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The post Marshall Ramsey: Life’s Constants appeared first on Mississippi Today.

When Dr. Jonathan Buchanan moved home to practice family medicine in Carthage in 2017, he was the first physician to come back to Leake County in 26 years.

Many residents had avoided going to the doctor unless it was “dire straits,” Buchanan said. They drove to Jackson or Meridian if they had to. Elderly patients would pay for someone else to take them. 

The community was glad to see him.

“It was absolutely an amazing welcome,” he said. “My parents still live there, like a lot of people I grew up with, who raised me or taught me, those kinds of things. To be gone for a while for college, medical school, residency, and then come back, it was very exciting.”

Buchanan is one of the 55 practicing alumni of the Mississippi Rural Physicians Scholarship Program. The scholarship launched with 10 awardees in 2008, aiming to tackle the state’s shortage of medical providers, one rural doctor at a time. 

Half of all Mississippians live in medically underserved counties, where there are more than 2,000 people for every primary care physician. In four counties – Benton, Carroll, Kemper, and Tallahatchie – there were no such doctors at all as of 2021, according to the health department’s Primary Care Needs Assessment. To close the gap, the state needs 323 more primary care physicians in underserved areas. 

Just shy of 90% of program alumni who have completed their service requirement are still practicing in Mississippi. And the scholarship is still ramping up. Behind the 55 alumni  are 64 people in residency, 64 in medical school, and 67 still completing their bachelor’s degrees. 

“It takes a long time to grow a doctor– a minimum of nine years,” said Wahnee Sherman, executive director of the scholarship program. 

The program awarded 65 scholarships this year, spread across four years of medical school. Recipients are required to spend one year practicing in Mississippi for every year they take the money.

Sophomores in college can apply to join the program’s two-year “nurturing phase.” They get academic support, Medical College Admissions Test (MCAT) preparation and guidance on applying to medical school. If they maintain their grades and score well on the MCAT, they can earn admittance to the University of Mississippi Medical Center or the William Carey University College of Osteopathic Medicine (WCUCOM), with annual funding of $35,000. (Current or admitted medical students who didn’t participate in the undergraduate program can also apply for the scholarship.)

The undergraduates participate in “medical encounters,” where they learn about the profession. On Monday, about 20 of them traveled to William Carey for a day of classes. Most scholarship recipients study at the University of Mississippi Medical Center, but a handful each year enroll at WCUCOM, which was founded about a decade ago with a focus on training primary care physicians. 

Christian Hollis and a University of Mississippi classmate, Taylor Lampkin, stood in a small exam room on Monday morning. Both wore white lab coats embroidered with the motto of the scholarship program in green: “Growing our own physicians.”

Hollis was born with a heart condition. About twice a year, his family made the two-hour round-trip drive from his home in Morton to Jackson so Hollins could see his heart doctors. The experience showed him how geography can become a burden and barrier to patients in need of care. 

Now a junior, Hollis dreams of practicing medicine close to home. He also wants to own a farm like his grandfather, who keeps chickens, cows and donkeys.

“I still go out there now,” he said of his grandfather’s farm. “I want a lot of land and to put animals on it. You can’t do that in, like, California or a big city.”

Hollis and Lampkin’s patient – an artificially intelligent knee joint – lay on the table between them. Dr. John Gaudet, a longtime Hattiesburg pediatrician and now a full-time instructor at the school, showed them how to palpate the knee and insert a needle into the joint to withdraw fluid.

It reminded Hollis of the time his mother had gone to the doctor with a knee swollen with fluid. 

“I saw the doctor do what we just did,” he said. 

Mississippi ranks 49th in primary care physicians per capita, behind only Utah, according to a 2021 report on the physician workforce by the Association of American Medical Colleges. 

There’s both a national and local explanation for this trend. First, around the country, specialists are better paid. On average, they earn about $150,000 more than primary care doctors. 

Dr. Italo Subbarao, the dean at WCUCOM, said specialty care, like neurology and plastic surgery, is “what’s glamorized in medicine.” 

“We try to show people the power of what a family doctor can do,” he said. 

The school is ranked number one in the country for the percentage of graduates who practice in rural areas. (UMMC ranks third.)

Second, people with higher education tend to leave Mississippi. In 2020, only half of recent graduates of public universities were working in the state, according to a recent study by the state auditor. 

Steven Smith, a second-year student at WCUCOM, grew up in Terry. His parents were both volunteer firefighters, and as a kid he went with them to car wrecks and fires because they didn’t have a babysitter. 

He would play with hoses on the firetruck, and when his parents were done working he would ask them what happened to the people after the ambulance took them away. They told him the people went to the doctor, who made them better.

“Well, if the doctor is who makes ‘em better, that’s what I want to do,” Smith thought. He has never really considered leaving Mississippi, but he knows many people with his education do. 

“A lot of people use that as their way out,” he said. 

“We’re doing the opposite,” said his classmate and fellow scholarship recipient, Ti Smith, from Okolona. 

Steven Carter, associate director of the scholarship program, said the COVID-19 pandemic highlighted the importance of family doctors rooted in their communities. While state leaders like health officer Dr. Thomas Dobbs became the highly visible face of Mississippi’s pandemic response, scholarship alumni were intubating patients in their rural hospitals’ tiny ICUs, then rushing to interviews with the local TV station to share public health guidance.

During the pandemic, Buchanan saw patients at the clinic and did hospital rounds, too. He advocated for masking and offered telehealth services. After the vaccines became available, Buchanan started conversations about them whenever he saw a patient.

“My patients trust me with their medical care,” he said. “They trust that I know what’s most up to date and available and what’s been proven versus what’s not. A lot of patients did not even have the thought of vaccination until they had a visit with me to go into detail. They saw how adamant I was about vaccination, that they felt good about receiving it.”

Mississippi’s sheer need for physicians is daunting. It would take hundreds of new doctors to fill the gap. Does one make a difference? 

Sherman believes the stories of Buchanan and his fellow alumni make the answer clear. 

“When you go into these communities that haven’t had a new doctor in 20, 25 years, you see that impact immediately,” she said. 

When talking to Mississippi students and alumni involved in the scholarship program, the state’s data on brain drain seems perplexing; no one seems to have given much thought to leaving. 

“I always wanted to stay in Mississippi after I graduated,” said Kayla Redmond, a junior at Mississippi University of Women. “I’m a country girl. I’ve traveled out of state. It’s not hospitable.”

Most of the participants are from rural areas themselves. And though they’re from all over the state, they share the perspective that the people in their communities deserve the best health care the country can offer. 

In between activities Monday, Khadeejah Franklin, a University of Mississippi junior from Vancleave, and Lauren Sumrall, a Mississippi College junior whose parents live in Poplarville and Purvis, talked about their goals. Franklin would like to practice back home, so people in Vancleave don’t have to travel so far for care. Sumrall wants to open labor and delivery clinics serving rural communities. 

“I don’t feel like anybody should have to drive 45 minutes in labor,” she said. “Where you live should not determine—”

“The level of care you receive,” Franklin nodded.

The post Mississippi needs hundreds of doctors. This scholarship program is ‘growing our own physicians.’ appeared first on Mississippi Today.

Attorneys at the Mississippi Center for Justice filed a formal ethics complaint on behalf of Mississippi Free Press reporter Nick Judin, who was barred entry from a House Republican Caucus meeting in March.

Mississippi Today first reported the journalist was barred from the March 14 meeting in an article chronicling what occurs inside the meetings. Major pieces of legislation authored or supported by Republican leaders, including Speaker of the House Philip Gunn, are often discussed and debated inside the backroom meetings.

Those private deliberations about policy often mean lawmakers will ask few or no questions during public committee meetings and on the House floor. In caucus meetings in recent years under Gunn’s leadership, Republican members have been asked to vote on specific bills, several lawmakers told Mississippi Today.

READ MORE: Speaker Philip Gunn uses secret Capitol meetings to pass his bills and restrict public debate. Is it legal?

Many people inside and outside the Capitol — including Republican lawmakers in both the House and the Senate — question whether the caucus meetings violate the state’s Open Meetings Act because the caucus consists of well more than half of the entire House body.

“The law is clear, yet for years the Speaker and the Caucus have violated it, conducting their business in secrecy and ignoring the rights of the public,” Mississippi Center for Justice attorney Rob McDuff, who filed the complaint, said in a statement.

The caucus meetings had never been challenged before the Ethics Commission or state courts. But several past opinions — including a 2017 Mississippi Supreme Court ruling — indicate the meetings could be illegal because the House Republican Caucus represents much more than a majority of the entire House of Representatives and is deliberating public policy in private.

State Sen. Sollie Norwood, a Democrat from Jackson, asked for an Ethics Commission opinion about the controversial meetings in early March, but commission leadership directed the senator to either file an official ethics complaint or ask the attorney general’s office for an opinion.

Gunn’s staff maintains that the House Republican Caucus is not obligated to adhere to the Open Meetings Act because it is not a “public body,” as defined by state law.

“The House Republican Caucus is not a public body under the Open Meetings Act,” Emily Simmons, Gunn’s communications director, told Mississippi Today last month. Trey Dellinger, Gunn’s chief of staff, shared the same justification.

Senate leaders do not agree. When Lt. Gov. Delbert Hosemann became lieutenant governor and presiding officer of the Senate in 2020, second-term Republican state Sen. Mike Seymour inquired whether caucus meetings were legal under the Open Meetings Act. After Senate staff did some research, Hosemann decided that he would not convene Senate Republican Caucus meetings because the staff advised him the meetings could very likely violate the Open Meetings Act.

The decision is now before the Ethics Commission, an eight-member body appointed to four-year terms by the governor, lieutenant governor, speaker of the House, and chief justice of the Supreme Court.

Several members of the commission have close ties to the state’s political apparatus or the officials who appointed them. Spencer Ritchie, appointed to the commission in 2018 by then-Lt. Gov. Tate Reeves, was executive director of the Mississippi Republican Party for more than two years.

Erin Lane, an attorney appointed to the commission in 2020 by now-Gov. Reeves, is the wife of one of Reeves’ closest friends, college fraternity brother and campaign donor Colby Lane.

Hosemann appointed Ben Stone, a Republican donor and longtime friend of Hosemann’s, to the Ethics Commission in 2021. Stone has been reappointed to the commission by every lieutenant governor since 1981.

One of Gunn’s two appointees currently sitting on the Ethics Commission is Sean Milner, who is president of the Mississippi Baptist Children’s Village. Milner and Gunn have both been leaders at Morrison Heights Baptist Church in Clinton. It is unclear whether Milner will recuse himself from the commission’s deliberations of Norwood’s opinion request regarding Gunn’s private meetings.

Editor’s note: Vangela M. Wade, president and CEO of the Mississippi Center for Justice, is a member of Mississippi Today’s board of directors.

The post Ethics complaint filed after reporter barred from House GOP Caucus meeting appeared first on Mississippi Today.

Southern Miss, ranked as high as No. 11 in the nation in college baseball polls, is led by a pitching staff that ranks in the top three in virtually every major statistical category, including third in earned run average and second in strikeouts to walks ratio. Associate head coach and pitching coach Christopher (Oz) Ostrander, the wizard behind the numbers, joins the podcast this week.

Stream all episodes here.

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The post Podcast: Christopher (Oz) Ostrander: This guy knows his stuff appeared first on Mississippi Today.

Read Auditor Shad White’s thoughts here.

The post Marshall Ramsey: Shad appeared first on Mississippi Today.

One day in early 2020, a Madison man noticed blood in his mouth. His symptoms escalated, and by the end of that week, he was in the intensive care unit at Merit Health Madison. When he woke up from a procedure, the gastroenterologist told him his liver was in bad shape.

He had end-stage liver disease, and the only treatment option was a liver transplant. 

The next two years consisted of a double hip replacement, numerous procedures on his esophagus and visits with an array of specialists, including psychologists. He started a special diet and followed the rules his doctors gave him. He did all of this to become eligible as a transplant candidate at the University of Mississippi Medical Center, which houses the state’s only organ transplant program.

In January of this year, he got the bittersweet call: his liver had worsened, and he was now on the transplant list.

“The liver problem is not something that is linear, it’s exponential. It doesn’t just progressively get worse – it’s one day you’re toddling along doing pretty well, then boom, you can fall off the cliff, and the liver goes bad overnight,” said the man, who did not want his name printed over fear of retaliation and privacy concerns. 

But after all that work and waiting, he, along with all Mississippians with Blue Cross & Blue Shield insurance who are on the transplant list at the University of Mississippi Medical Center, is now ineligible to receive an organ as long as the hospital is out of network with the insurer. 

UMMC, the state’s largest hospital and only academic medical center, went out of network on April 1 with Blue Cross & Blue Shield of Mississippi, the state’s largest insurer. UMMC asked for higher reimbursement rates for its services and disagreed with the company’s quality care plan, which measures hospital performance and whether services provided to patients are adequate.

Mississippi has the lowest reimbursement rate from commercial insurance companies for inpatient services in the nation, according to a 2021 white paper by the actuarial and consulting firm Milliman. The outpatient reimbursement rates are also low compared to the rest of the country. 

Blue Cross balked at the hospital’s proposal, and tens of thousands of Mississippians were left to face higher out-of-pocket medical expenses or find care elsewhere. UMMC has the state’s only organ transplant center in addition to the only children’s hospital, Level I trauma center, Level IV neonatal intensive care unit and other advanced specialties.  

Adults and children with Blue Cross insurance represent about 10% of the transplants done each year, according to UMMC officials. They are not considered under the “continuity of care” obligation, which requires the hospital to honor in-network insurance rates for certain patients until June 30. UMMC officials say this is because a transplant recipient’s care extends far beyond 90 days and requires a lifelong prescription of expensive immunosuppressant drugs.

“We’re still looking at the legal issues and the authority we have to try and bring a settlement about between the parties,” said Mike Chaney, the state commissioner of insurance, when asked about the dispute’s impact on organ transplant candidates. 

READ MORE: UMMC goes out-of-network with Blue Cross Blue Shield

The liver transplant candidate moved to the metro area in 2019 to access better medical care for problems stemming from a serious car accident. He was diagnosed with liver disease in 2020 and found out UMMC’s program was listed in the top three in the country by the Scientific Registry of Transplant Recipients. He was relieved he’d be able to access this life-saving care from a nearby – and esteemed – provider. 

The call that a liver was ready could come anytime of the day or night, and he needed to have a bag packed and always stay within a one-hour drive of the hospital, his care team told him. He should self-monitor and report any changes or issues to his doctors immediately. 

But the first week of this month, the transplant coordinator called him. 

“They said, ‘Your insurance is not willing to pay,’” he recalled. He first understood them to say he had been removed from the list entirely, but later clarified he had been put on “hold” – meaning if his perfect organ became available, he wouldn’t be getting it at UMMC. 

Marc Rolph, executive director of communications and marketing at UMMC, said the process of placing potential transplant recipients on hold, or marking them as “inactive,” due to insurance changes is not new. 

“There are cases where somebody has insurance (we accept), they get on the (transplant) list and change their insurance to one that we’re not in network with,” he said.

Rolph said if and when UMMC returns to being in network with the insurance company, the hold on the patient is lifted.

“So you’re still on the list, you haven’t lost your spot,” he said.

When an organ becomes available — a rare occurrence in itself because of the small percentage of people who are on ventilators before they die — a match is found through a complex database of candidates maintained by the United Network for Organ Sharing. The match is based on a variety of characteristics of both the donor and the recipient, including blood type, medical urgency and the location of the transplant hospital.

But as long as UMMC remains out of network with Blue Cross, patients with Blue Cross who are only on UMMC’s transplant list won’t be notified if a compatible organ becomes available. Instead, it would go to another candidate, or potentially no one at all.

Officials at Blue Cross & Blue Shield of Mississippi call the move “heartless” and say transplants is one of the areas where it offered UMMC an increase in reimbursement when the hospital and insurer were attempting to negotiate their contract.

“Most of these patients have been treated by UMMC for some time and their relationship with their UMMC physician is being disregarded by these tactics,” said Cayla Mangrum, manager of corporate communications for Blue Cross & Blue Shield of Mississippi. “UMMC’s reimbursement for transplants is fair and equitable and based on regional data.” 

But Dr. Alan Jones, associate vice chancellor for clinical affairs for UMMC, said Blue Cross is not telling the whole story. The insurer did offer a minimal increase in transplant, but it was offset by reductions in other areas, he said. 

Details of existing contracts and negotiations between insurers and hospitals, even those that are state-funded, are not public record. 

Chuck Stinson of the Mississippi Organ Recovery Agency, the state’s organ procurement agency that raises awareness about organ, eye and tissue transplantation, declined to comment on the issue.

The UMMC patient scrambled to find a solution after getting the call. He talked to Blue Cross & Blue Shield of Mississippi representatives, who he says are encouraging him to get on the list at Methodist Transplant Institute in Memphis. 

The insurance company doesn’t seem to understand the complicated, involved process of getting evaluated and the challenges of getting care three hours away, he said.

“She (Blue Cross adult case manager) just said ‘Oh, you’ll just go up there and get evaluated,’ and I said, ‘Ma’am, it’s not that simple.’ It was four months (of evaluation) at UMMC,” he said. “And who’s going to pay for me to go back and forth to Memphis? I don’t know a soul in Memphis.”

And because transplant programs have differing criteria for candidates, there’s no guarantee he would be accepted there. Some require a certain MELD (Model for End-Stage Liver Disease) score to qualify. Others only allow a candidate to be on the transplant list at one facility, while others allow candidates to be on multiple lists.

“What if I don’t qualify after I go to Memphis and spend all that time and money? What if, for some reason, they just don’t like a guy that looks like me?” he said. 

And because some insurance plans have coverage limits, people who go through multiple evaluations at different hospitals may exceed their limit and face expensive medical bills.

He is waiting on a cost estimate from UMMC of what the transplant would cost in hopes Blue Cross agrees to pay some of it. But because UMMC has said it will not accept any payments from Blue Cross, it’s unknown whether any payment agreement can be reached.

The average total cost of a liver transplant is $878,400, including costs of care the month before surgery and six months’ of care post-surgery, according to a summary of estimated organ transplant costs for 2020.

“If a Member wants the UMMC Network benefit payment to be made to the Member, they can direct BCBSMS to do so by not signing a Written Direction of Payment,” said Cayla Mangrum, manager of corporate communications for the insurer, when asked about the patient’s situation. “In this situation, the Member would not be guaranteed that UMMC would not balance bill them for amounts greater than their Network benefits.”

Balance billing is illegal under a state law passed in 2013. The law states that if a health care provider accepts payment from a health insurance company on behalf of a patient, the provider is prohibited from collecting any amount from the patient above their deductible, co-pay, or co-insurance amount.

For example, if a patient is billed $10,000 by their hospital the health insurance company pays the hospital $5,000, and the hospital cannot then try to collect the remaining $5,000 from the patient.

If the payment is made directly to the patient, however, it is not considered balance billing for the hospital to charge the patient the difference.

Officials at the hospital and insurance company each point the finger at the other when asked about the sometimes life-and-death effects this contract dispute is having on UMMC patients.

“We understand that some Members may not want to go out of state for their transplant – but it is UMMC that is refusing to care for them,” Mangrum said.

Jones said he hopes Blue Cross “sees the value” of the state’s only organ transplant program and UMMC as a whole.

“We are disheartened that patients with whom we’ve already established a relationship may have to make the difficult decision to get on a transplant list at another facility. We certainly wish they weren’t faced with that process, which can sometimes take multiple in-person visits with a hospital’s transplant program coordinators and surgeons,” said Jones. “We believe it is best for Mississippians who need a life-saving organ transplant to receive it here in their home state.”

This patient said while the situation has been stressful, he’s been able to remain calm. What really gets to him, he says, is thinking about children in his same predicament.

Liver transplant recipients can live a good 30 years, he’s heard.

“At my age, I probably don’t have 30 years left, even with a great liver. But a child that is sick and has a bad MELD (Model for End-Stage Liver Disease) score – a transplant could create 30 more years of healthy living (for them),” he said. “They’ve got their whole lives in front of them. It’s just sad to try to even comprehend that any person or organization would stand in the way of that.” 

The post Need an organ transplant in Mississippi? You may be out of luck thanks to an insurance dispute. appeared first on Mississippi Today.

So this really happened Saturday night in Laurel at a softball game involving 12-year-old girls. A team from Hattiesburg played a team from Laurel in a United States Fastpitch Association (USFA) travel league softball tournament. 

The score does not matter. It will be forgotten in days, if not already. What happened will not be forgotten by those who witnessed the scene. 

This is from eyewitnesses: 

During the game, Kiara Thomas, the mother of one of the Hattiesburg players, persistently berated the umpires, using vulgar language. She was warned to stop. She did not. Finally, she was told to leave the premises. She left the stands but not before threatening umpire Kristi Moore of Ellisville, again using vulgar language. Thomas apparently never left the softball complex.

The game ended. Thomas accosted Moore just after she had exited the field. “You got something to say to me, b—-?” Thomas said. And then Thomas slugged her with what several witnesses described as “a sucker punch.” 

Thomas, wearing a T-shirt that said “Mother of the Year,” then left, but not before a witness followed her, took a cellphone photo of her license plate and called Laurel police. Thomas was stopped and arrested minutes later. She was charged with misdemeanor simple assault and bonded out at a cost of $425.25. An initial court date has been set for May 18. A preliminary hearing is set for Wednesday.

Meanwhile, Moore has a black eye (a severe contusion and nerve damage, her doctor said) and a bruised eardrum. Moore, the umpire in chief for USFA statewide, officiated the game Saturday night because another umpire became ill and could not.

Sadly, this is not an isolated incident. More and more, youth league umpires and high school umpires, referees and officials are the victims of both verbal and sometimes physical threats and abuse. Moore, who assigns umpires for tournaments across the state, says there is a shortage of umpires in travel leagues and recreation leagues because of the mostly verbal abuse from fans, primarily parents.

Robert Holloway, who coordinates umpires for the Mississippi High Schools Activities Association (MHSAA), says games have been postponed and even cancelled because of the shortage of umpires. “We’ve had to adjust playing dates and sometimes simply not play the games because we don’t have anybody to call them,” Holloway said. “Umpires are quitting and unfortunately few want to replace them.”

He blames the shortage of umpires on fan abuse. “We need some legislation for laws with some teeth in them in Mississippi like there are in some other states to protect sports officials,” Holloway said. Holloway said such legislation was proposed this legislative session but it died in committee.

Moore, who works as program director for Laurel’s AmeriCorps, said Tuesday that she began umpiring because she had a stepdaughter who played and “because I have always loved the game.”

The events of Saturday night have caused her to re-think her future in softball umpiring.

“That’s something I’ve got to decide,” she said by phone from Laurel. “I can’t say what I will do at this point, but it’s definitely on my mind. I am a single mom, raising two kids. When I got home Saturday night they both burst into tears. I don’t know … I’ve got to think about it. I mean, what if she had had a gun or a knife?”

Moore cancelled two nights of rec league umpiring this week.

Andrea Russell, another umpire, witnessed the scene. She wasn’t the calling the game but said she was there to watch Moore “in hopes of learning something. She’s the best.”

“Kristi made the right call and handled herself well under the circumstances,” Russell said. “She didn’t deserve what happened to her in the slightest.”

The incident has made Kristi Moore — and Kiara Thomas, for that matter — famous through social media.

“I’ve had messages of support from as far away as Nigeria, Australia and Canada,” Moore said. “The amount of support has been unbelievable, but it’s not the way I wanted to become famous.”

Attempts to reach Thomas were unsuccessful. In a cryptic Facebook post, since removed, she did not sound the least bit repentant. In all caps, she wrote: “I do not play that respectful s— and I will not let you make it once you cross that line. And nobody can ever make an example out of me. A misdemeanor that Im gone beat … f— yall thought.”

The post Ugly softball incident in Laurel is unfortunately a sign of the times appeared first on Mississippi Today.

Join us every third Wednesday of the month from 7:30 – 10:30 a.m. at Broad Street Bakery in Jackson, Mississippi for a free coffee courtesy of Mississippi Today, while you enjoy the company and conversation of Editor-at-Large Marshall Ramsey and special guests.

Open to anyone, we invite our readers to come meet Marshall Ramsey and other members of the Mississippi Today team. We value connecting with our reader community, after all — we report to you.

You’ll see award-winning editorial cartoonist Marshall at work, as he will create original sketches and cartoons while he visits with those attending.

The post Coffee with Marshall Ramsey appeared first on Mississippi Today.

Since Auditor Shad White arrested Gov. Phil Bryant’s appointed welfare director in 2020 within a sprawling fraud scheme, state and federal investigators and prosecutors have failed to publicly scrutinize the governor’s role — which is palpable in written communication they’ve possessed for more than two years. 

Much of that communication has been published for the first time in Mississippi Today’s “The Backchannel” investigation, which uncovers the depth of the former governor’s involvement within the scandal that plagued his administration.

White, a former Bryant staffer and campaign manager who the former governor later appointed as state auditor, sat down with Mississippi Today on Oct. 14, 2021, for an in-depth interview about the welfare department and his investigation of it.

Highlights of the interview include:

• White said that he believed it was the welfare director’s duty to reject any improper requests from the governor, not the governor’s responsibility to know agency spending regulations.
• White said that he had not seen any evidence of Bryant directing his welfare agency head to make specific payments to specific programs.
• White said that if there was evidence of Bryant directing payments, the welfare director awaiting trial should point that out to investigators or prosecutors.

Soon after the interview, Mississippi Today obtained thousands of written communications between the governor and principal players in the scandal that shed light on Bryant’s involvement. When we conducted the interview with White, we didn’t yet know much of what we’ve published in “The Backchannel” investigation.

Since the interview, the judge in an ongoing criminal case has reinforced the gag order against White, meaning this is likely his final on-the-record interview about the scheme until the criminal cases are over. Those cases could continue for the rest of the year or longer. For that reason, we are publishing the interview, which has been edited for length and clarity.

Two additional notes to consider while reading: Because the investigation was then and is still ongoing, White often spoke in hypotheticals while answering questions. Second, the interview was conducted just days after White issued civil demand letters for 15 people or organizations to return a total of $77 million in misspent welfare dollars.

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MT: Especially after seeing the demand letters, and particularly the one to John Davis, it’s just making me think more and more about how he is really being held accountable for this whole overarching scheme, a lot of which didn’t benefit him personally. Right? And lots of other people benefited much more than he did. I guess I just want to ask you generally, with the tack that you’re taking to try to be accountable for taxpayer money, how you think that’s going to change this good ole boy structure that the John Davis case illustrates, which is pervasive through Mississippi’s government.

WHITE: You know, I think the first and most important thing is that the demand that John Davis — which is obviously large. It’s $96 million when you add interest. That’s the largest demand that’s ever been issued by this office, period. The demand that is issued to John Davis sends this message that if you are legally responsible for making sure that money is spent in accordance with the law and you don’t follow the law and you do whatever you want to with it, and you spend it in ways that are maybe politically beneficial to you, then you’re going to be held accountable.

And I don’t know of another way to better send that message than to just enforce the law as it is written and hold someone to the standard that the law sets, which is, if you’re running an agency, handling all this money and you’re responsible for making sure that it goes to the actual program beneficiaries that the program was designed to serve, that you actually do that.

That’s, I think, the first thing. And then there’s the second layer under that, which is, if there is a criminal case to be made, that you have to be willing — and I say you, meaning investigators and prosecutors and the court system — has to be willing to enforce the criminal law, too. Now, you and I know that not every case is a DHS-level case. We see instances of misappropriation that don’t get anywhere near $77 million. We see instances of misappropriation that don’t come with a criminal charge because what was done did not violate a criminal statute. But in this case, you’ve got large dollar amounts and you’ve got civil and criminal cases that are possible.

And so when something like this happens, you have to do your job. You meaning me — I have to do my job. And prosecutors have to do their jobs and the court has to do its job.

And I think that that’s how you begin to unwind a system where people believe that rules are not real. Because that’s what I’m afraid existed for a long time in some corners of Mississippi, that people just believed that the rules were not real, but the rules are the law.

That’s where we’re getting these rules from. The rules come from regulations and statutes passed by democratically elected officials. And those are important. It’s important to me personally. It’s a value that I hold very deeply and I’ve spent a lot of my life thinking about it.

And so, we just have to have more people who are, one, in positions of influence, who are willing to follow the law, and more people who are willing to step up and enforce it if those individuals in positions of influence don’t follow the law.

MT: Right. But I guess when I think about John Davis, I think about how he was doing what everyone around him does and has been doing. And how is taking John Davis as an individual down, going to change the culture and the overarching structure of people doing favors for people. And I guess, let me take it a little further, because I’ve now consumed enough information and have details of the way that Phil Bryant and John Davis interacted. And Phil Bryant directed John Davis’ actions.

And how do we hold the state’s top official accountable in the same way that we’re holding John Davis accountable.

White: When you say, Phil Bryant directed John Davis’ actions, are you saying that there is specific evidence that Phil Bryant told John Davis to spend money in certain ways?

MT: Yeah.

White: OK.

MT: I mean, that’s clear.

White: We would love to see any evidence to that effect that anybody has. I would first say that. I mean, we have gathered tons of evidence in this case. But if there’s any documented evidence or anything like that, that exists, we need to make sure that we have it. That’s the first big thing I would say.

MT: I don’t think you’re going to find a piece of paper that shows Phil Bryant telling John Davis, for example, to give money to Prevacus. But there were meetings that took place, and there were examples of him directing him to do other things with money. And those specific things might not be part of the criminal allegations, but it shows the pattern of how they communicated.

White: Yeah. So, we know the meetings took place, right? That’s been publicly reported and there’s nothing illegal, obviously, about a meeting. Right? You would expect that right now, if someone came to Tate Reeves and said, “Hey, I have a potential drug that could be manufactured in Mississippi, and I would like to sit and talk with you about that potential.” If Tate Reeves’ team thought that was a real proposal, then the governor probably should take a meeting like that, I would think. So that’s kind of the first thing that comes to mind when we’re just talking about that meeting in particular.

Getting a bit more into the detail of the other thing that you mentioned, the emails where Phil Bryant is directing spending. I’d love to see those too, if you got ’em. We may already have them, but just to make sure that we are seeing everything that you’re seeing, I’d love to see them, especially if they’re public documents. The thing that I would say, regardless of what those emails say, the thing that I would point out too, is that: Let’s take a hypothetical. Let’s say that Bob Anderson goes over to Tate Reeves’ office today. And Tate Reeves says to Bob Anderson, “Bob, I’ve got a really good idea. I want you to spend TANF money on a community garden in inner city Jackson, and you should do it in this way, and this way, and this way.” And the way he describes it, violates TANF regs. Is it Bob Anderson’s responsibility to then say, “Yes, governor, I will do whatever you’re telling me to do”? Or is Bob Anderson’s responsibility to say, “Governor, actually, the way you described it violates TANF regulations and we can’t do that with that money”?

Now my personal position is that it is Bob Anderson’s job to do the latter. It’s his job to do the latter. Another sub question there would be, is it the governor’s responsibility in that hypothetical that I just set up to know all the TANF regs?

MT: Right.

White: The answer is no. If that is the governor’s responsibility, then it is impossible to be the governor of the state of Mississippi or any state, because you would have to be an expert in TANF regs, MEMA regs, DPS regs, and every federal grant that is drawn down by any of those entities. It would be impossible.

MT: Yeah, no, I get that. But so, the governor going to a state agency head and saying, “I want you to fund this,” isn’t that inherently improper? I mean, they’re supposed to be bidding to figure out who gets money. You’re not supposed to be able to go to a state agency and say — Maybe you could go to the state agency and say, “Hey, put out an RFP for this particular service that I’m interested in us providing to citizens,” but to go and say, “You need to fund this group”–

White: Fund specific vendors, is that what you’re saying?

MT: Yeah, yeah.

White: Because it’s two very different things for Tate Reeves to say to Bob Anderson, “Hey, I want a community garden with TANF money in inner city Jackson,” and for Tate Reeves to say, “I want this specific company to win this contract to provide a community garden in inner city Jackson.” Right?

MT: Yeah.

White: So just to be clear, you’re saying that there is proof of the latter and not the former.

MT: Yeah.

White: Is there a proof — What proof are we talking about here? Are there emails? Is it John Davis’ word?

MT: There are emails that describe Phil Bryant asking for a group to be funded by John Davis. And I’m not saying that that group doesn’t satisfy TANF purposes. I’m just calling into question why the governor would be telling him to fund a specific group in the first place.

White: Is the email from Phil Bryant, or is it from John Davis to somebody saying, Phil Bryant—

MT: No, no, no. It’s from Phil Bryant.

White: (Long pause) Cause I don’t know that I’ve ever seen anything quite like what you’re describing.

MT: OK. I mean, does that make you feel differently?

White: I would say that if there’s any sort of violation of bid laws where anyone in a position of power is saying that a specific vendor needs to be funded, and that would be in violation of bid laws or procurement laws, then yeah, there’s a problem. That’s just an obvious, I think that’s obvious.

MT: Yeah. And I don’t know that it is in violation of bid laws because I don’t know what law says that you have to bid TANF projects.

White: So these are specific TANF projects that you’re talking about?

MT: They were funded with TANF dollars, but I don’t think, I don’t think Phil Bryant was going to John Davis saying, ‘Can you fund this with TANF?’ I think he was saying, ‘Can you fund this for me?’

White: I mean, so this is getting a little complicated in the sense that there are a lot of ifs in here. So honestly, I’d have to just see what you’re talking about in order to come to an opinion on it, I think. Because there are a bunch of twists and turns inside this hypothetical that I’m trying to weave in my mind, of, what exactly is he telling him? And, what’s the tone? Is it, “Hey, if this is legal and allowable, then do this.” Or if that’s not there — all these little idiosyncrasies and small features will end up mattering, obviously.

MT: Yeah, I get what you’re saying. I think that for my purposes, the communication that I have, I’ve seen this a while ago and I didn’t think it rose to the level of its own story.

White: Yeah

MT: I don’t know that I feel that same way right now, because I think it illustrates the relationship that they had, and the kind of orders, or the kind of requests that Phil Bryant was making of John Davis that get a little further at the question of whether Phil Bryant should be held accountable for the misspending of this money.

White: Yeah. And let me tackle the question in a different, more generic way than just speaking specifically about these emails and that sort of thing.

MT: Yeah.

White: If John Davis believes that Phil Bryant has some sort of culpability here, then it’s obviously in his best interest to disclose all of that as soon as possible, whether it’s to me, or if he doesn’t want to disclose it to me, to the FBI, or federal prosecutors, or Jody Owens, or any of the other parties that are capable of seeing this, who have cases under their jurisdiction or investigations under their jurisdiction related to this.

MT: Yeah.

White: It is in his best interest to do that. And you would think that if he has anything like that, he would have taken it to one of those parties at some point before now, but he’s still free to do that.

MT: But if the nature of their relationship was where Phil Bryant would express what he wanted to John Davis and John Davis would make it happen, I’m not sure at what point Phil Bryant should be brought into the conversation of who is responsible for the misspending. Because John Davis didn’t — I don’t think John Davis personally spent $77 million dollars.

White: Well, here’s the thing. Let’s fast forward the clock a bit. Let’s say John Davis doesn’t pay anything on this demand. And let’s say that the Attorney General’s office sues John Davis in civil court to enforce the demand. If John Davis believes that he might be legally responsible for repaying any of that money because he was directed to do so, or because of the relationship between him and Governor Bryant and because the nature of the relationship absolves him of some sort of liability, he’s got the opportunity both now and at trial to present all that information.

But let’s go back to the hypothetical that I had a moment ago, where Bob Anderson is in Tate Reeves’ office. And Tate Reeves says to Bob, “Go make the community garden.” Now, Bob might say, “Well, it’s just our relationship that if Tate Reeves tells me to do something, I go and do it.”

Does that absolve Bob Anderson of responsibility for spending that money appropriately? No. In fact, regardless of how Bob thinks about his relationship with Tate in that hypothetical, Bob is going to be held responsible for whether or not that money is spent appropriately and legally. And Tate Reeves is not.

And it doesn’t matter that Bob thinks, “Well, it’s just this unspoken rule in our relationship that if I don’t do this, that I’m going to be fired.” That doesn’t matter. If someone comes into my office today and tells me to do something that I don’t agree with, that is a violation of law. I’m not going to do it.

If I were working for the state auditor and the state auditor walked into my office and told me to do something illegal, it doesn’t matter that I would be fired. I have a responsibility to not do it. So, in the hypothetical, Bob Anderson still doesn’t have proof of something that absolves him of responsibility.

MT: Yes.

White: I’m trying to figure out if what you’re describing is like that, when you’re saying “the relationship between John Davis and Phil Bryant.”

MT: Yeah. I think that gets close to it, but that’s the thing, I’m not saying that John Davis shouldn’t be held accountable. Can’t two people be held accountable? And if it’s not going to absolve him, why would he bring it up?

White: But the following question to that is, if you’re going to bring it up and think it absolves you, then why have you not presented it to any of the legal authorities, whether it’s me or the AG, federal prosecutors, and state prosecutors or anybody else? Why have you not presented that information to get yourself off the hook?

MT: No, because I don’t think he thinks it’s going to absolve him. I’m just saying there’s another person that should be also held accountable – potentially.

White: So he thinks that even if it doesn’t absolve him, that it could implicate Phil Bryant, and for whatever reason, he’s just not going to disclose that information.

MT: He’s probably, I would imagine, taking all of his cues from his defense counsel. So I’m not trying to get in his head, I’m just saying, regardless of what John Davis decides to do or say, or try to defend himself, there was another person who also is responsible for the money being spent properly.

White: But not in the same way. Not in the same way, I would say. Because again, go back to the Tate hypothetical. Is Tate responsible for knowing all the TANF regs? No. He’s just not.

MT: But if he’s just like telling an agency head to help out his nephew or fund this school that he wants to see funded because it’s going to go down otherwise. He’s not supposed to do that, no matter what money or what purposes the money was supposed to be going towards. Throw out the whole, “Does it serve a TANF purpose?” and just look at, is a governor supposed to be telling a state agency head who to fund? Or who to help out? Or if their friend needs their mom to get on the Medicaid waiver, he’s going to try to get the state agency head to help this person get on the program? You know, these are the examples that I think about when I think about the way that Phil Bryant may have had influence over John Davis’ actions.

White: Yeah. I mean, again, if there are specific instances where there’s specific language, where Phil Bryant is instructing John Davis to do X, Y, or Z, I mean, I really would need to see it in order to know if we — meaning me and the attorneys over here and the investigators over here — think that’s over the line or not. But again, the governor is elected and governs for a reason, you know?

So, if Tate Reeves is sitting there telling Bob Anderson, or just to be more specific, I mean, if Phil Bryant is telling John Davis, “Look, I really think that helping children in poor families is more important than helping poor adults. And I think that you should direct your TANF spending to do that as opposed to helping poor adults.” Does he have the right to do that? Absolutely he has the right to do that. He was elected, and as the elected representative of the people, he’s got a right to direct the agencies that answer to him under the law, according to his policy preferences.

MT: Yeah, no, I don’t think anyone’s arguing against that.

White: The question that you’re posing is what happens when you get more specific. And what happens if what he is suggesting to Davis does violate a reg. So, just say a reg, not a criminal statute or something like that, let’s say a reg. Again, I would just maintain that it is the agency head’s responsibility to say, “No.”

I’ll give you another example, if I walked over to the Lieutenant Governor’s office and the Lieutenant Governor told me, “Shad, the state auditor’s office will do XYZ this year, or we will cut your budget in half.” And I know that XYZ is illegal. It is my responsibility to say, “Lieutenant Governor, you may not know this, but XYZ is illegal and I will not be doing that. And you can do whatever you like to me as a result, but I will not be doing that.”

It is my responsibility because I would be the one who is held ultimately accountable for knowing the rules and regs and statutes that apply to my operations in my agency. And I don’t even necessarily think that the Lieutenant Governor would have reason to know some of those things.

In fact, it’d be impossible for the Lieutenant Governor to know all those things because he’s funding every state agency.

So there’s just a big onus that comes with running a state agency. And I feel like I can say that with some credibility, because I run a state agency. I’m responsible for complying with all the rules and regs that are applicable to me, every single day.

MT: Right. I guess I recognize that there might not be a path forward with the types of laws and things that you enforce, and I worry that like the larger, sort of, culture of state government, is not going to be addressed or taken down in the same way that these alleged embezzlers are.

What do you think about that?

White: This is actually something that runs through my head a lot and I’ll tell you why it runs through my head a lot. So, we get a call, let’s just say, again, this is a hypothetical, made up facts, but it’s very similar to things that we deal with all the time.

I get a call from a resident of a county. And the resident of the county says, “Look, my board of supervisors down here misspent a ton of money and I think they maybe even stole some of it.” So we go and we look, and as it turns out, the board paved a road that was barely driven on, which is totally legal, but is a complete waste of money.

And then on top of that, one of the board members received a kickback. So, we arrest the board member for the kickback and send him to jail. He gets prosecuted. But then the person who called the tip in, in the first place says, “Yeah, but they still spent the money on that road.” What is the recourse to hold them accountable for the money they spent on the road that was wasteful?

And the answer is, if there’s no criminal statute that applies to the actions that took place, the answer is that you have to vote those people out. And then the person who’s on the phone with me gets frustrated because they say, “Well, I don’t have unilateral power to vote these people out.” And so you have to go back to this point of: democracy is frustrating sometimes, but it exists for a reason.

And the reason in this case is that the voters get to decide whether or not the policy choices by an individual or the way they handle their business is something that they want in office or not. And that’s really where the accountability falls if there’s no statute that’s been triggered.

So I do think about it a lot, but there’s not a perfect answer to this because there’s not supposed to be a perfect answer. No one person’s judgment is supposed to rule the day. We decided to outsource those kinds of decisions to the voting public. And that’s just where the decision lies and that’s where the accountability has to lie, too, if there’s no statute has been violated.

MT: Yeah. If there’s no statute that’s been violated.

I think that the problem that I have, and that really bugs me about this story, as I learn more and more, especially looking at the forensic audit and seeing the different characters who are totally outside of the story that has been told, but these contractors who are politically connected getting these big contracts to do little to nothing. And you’ve talked about this before, the way that you’ve talked about these issues, it’s like, you’re pissed that money didn’t go to people who needed it. And in the case of corrections, you seem to express empathy for people who needed to be rehabilitated, who were not because money was not spent properly at the department of corrections. So these are just examples. It seems like you want things to be done more ethically, even if there’s no laws being broken by the actions that are taking place right now. And so how do we accomplish that?

White: Well those instances would be laws being broken, though, right? It would be if a parole officer is embezzling funds from prisoners–

MT: Well, yeah, but I’m not even talking about a parole officer, I’m talking about–

White: I take your point, keep going.

MT: I’m talking about the department of corrections commissioner taking a whatever, hundred thousand dollar buyout, illegal buyout, and has never been held accountable for that. You know? I mean, she didn’t, I guess, violate a specific statute or something, but you still express through your written reports that that was improper.

White: I would say she did violate a specific statute. So what we do when we audit is if you read something in an audit finding, the finding is describing spending that did appear to violate a statute or a reg. So I would say that, just like the comp time buyout of John Dowdy at the Bureau of Narcotics, which we audited, you know, that buyout was not appropriate under the law and he had to pay it back.

So in these situations that you’re describing, so far at least, we have both, we have something that is both unethical and illegal.

MT: So does anyone get charged with a crime?

White: Well, you know, criminal statutes and civil statutes are different in what we look for, this is just generally speaking about criminal statutes.

What we look for to see if there’s a violation of criminal statutes is, we’re looking for things like a personal benefit to someone, if it’s an alleged embezzlement. And we’re looking to see also that they intended to do this, knowing that what they were doing was not allowed. So, when you get to that point, when you’re trying to figure out if somebody intended to do something, you have a problem in the law, which is you’re trying to step inside their head, but that’s impossible. Right? So what do you do?

You look at circumstantial evidence to see if it seems like they knew what they were doing. So you looked to see if they concealed what they were doing while they were doing it. You look to see if they covered their tracks. Inversely, you would look to see if they were very open and apparent about what they were doing.

Did they walk down the hall and tell everybody, “Hey, I just bought a new Ferrari with the agency’s money. Isn’t this great? Everybody come down and see the Ferrari.” I mean, weirdly, that is proof that they were dumb and didn’t know that what they were doing was illegal. So we look at intent. We look at whether or not there’s a personal benefit. We look at whether or not they make fraudulent statements on a government document. And again, every fraud statute in every state in the country has an intent element, which means we have to show that they intentionally decided to lie and conceal what the truth was. So that’s where, speaking broadly, that’s where the line is between a civil case and a criminal case.

But, all that to say, the state auditor’s office is not in charge of deciding whether something is a civil or criminal case. We do not have that legal authority at all. We are an investigative body. So we go out, we identify facts. We figure out what actually happened with spending. And we ultimately present those facts to lawyers, prosecutors outside of my office, the AG’s office, the local DA, federal prosecutors. Prosecutors make charging decisions. Prosecutors are the ones who decide, “OK, well this, this is not just civil. This is criminal. And we’re going to take this to a grand jury.” And then of course, if it goes to a grand jury, a jury of a person’s peers is going to decide if the individual is indicted or not. So that’s how I think about it.

And that system has worked well because there are tons of different safeguards in there. And there are provisions in there that prevent any one person from being too powerful. And that’s, I think, important to remember in this case, is, I mean, you can see it yesterday or whenever it was that we released the demands. People say, “Well, why aren’t all these folks going to jail?” And they question whether or not I am fully doing my job because they’re not in jail. Well, they forget that I don’t make charging decisions.

MT: Yeah.

White: I don’t have that power. I absolutely do not have that power. I could not haul somebody into jail right now without having an indictment and a reason to believe that they have committed a crime. I just don’t. So if they have a problem with that, they have to take it up with the prosecutor.

MT: When you’ve given information over to prosecutors, have there been times where you felt like they didn’t follow up on something that you would have expected them to?

White: You’re talking about just in general with any case?

MT: Yeah, but also within this welfare stuff, certainly. How much are you guiding them through the information you’re giving them? Do you hand over the documents and are like, “These are the six guys who really did something?” Or is it more like, “Here’s a group of people who may have done something,” and the prosecutors are the ones that picked out the six guys.

White: To go to one end of the spectrum, there’s never a world in which we will dump 30,000 pages of documents at a prosecutor and say, “Hey, figure it out.” That’s not gonna happen. That literally has never happened, will never happen. They would just laugh at us. And then they would probably never take our cases ever again if we started doing things like that.

So your question is, “How specific do we get when we present files to the prosecutors?” I mean, we will look through files and spend time figuring out who we think has violated a criminal statute and speaking generally, because I don’t want to get too specific about DHS criminal cases, speaking generally, we’ve taken cases to prosecutor’s offices said, “Hey, here’s a summary of four different violations of criminal statutes by three different people that we think happened. What do you think?” And sometimes prosecutors agree with us and sometimes they disagree. In addition to that, especially if it’s a case that has a federal nexus, usually what happens if we do that with a federal office, is they say, “Thank you for your recommendation on these three people that violated those four criminal statutes. We’ll take it from here.” And usually the federal prosecutor will take the documents and take whatever we’ve said and hand it over to the FBI, and then they will do their own digging and come to their own conclusions about who should be liable for what.

So that’s kind of how that works. Is there a frustration between agencies over whether or not everybody who got indicted should have been indicted? Yeah, sometimes. But that’s just natural between law enforcement entities, I think. That’s a common occurrence. People have differences of opinions because when you have a bunch of smart people in a room who are looking at the same facts and looking at the same law, they can differ on what the application of the law should actually mean.

And that’s just to be expected, I think.

MT: Yeah. So going back to the things that you’ve said, that kind of, to me, illustrate your mindset about the way that public funds are supposed to be spent. There’s no body, there’s no agency in charge of that in Mississippi.

White: You mean how public funds were supposed to be spent generally at every agency?

MT: We’ve talked about this before, how your office can’t have a role in making sure an agency’s spending is effective or that they reach intended outcomes. So whose role is that?

White: Yeah, it’s the role of the agency. You’re right. That there is no big oversight body that runs, that manages spending for state agencies.

MEMA ultimately has responsibility for wisely and legally managing the funds that have been handed to them. And so too does DHS, and so on.

MT: Yeah. So that’s problematic that the agency gets to spend, gets to decide how it spends the money, and there’s no one looking out for whether that money is actually being spent the way it’s intended.

…What I’m talking about are purchases that are not illegal. But they also don’t satisfy the intended purpose. There’s no one checking to see if money is being spent in the way that will accomplish the goal.

White: I don’t know that I agree with that because if you spend money in a way that does not conform to the goals stated in statute of TANF, then you’ve spent money illegally. And so then that would trigger our authority.

It sounds to me like what you’re saying is some sort of area in between where an agency is spending money legally in a way that conforms with the stated goals in statute of TANF. But that’s just not a good use of funds.

MT: No. Or that it just doesn’t meet the goal.

White: If it doesn’t meet the goal though, I’m saying it’s actually illegal.

Editor’s note: The interview delves into specific examples in the forensic audit.

MT: The way that he was charged with going about helping people get jobs, did not help people get jobs. Not necessarily because he didn’t do the work, but because the work that they had him doing didn’t satisfy the goal. I mean, I think it’s happening all the time where we’re giving contracts that say, “Hey, you go do this thing.” And people just kind of flail around and don’t actually accomplish anything. And that’s perfectly legal.

The terms of the contract are satisfied, but they didn’t accomplish anything.

White: Yes. And so I’m tracking now, so the contract, as it is written describes a legal use of TANF money.

MT: Right.

White: But then the way the contract is executed just means that the money doesn’t actually help anybody, something like that.

I think that if that is the case, then again, the accountability comes back to the governing entity of the agency, whether that be the governor who appoints the agency head or the board who appoints an agency head. Because what you’re really talking about is mismanagement, right? You’re talking about legal activities, but activities that don’t make anyone’s life better.

And if that’s the case, then the accountability has to fall on whoever’s overseeing that agency. And in some cases, that’s the governor, who’s elected by the people and can be unelected by the people. And in some cases that’s a board, but the board is appointed by usually the governor or someone else.

So that’s where the accountability lies. I get the frustration. I get that it’s messy, but that is the system. That is it. And it’s important to think about the inverse of that system to what would it look like for one person to have oversight over all these agencies and to be able to decide unilaterally what mismanagement looks like. That would be a lot of power for one individual or for one body or something like that.

MT: I would think that the legislature would be held more accountable for that because they’re the ones setting the budgets and they don’t require the agencies to show that they need the money to satisfy a goal and then come back the next year and show how that goal was actually satisfied with the money that they were given.

White: No, that’s a great point. That is a great point. And I should have mentioned that. So you do have two forms of oversight. Let’s take DHS to be specific. You have the governor who appoints the head of DHS. So he is the person who is elected by the people to make policy decisions about what DHS is going to do and should be held accountable for that agency functioning well, through his appointee.

But also you have the people funding the agency, right? And they too, I think, bear responsibility to make sure that the money is well spent and they should ask hard questions about where that money is going. And and I can tell you, I think that if I misspent half of my budget here in the state auditor’s office, I would certainly hope that appropriators would come back to me and say, “What you are doing and how you are running your agency may be legal, but it is not appropriate because you’re wasting a bunch of money and we’re about to cut half your budget.”

MT: Which ultimately doesn’t help anybody. It still doesn’t help the person that the agency should be helping. But the last point I wanna make is just –

White: We’re getting very philosophical by the way.

MT: I know, I’m sorry.

White: I feel like we’re getting down to, like, is democracy good, now—

MT: (laughs) I don’t know how else to do my job.

White: I think you and I might come out on different sides on the “Is democracy good?” question.

MT: Let me, I just want to make one more point about the way that these agencies are operating very legally.

And what I see happening more and more as I gather examples, and I was not this cynical before I saw all of this. We were under a favor system in this state. That means that the people who are getting jobs in state government or contracts or whatever you want to call it, are people who already had wealth and power and the state is letting them maintain wealth and power. While no one else has the opportunity unless they were born with it.

White: But what about me?

MT: What about you? You don’t think that describes you.

White: It does not. I don’t think that describes me.

MT: Yeah.

White: So how does someone like me get into this position without being born into it, if the premise that you just set out is true?

I have no doubt that there are places where somebody’s daddy, who’s influential calls somebody else and gets them a job. That just happens in life. But I also have no doubt that there are times, including in state government, where people get into positions of power, regardless of who they were, who they are, or who their parents are or where they’re from.

I have no political connections. I grew up in a town of 700 people. My dad’s an oilfield pumper and my mom’s a school teacher.

MT: Yeah.

White: The first time they ever met a governor was when I worked for one. I don’t think what you said is totally true

MT: Well, you’re an exceptional case. I mean, you’re like a Rhodes Scholar. That’s a remarkable position to be in, that you created for yourself. It’s not common.

White: I don’t know. I don’t have a good way to assess how many people got into their jobs based on family and historic power and wealth versus something else. I just don’t.

Look, here’s another thing. I think sometimes people confuse agreement with ideology with coming from a privileged background. So for example, I saw the other day that somebody had criticized me for coming from privilege and not understanding what DHS was or what TANF dollars were intended to do. Now, that’s somebody who obviously has no idea who I am. They haven’t even bothered to Google me or figure out what my path was to this point. I think they leapt to that conclusion probably because they disagree with me politically. And they just assumed that somebody who’s a Republican, who’s in charge of something, must’ve come from privilege, which is just not true.

So we have to be careful, I think, to avoid falling into that logical trap. But, to your point, yeah, I do think that there are absolutely situations where people get jobs because of who they know, who their parents were, how much money they have, all that kind of stuff. And I don’t like that. I really don’t. You can ask my wife, I complain more about that, about people being born on third base and getting to home and thinking that they have accomplished something great–

MT: Yeah.

White: –than almost any other societal problem. But it doesn’t mean it is the universal rule in Mississippi, and I honestly don’t have a way of assessing whether or not Mississippi is any worse in that regard than anywhere else.

MT: Right. Well, going back to Phil Bryant, the Phil Bryant question is lingering and is not going to go away — how much responsibility he had or should have had for the misspending of tens of millions of dollars that. How does one person misspend tens of millions of dollars by himself?

That’s a system. That’s a broken system. That’s not a broken person.

White: Well, I do think you could say that it is a broken system and still believe that John Davis was the final arbiter of all these decisions, because John Davis didn’t misspent $77 million. John Davis misspent a bunch of money, and then he handed a bunch more money to MCEC and FRC, who he then failed to monitor, who also misspent a bunch of money. So, it’s definitely a system. There’s no doubt about that. It’s not one guy stroking checks day after day, spending the money himself minute by minute. You’re exactly right. That would be very difficult for one person to do. But it wasn’t one person.

And let me just take one step back, too, and talk about Mississippi in general, because now we’ll get to a point where I do think that some problems here are more acute than in other places. One of the reasons why this entire ecosystem of fraud was allowed to develop was because there was almost no oversight over nonprofits in Mississippi.

MT: Yeah.

White: So you have nonprofits operating out there sometimes without boards.

MT: Yeah.

White: You have nonprofits operating out there, who, the only way that they are subjected to regulatory oversight is through submitting some documents occasionally to the Secretary of State’s Office and 990s, and a couple of other things.

The Secretary of State’s Office doesn’t have investigators who are going around and looking for misspending at non-profits.

So yes, there is a system here that was, I don’t know that you would say it was put into place, but it existed, that allowed $96 million dollars, let’s call it what it is because of interest, $96 million that was misspent.

And I think there need to be real policy questions asked about why that system is the way it is. And I understand your argument about privilege and all that stuff. I, speaking honestly, I think those are the wrong questions. To me, the right questions are, “Why is it that nonprofits have no oversight in the state? Why is it that the accountants who audited FRC and MCEC have not been held accountable for their audits of those institutions?” You know, these are the kinds of things that when coupled together, create an ecosystem for fraud. It’s like a plane crash. A plane only crashes if there are multiple redundant systems that failed and what you have is multiple redundant systems failing.

I don’t know that I would wake up and say, well, is the thing that is failing in Mississippi the fact that a bunch of rich, privileged people who only belong to rich, privileged families are in charge of everything. That’s just not true. I just don’t think that’s true. Phil Bryant is proof that that’s not true, actually.

But is there a better set of questions to ask about why a system exists and what the underlying drivers of the system are? Yeah. I think there’s a whole bunch of questions to ask about that. And I think that the answers to those questions require a ton of hard work and a ton of thinking about why Mississippi is the way it is, why we have set up the policies in the way that we have set up.

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