I have no idea who State Comptroller Jason Mumpower listens to, but it can’t be TN General Assembly leadership. After all, the Memphis Shelby County Schools (MSCS) $7.7M forensic audit only identified $1.1M in waste out of $5.7B over 2022-24 fiscal years. .02% waste would likely be found in any forensic audit of a public or private entity.

Effectively, the insignificant waste headline hung out TN General Assembly leadership in House Speaker Cameron Sexton and Lt Governor Randy McNally, along with local Senator Brent Taylor and Representative Mark White.

In the audit press conference, Senator Brent Taylor supplemented the insignificant audit waste findings with the local findings related to the MSCS Bayer building which point to $30M in waste. And Speaker Sexton referenced rumors going back years regarding waste. But other than the $1.1M, nothing else concrete in the Comptroller specified $7.7M forensic audit.

I have been watching the Comptroller for years and I don’t think he can count. We need a new State Comptroller. Or someone needs to crawl down in the floor and build a relationship with him, by playing with Spider Man dolls and teaching him to count.

Its so sad that the Comptroller does not seem to know that forensic audits are about audit targets and less about auditing everything. Like for example, a target for Federal COVID funding at MSCS for HVAC capital expenditures at $172M, after in depth reporting on excessive HVAC spend at MSCS due largely to deficient bid competition.

From the July 5, 2022 Daily Memphian article, entitled “‘Fast and furious:’ In rush to spend, fewer bidders likely cost MSCS millions”, this excerpt appears which compares DeSoto County Schools with MSCS HVAC costs:

Seven companies bid to replace rooftop units at Lewisburg Elementary in Olive Branch. American Refrigeration was awarded the contract for about $1.2 million. That amounts to about $15 per square foot.

At MSCS, only one company bid to replace rooftop units at Woodstock Middle School, which is about the same size as Lewisburg. Martin and White was awarded the contract for about $2.8 million. That amounts to more than $30 per square foot.

Anyway, I was told by a local HVAC expert that MSCS spent at least 2x of other districts during COVID madness on HVAC contracts. On $172M that would be $86M in waste and the preliminary audit comes out with an insignificant $1.1M in waste, while hanging out the TN General Assembly. Do What ???

If the Comptroller missed a deep dive on HVAC audit requirement that would result in a calculation of waste within the HVAC category, that would be a nod to the HVAC public ripoff business, going on across Shelby County. MSCS should have virtually no HVAC issues. But they do.

Had the Memphis Comptroller office been adequately staffed, they would likely have called for a forensic investigation upon the publication of  “Fast and Furious” . But with inadequate staff, the former did not happen.

I don’t believe the Comptroller can count and I know he can’t appropriately allocate resources. For example, at last count a year ago, Comptroller resources were allocated in the following counties: Davidson-422, Greene-8, Knox-45, Madison – 45, Putnam-40, Rutherford – 16, and Shelby-3.

Shelby County needs at least 30 staff members located in Memphis to police public corruption. Instead, the Comptroller staffs the Rutherford County office with 16, just down the road from Davidson County where there are already 422 staffers.

So why are there 16 staffers in Rutherford County? Apparently, the reason was/is to bully Rutherford County Assessor Robert Mitchell. But after a massive corrective action resource allocation to Rutherford County, the Comptroller was only able to identify a statistically insignificant appraisal error rate of .16% or $1,088,196 in additional property tax revenue.

The Comptroller’s findings were insignificant in the fastest growing Rutherford County in TN, while the slowest growing and most populous municipal Shelby County, only gets 3 staffers. And while, Sexton is right to assert Shelby County is infested with public corruption, the Comptroller refuses to provide adequate staffing for the State's most populous and corrupt Shelby County. 

Another resource allocation concern involves a small town 2022 Comptroller investigative audit of the West TN Town of Toone, TN. The audit findings amount to less than $10K and involve an investigation of the illegal use of a Toone City-owned lawnmower for personal use.

C’mon Man, what about Memphis Mr. Comptroller where billions are missing due to public corruption? The State can do better with a new Comptroller willing to fully staff the Memphis office to police public corruption. That’s all….