State Auditor: Saundra McDowell
Party: Republican
Place of residence: Jefferson City
Age: 38
Education: Drake University; Juris Doctor from Regent University in Virginia.
Political experience: Assistant state attorney general, Secretary of State’s Office, Private Attorney
Opponent: Nicole Galloway
What makes you qualified for this position?
Well I’m a hard worker. I’ve been in the military. I know I have a great work ethic.
I have two sets of twins. I’m a multi-tasker, I know I can get it done. … I have gained a lot of leadership experience over my life because of being in the military. Rose to the rank of tech sergeant before I got out of the military. I was leading other airmen there. Since then, when I was working with my second law firm I actually developed and managed their disability department and gained over 500 clients within six months.
I’ve worked in the Attorney General’s Office and the Secretary of State’s Office in management-level positions where I led others. I know with the experience I have I can go in and fix the leadership and management issues there. Also just knowing how to lead auditors and investigators and conduct those investigations myself. At the securities division was just that, a team. We worked together. I knew what was going on in each of those cases, and we had close to 200 cases there at one time so I think, when you have someone that is a hard worker that knows how to do the jobs and cares enough to actually go in and actually fight the corruption and makes sure that taxpayer money’s not being wasted, then that person is going to go in and work hard and do the best possible good they can for the state of Missouri.
How do you differ from your opponent?
She has a lot of executive administration in her office. She’s very top heavy there. I plan on having a very lean team of people at the top level and have a lot more auditors, so we can conduct a lot more audits. So I’d like to reorganize the office so we have a lot more workers that are able to do the job and not so much leadership on the top, I don’t think we really need that.
I also want to tweak the training in the office. As I’ve gone around the state I’ve heard about problems with the actual training of the auditors and that they are not trained in order to go out to help the counties. Like they can’t answer basic questions, they don’t know why they’re asking for the documents they’re asking for. So I want to make sure all the auditors are properly trained, we’re going to put them through a boot camp.
Also, because I’m an attorney, I look at everything with an eye towards litigation, so if we do conduct the audit and find fraud or corruption, then I want to make sure everything that we took in will be able to stand against any objection that may happen in court, like hearsay or relevance. And make sure everything we take in is ironclad, so by the time we get done with the audit, we can just put a big bow tie on it and send it to the criminal referral, wherever that may be. Local law enforcement, the AG’s, the Feds. And where they’re able to go and file on it and not have to do any extra work. So I’m going to tweak the actual audit training itself to make sure we have that eye towards litigation.
I’m also going to be looking into everywhere taxpayer funds go to make sure every area of government is being audited by the auditor’s office. This kind of goes back to my “Every Dollar Works” plan that I’ve been talking about along the campaign. In essence, anywhere taxpayer funds go, the auditor should be auditing those areas and making sure that money is being used efficiently and effectively. I know that there are a lot of places that are not being audited by the auditors office, so I’m going to put together a unit in the office to research everywhere taxpayer money goes and make sure we get those places prioritized, get those places audited, and if it’s someplace that maybe isn’t a priority, at least get them on a rotation so they get audited in the near future. So, like I said, the Every Dollar Works plan is basically to shine a light on every dark corner of government to make sure every taxpayer fund is being used in the best possible way for the people of Missouri.
How do you respond to criticism of your past financial issues and the court judgment against you?
The current auditor is been smear campaign against me saying that I have financial issues, but really it isn’t a financial issue, what it is is that we lost a case.
We had a lease option contact on a house in Springfield that included the furniture. We entered into the contract, and two months in we found out the owners did not have good title to the furniture. So we tried to renegotiate the contract, they wouldn’t do it. I knew, because I’m an attorney, that if you continue to perform under a contract as written, even if you don’t agree with it, then you acquiesce to that and we were concerned we would pay for the furniture and not actually have title to the furniture. So we took the amount of the furniture off the total amount, recalculate the payments for the house offered that to them. They took that for the first two months, after that they said they weren’t going to take it anymore, we had to to pay the full amount or we were going to be sue us, and we’d have to move.
We say well fine, we’ll move and you can sue us. And they did, and we lost that case. I don’t agree with that decision but we’ve been paying on it ever since. It is not a financial issue in any way, it’s just a court case that we lost, and like I said we’ve been paying on it. We didn’t appeal the decision because we had four babies, we had two sets of twins, 15 months apart, and that’s very stressful as anyone can imagine. And so we just decided we would put this behind us and move on. Never thought I would run for office and that this would be the thing that my opponent would attack me on, but it has absolutely nothing to do with budgeting and financial issues.
Explain your Every Dollar Works plan.
It’s a five point plan.
… The first thing I’m going to do is audit the auditor’s office. The current auditor said that it’s been audited in the past, but those are just financial audits to say that you’re not misusing the funds in the office. I’m going to audit the office to make sure the office itself is working efficiently and effectively before we go out and talk to counties and state agencies and help them. So first is auditing the auditor’s office is first, second is training the auditors, third is actually developing a manual that’s called a best practices manual for counties to look to for guidance, because when I went around the state when I campaigned I heard from the county elected officials, collectors, auditors, clerks, anyone that I could talk to I would always ask them about their relationship with the auditor’s office, good/bad.
So I know, when I get in office, what things to keep, what things to change, and everyone said they would like some guidance from the auditor’s office. And that they would like an auditor to work with them rather than against them, like they felt the current auditor was. They would like some sort of bible, if you will, to look to for guidance. So I’m going to develop this best practices manual for them to look to. It will bring a lot of consistency to local government. It will also bring a more efficient working for each of the offices. So that’s the third point.
The fourth is to audit the funds set up across the state. There are over a thousand funds set up for specific purposes, and to my knowledge they have not been audited by the state auditor or anyone else. So I want to make sure they are being used for the stated purposes. And then also I’ve heard, because there are so many of these funds, that there is over a billion dollars total just sitting in these funds not being used at all. So I want to get in there, see if they’re being used right. If there is money just sitting there, not needed in those areas, then I would want to work with the legislature on moving that money to areas where we could better utilize it, like our roads and our bridges and our schools. Those all have a lot of issues where we could use the money.
And the fifth thing would be to develop that unit I was talking about, to research every area of state government to make sure every place is being audited. So that plan is something I have developed because I have heard the issues across this state, and that will basically take care of most of the issues that I’ve heard about. And once I’m in office and I’ve developed more plans going forward once I’m there, but this will be kind of the first year kind of plan to get in there and get going to get as much work as I can done. Because the four years will go by quickly so I want to get as much done as I can.
