Committee moves Parker bill on Auditor powers

Photo: An image screenshot from the Senate Accountability, Efficiency, Transparency Committee meeting Thursday morning, a committee chaired by state Sen. Dr. David Parker (R-Olive Branch)

Jan. 30, 2025-There has been discussion the past week about a bill that passed a state Senate committee Thursday morning concerning the powers of the state Auditor’s office.  

The bill is Senate Bill 2847, authored by state Sen. Dr. David Parker (R-Olive Branch), and it passed out of the Senate Accountability, Efficiency, Transparency Committee, of which he is the chairman. 

The bill does two things, as Parker pointed out in the committee meeting Thursday morning. One, it prohibits certain entities from entering into certain consent decrees or agreed judgements without prior written notification to the governor and the legislature. The second part of the measure is that it enhances the duties of the Auditor’s office by requiring a pre-audit and post-audit if a profit or nonprofit receives $10 million or more of public funds.

State Auditor Shad White quickly on Monday came out and attacked the bill, asserting it was introduced on behalf of Lt. Gov. Delbert Hosemann to gut the Auditor’s office of much of its power.  

“At a time when President Trump is cutting government fat, Mississippi’s swamp creatures and establishment politicians are trying to stop me from finding waste and theft of taxpayer funds,” White said in a news release. “You may as well call this the Mississippi Corruption Act of 2025.”

Parker, in his presentation to the committee Thursday morning, quickly refuted that the bill was not a “Hosemann” bill, but rather a bill of his own doing. Parker said it comes in response to the indictment charges and arrest made of Horn Lake alderman Charlie Roberts, charges later dropped. 

Last September, White and District Attorney Matthew Barton held a news conference on the steps of the DeSoto County Administration Building in Hernando, announcing the indictment and subsequent arrest. White charged Roberts with unemployment fraud because he failed to list being employed as an alderman when he received benefits during the COVID pandemic.  

“I can tell you that Charlie applied for unemployment benefits during COVID and did not list his employment as an alderman because he checked and thought it was part-time work,” Roberts’ attorney Tony Farese told DeSoto County News last September, one day after the White news conference. “He subsequently was notified that he had been overpaid unemployment benefits and that he owed money. They subsequently garnished his wages.” 

Farese went on to say that Roberts had covered the overpayment once he learned of the mistake. With that acknowledgement, Roberts was released from jail.  

Parker said he learned of what happened with Roberts through media reports, including DeSoto County News, then investigated with the Mississippi Department of Employment Services (MDES) and with White, who eventually accused him of interfering with a federal investigation because Parker wouldn’t divulge to White who at MDES gave Parker information about the case, information Parker said he did not have to reveal.  

The Olive Branch state senator said it was a mistake the Auditor’s office should not make.

“We can give the Auditor more power to do these audits, but we also require collaboration so that we don’t have some of our regular citizens who don’t have the benefit of this microphone put in situations where their lives can be changed forever for what they consider, and what I consider, to be a mistake,” Parker said, adding that someone should not be put in jail for omitting something on a form. 

White’s news release on Monday pointed out that the powers to audit some nonprofits and for-profit companies spending taxpayer money allowed him to investigate a large pharmacy benefit manager five years ago, resulting in a $55 million civil recovery, the largest in office history. White also said the welfare scandal (the largest public fraud scheme in state history) was only stopped because the auditor’s office could audit these kinds of entities, and added he had released an audit finding $335 million in waste in state government. “This bill would take away the office’s ability to perform these audits for waste,” White said.  

But Parker reiterates the bill is not injected into consideration by Lt. Gov. Hosemann through Parker, as he told his fellow committee members Thursday morning. 

“I held my comments until today because I don’t do legislation on social media, I do it in this room,” Parker said. “When someone makes a representation about the concerns I have with the authority and they attribute it to the Lt. Governor or anyone else, I’ll tell you, attribute it to me.”

Parker has provided comments and the video of the bill’s discussion at today’s committee meeting on his own David Parker for Senate Facebook page.