If Shad White runs for governor of Mississippi in a couple of years, as is expected, he’s getting an early taste of what the scrutiny is going to be like.
As state auditor, White and his staff are used to putting the heat on those accused of misspending the taxpayers’ money or misusing their position for personal gain.
In recent months, though, the tables have been turned and White is on the receiving end of those kinds of allegations.
He’s been accused of going beyond his spending authority to hire an outside consulting firm for $2 million to do a study of government waste. And last week, a story surfaced raising questions about White’s use of a government attorney to help represent him in a defamation suit brought by former NFL quarterback Brett Favre.
Mississippi Today has reported that White has used both a private attorney and an attorney who works out of the auditor’s office to handle the responses to Favre’s lawsuit. This comes after Attorney General Lynn Fitch, no fan of White’s and a possible gubernatorial opponent, announced early last year that her office, though it had agreed to represent White initially, would no longer be doing so as a result of a book he was about to publish regarding the welfare scandal in which Favre got tangled.
Although the book is without question a private venture that White chose to undertake, it was also believed that Fitch washed her hands of representing the state auditor because of her own personal beef with the book. In the book as well as at other times, White has been heavily critical of Fitch, in particular when it comes to prosecuting or suing those whom the auditor’s office determined had stolen or misspent public funds.
Whether White slandered Favre is a factual determination to be made by a court of law. At issue in the meantime, though, is whether it is right for the state auditor to use a taxpayer-funded employee for legal counsel in the dispute.
It is a gray area. Although White’s book about the welfare scandal is a private venture, there are other times when White has spoken unfavorably about Favre in press conferences and in interviews that had everything to do with White’s job as state auditor. Drawing the line between where his publicly funded defense should end and his privately funded defense begin may not be easy. On at least one occasion, though, the line was clearly overstepped when, according to Mississippi Today, the government attorney filed a motion to block Favre’s request for unpublished portions of White’s book.
Those in public office are expected to be careful to be sure that no private benefit accrues from a public expense. When they fail to do so, it’s not unusual for the state auditor to come knocking and demand repayment of the expenditure. White should expect to be held to the same standard, if not an even higher one given his position.
The criticism that White has failed to be scrupulous in this matter cannot just be written off as potshots from political rivals or their supporters, as he suggests. It also could reflect his own poor judgment.
