Does Phil Bryant Deserve a Promotion?

The state legislature conducts inquiries on a regular basis to determine the effectiveness of state agencies and there is a public record made of these reports. I have recently been made aware of the '07 assessment of the State Auditor's office. Since Phil Bryant, the State Auditor, is running for Lt. Gov, this is a thing worth looking at. You can view the full report at

http://www.peer.state.ms.us/495.html

The PEER report concludes that:

1. In 5 of the 8 functional areas of the office, significant improvements are necessary.
2. Between 2002-2006, the office failed to recoup 2.53 million in lost public money that it issued repayment demands for.
3. The office does not ensure the annual audits of municipalities, as required by law.
4. The office is relying on contracting out CPA's to accomplish the bulk of the auditing work.
5. They effectively duplicate audits on school systems. Duplicating audits on school systems reduces the departments' resources with which to perform state agencty and university fixed asset audits. They also use state resources to accomplish the responsibilities of local governments.
6. In 06-07 did not adequately audit the information provided by school systems regarding attendance data, thus creating the opportunity for educational funds to be improperly disbursed.

There are constant references throughout the report of resources being misallocated. The report also indicates that the Auditor's office is chronically understaffed and has a high turnover rate. Inexperienced people are doing the auditing, in effect.

And that's the part that doesn't make any sense to me. Political staffers, and anybody who works in an agency office is a political instrument and knows it, are a wildly loyal lot. They work for the same guy for 5-8 years. As long as he'll have them, most of the time. High staff turnover is not indicative of the nature of the tribe. Yes, low level people, like staff assistants get offered better jobs fairly quickly (and that's the only reason lots of people take those jobs), but the senior staff stay. Especially specialists, like accountants.

The idea that the guy who for 4 or 5 years was the top Republican in the state has a high staff turnover rate says two things to me. 1. The best and brightest, when given the opportunity, leave his office. There is a bad culture, even for Republicans. 2. That political people were willing to leave politics to not have to work for him. In a lot of cases, that's like a fish voluntarily leaving water.

Imagine the trouble a Lt. Gov would be in if he had to hire a new Legislative Director every January. No experience. No institutional memory. In that job, it equates an inability to function.

Phil is looking for a promotion. I think he failed his annual review.