Presley releases ethics plan’s second plank
Democratic candidate for Mississippi governor Brandon Presley has released the second plank of his ethics plan to make sure what he calls “Tategate” never happens again.
Presley made the announcement outside of the Harrison County Courthouse.
“When I’m governor, I plan on declaring war on corruption in our state government, and it all starts with sanitizing an infected lobbying system,” said Presley. “The first plank of our historic ethics plan focused on curbing the influence of lobbyists and giant corporations. The second plank of our bold plan tackles how we make sure that the largest public corruption scandal in state history never happens again.”
The second plank of Brandon’s War on Corruption plan includes:
- Hiring an independent investigator appointed by the Ethics Commission that cannot be fired by the governor or the legislature.
- Creating a Task Force on Public Integrity with appointments from the state auditor, attorney general, and executive director of the Department of Finance and Administration to review all state contracts and evaluate the performance of any recipient of taxpayer dollars
Presley said there would be a focus on the Department of Human Services because, “under Tate Reeves’ watch as lieutenant governor, he failed to provide oversight of $77 million that was stolen or misspent at DHS.”
The task force would be subject to the open meetings law.
In the first plank of Brandon’s ethics plan, he proposed holding every state agency responsible for timely public records request responses and permanently reauthorizing the Public Records Act.
