 funding goes to the classroom and for public school administrative spending to be capped as a cost-saving mechanism.
Additionally, White said the state could even save a little over $1 million per year by getting rid of the state plane. He vouched for chartering and flying commercial as a more cost-efficient means of traveling.
“We sat down and talked extensively with each individual agency head and gave them very specific recommendations for what they could do to fix all this stuff,” White added.
As for long-term solutions, White advocated for the agencies to use technology to eliminate unnecessary spending and human error, to use better discretion when it comes to purchasing decisions, and to find any possible way to avoid spending large sums of money.
White said he had not received any pushback from the administrators of the 13 agencies that were audited. He further added that Governor Tate Reeves, who he considers a fellow “fiscal conservative,” played an instrumental role in getting this report across the finish line.
“I believe that Project Momentum is the most important project we will do in my time as State Auditor, because, if we take a chainsaw to all this fat, it will make government leaner and smarter for decades to come,” White reiterated.
The state auditor noted that the discovery of inefficient spending was not indicative of any criminal wrongdoing by those in charge of the agencies under analysis.
