MSDH: Oops!
State Auditor Shad White issued the following statement.
Today State Auditor Shad White released a report showing taxpayer funds were spent on a “Queerceanara” (which was described as a “Latinx pride month event that highlights LGBTQ Latinx and Indigenous community members”), beer, “diva brunches,” and other questionable expenses by nonprofit organizations receiving government grants from the Mississippi Department of Health. The grants were primarily intended to test Mississippians for HIV-AIDS. “It’s almost like our government hates us,” said Auditor White. “This kind of spending defies all common sense and is an insult to hardworking taxpayers.” Every year the federal government sends hundreds of millions of dollars to Mississippi state agencies which they then pass to nonprofits. Over the last five years, the Mississippi Department of Health was charged with using some of those funds to decrease HIV infections in Mississippi. To achieve this goal, the Department of Health gave three nonprofits more than $853,000 between 2020 and 2025. During that time, those nonprofits only administered 35 HIV tests. Instead, they spent the funds in the following ways: The Immigrant Alliance for Justice and Equity (IAJE) was given: $17,380.19 for hosting a “Queerceanera.” Of that, they spent $327.36 on Bud Light and Coronita beer, $2,500 on gift cards for “Queerceanera” attendees, and $14,126.84 on the venue, food, supplies, DJ, photographer, and travel for the event. $699.79 for 19 spa gift baskets “for women” from Amazon. $137.79 for five Lyft rideshares in New York City at 10:12 pm and 4:08 am on 4-5 March 2023, which included a two-hour stop at “the longest running lesbian bar in the country.” $82.50 for dinner at a “restaurant in Baltimore” despite the receipt address being for a tobacco/vape store. Love Inside for Everyone (LIFE, Inc) was given $4,000 to cover rental fees for a nightclub (run by the nonprofit’s director) to host monthly “diva brunches” Over $90,000 with no receipts or supporting documentation provided to the Department of Health Funds to host Gay Pride Weekend in Jackson, MS, in 2023 Love Me Unlimited 4 Life was given over $140,000, which they spent entirely on salaries with a requirement to hire people who identify “as Gender Non-Conformant (GNC), Aged 17-34 that are People with HIV (PWH), members of the LGBTQIA community, and/or at risk for acquiring HIV.” “This past legislative session, Mississippi State Senate leadership passed a bill through committee that specifically deleted my office’s ability to investigate nonprofits receiving less than $10 million in taxpayer funds,” said White. “I’m glad the bill failed, because clearly these nonprofits need to be scrutinized. This waste of taxpayer funds must stop.”The Health Department issued the following response.
The Mississippi State Department of Health (MSDH) takes the findings of State Auditor Shad White seriously and recognizes that there were issues in the oversight of certain grants related to HIV/AIDS prevention. We agree that the lapses identified are unacceptable and not reflective of our agency’s standards or mission.
Even prior to this report, MSDH had taken decisive action to strengthen oversight and accountability. This includes a leadership overhaul in the affected program nearly a year ago and the launch of a comprehensive agency-wide reform to modernize and tighten our grants management and compliance processes.
The Auditor’s concerns involve past agreements. None of the nonprofits cited in the report currently have active grants or contracts with MSDH to continue these activities. Today, our leadership is committed to a culture of accountability, transparency and measurable results.
“Since I was appointed State Health Officer, we have been actively working on improvements to create a culture of compliance while identifying inefficiencies and areas of risk to improve how MSDH serves the public,” said Dr. Daniel Edney. “As part of this effort, we have strengthened our infrastructure to support grants management with clear deliverables, accountability and comprehensive oversight across both federal and state programs.”
It is important to underscore that these findings do not reflect the value of many nonprofit partners we continue to work with across Mississippi. Partnerships remain critical to our public health mission.
Our Internal Audit division will continue to partner with the Office of the State Auditor. We are using this moment as a catalyst to implement meaningful improvements in how we operate.
We appreciate the Auditor’s attention to this matter and are fully committed to ensuring rigorous oversight of public health funds.
40 comments:
DOGE! MOGE! Stop the federal grants. If a project is so important fund it using local funds!
Where's the "low hanging fruit" troll?
The ludicrous bill attempted this session by the Legislature strongly suggests that our own legislators or their family members, like those in DC, are financially benefitting from the never ending network of NGO’s who siphon away tax payers funds.
First off
Latinos hate the term Latinx… they are far too conservative for that. The left seems to ignore the wishes of removing it as a term.
At least he's found standard stupid wasteful spending and it's not an important politician's partner borrowing clothes from the founder of a state funded con-profit and millions of fraud or something like that.
This time.
Someone please post the name(s) of the venal legislators who introduced/promoted the bill to prevent Shadrick from doing his job. That should make it possible to discern how they would profit from certain programs not being audited. If someone can give me the bill number, I'll post the names myself.
You can bet your last dollar there is NO record of to whom all those gift cards went. This is pure damned theft.
Thank you, Shad !!
Old news from a few years ago. Not even low hanging fruit but already been picked fruit. Hope lil Shad didn’t spend millions on this report like his other one.
It’s seeming as if most all of the nonprofits are scams.
all !
" “Queerceanara” (which was described as a “Latinx pride month event that highlights LGBTQ Latinx and Indigenous community members”), beer, “diva brunches,” and other questionable expenses by nonprofit organizations receiving government grants from the Mississippi Department of Health. The grants were primarily intended to test Mississippians for HIV-AIDS."
Geez,
I would rather see more DHS funds spent on two more Volleyball complexes at the Mississippi Southern College in Hattiesburg,
Viva El Shad!
Lol the pictures of the event are still on facebook. Tax payers probably purchased her blue manolo blahniks.
Immigrant Alliance for Justice & Equity of Mississippi June 2023
Thanks for finding this Shad! Has anybody gone to jail or at least lost their job yet?
The only Diva I know of is Little Diva Shad.
While he’s at it, Shad ought ti investigate all the state paid consulting firms, and what purpose they serve, and what connections they have with who on state government. The results will be quite interesting.
MDH has an internal audit division?
If Shad can audit or involve himself in Federal dollars of this nature, he should take a look at the ocean of Federal Financial Aid and the number one scam that keeps Mississippi afloat. BILLIONS are drawn down without any accountability all meant to proposedly "possibly benefit" students who are not learning anything in higher education. It's a complete farce.
Mississippi's graduation higher ed graduation rate has shown an upward trend, increasing from 74.5% in 2013 to 89.4%, an all-time high in 2023. Guess why? They knew the gravy train was running out, so they made instructors/professors pass/complete thousands whether they did the work or not. The last ten years they've successfully pushed their enrollments to 30% being "dual credit" high schoolers where juniors in high school have enough dual-credits to qualify as sophomores in college! This has been to prop up (inflate) community college/university enrollments in an effort to "front load" students right out of high school to capture the federal financial aid Pell Grants/Student Loans that the colleges/universities PROFIT from. Calling the State Auditor....Mr. White, Wanna be the Governor.? Then be a baller and take down the fiefdoms with MOGE before DOGE does.
any arrests here? Nope! Next!!!
5:54 a.m. The problem with Pell grants was ( last I looked a few decades ago) that they were granted to students who 1) Do not have the ability to complete a semester and 2) If they do complete the course work, there are no jobs in Mississippi available and the students who graduate haven't the funds to relocate. Many Pell grant recipients didn't last the first 6 weeks after acceptance. The easiest example at the time was the number of two year junior college graduating nurses being more than twice the number of jobs statewide. The worst problem in MS is "foxes guarding the hen house".
Then, the " unspent" money once went to " administration" not to the teachers' even when salary increases were approved. Our junior college Presidents lived life with none of the personal expenses their teachers had ... no utility bills, all maintenance is covered, no grocery bills (food from the cafeteria) and "trustees" benefitted from contracts. I hope that's changed. I hope that has changed.
Ok then! I am seeing why MSDH is so dsyfunctional. Thanks for telling me again why we don’t need MSDH. Please dismantle it. I needed them in 2020 (useless Attorney General Office assured me they were the enforcers for them and they would help me) for my sister who was mentally impaired and being taken advantage of by someone unrelated to her. The absence of their help created a crappy result I deal with every day now. They were forced on me again when my mother was removed from her memory care facility (notice given at 2:00 on Sunday for removal at 5 following Monday). They protected the owner (she seemed to have financial difficulty but that does not mean u treat Alzheimer’s patients like this) not the elderly. Between my 2 experiences and the TANF debacle, let’s shut it down. Would we notice it was missing except for some unemployed people?
Simple solutions:
1. Stop all grants until appropriate oversite is instituted
2. Misappropriation of funds is a criminal act. Prosecute those responsible
3. Immediately suspend or fire responsible employees
I worked at the main office on Woodrow Wilson for 6 years. Dig deeper. Most of that agency is a waste of taxpayer dollars. Every single program under MSDH deserves some sunshine on their books.
Abolish Headstart. It's a scam to provide free babysitting services
Mr. White must be hitting close to you if you don't want this talked about.
@8:15 I get where you're coming from, but stopping all grants will have an insane impact, and further, there are some that are spent appropriately (remember how much you hated the whole class getting in trouble when just some kids were acting up?) - BUT this does point to the main issue at play. Government spending in and of itself isn't bad. The greatest leaps in wealth and economic prosperity for the US came with significant government programs, but ones that were done the right way, with oversight, with tightly tailored purpose and no ability to color outside those lines.
Congress, on both sides of the aisle, appropriate way to much money without strings for broad purpose and pat themselves on the back for "making an impact" when we're not seeing the ROI on taxpayer dollars the people deserve.
What's been encouraging to see is even left-leaning "tax and spend" economists are pointing this out and calling for accountability and insurance of positive public impact
Where is Tate Reeves (aka Tater Tot) in any of this? Oh yeh. He just read this on JJ. He hard at it complaining about why a budget can't be pass. Shad is doing a great job at reducing the grift!
I hope Shad continues his efforts. So far, he has done more to address theft and mismanagement than any politician in Mississippi. Yea, there's been some low hanging fruit but, so what? He is doing his job.
Quite a few posters seem unhappy that this graft and corruption has been exposed by the Auditor. Why is that? I figure they are either involved in the expenditures or are beneficiaries of it.I reckon there are other possible reasons, but those two float to the top.
Dr. Edney is too busy running on radio programs across the State violating medical ethics by spreading vaccination propaganda rather than running the business of MSDH. But, folks, your federal government is full of this kind of wasteful spending, yet the radio talking heads say the federal budget can never be balanced if we don't touch Social Security and Medicare - like those programs aren't full of this kind of wasteful garbage spending either.
Shad knows that most of the dumb ass readers will actually be more enraged by the "far-left LBGT transgender" activities involved, than the waste of taxpayer money which has been an ongoing tradition in so many state agency grants. He has correctly judged the political climate and pushes the right buttons to get an excited reaction. More to come before the next gubernatorial dance.
the federal grant..............it's more popular in mississippi than bourbon and pink wine.
Go Shad, keep shining light on the roaches.
" Dr. Edney is too busy running on radio programs across the State"
That's very true.
He's on Supertalk almost every week.
I wonder if the powers over there will now question him about this fiasco ?
Hey Shad you might want to take a hard look at the Dept of Mental Health. It seems they have been playing a shell game with grant funds, substituting grant funding for what should be tax money generated from alcohol tax designated for regional mental health centers. They don’t want to talk about it. They don’t want to talk about funds steered toward the “non profit” Canopy! Take a look Shad! The Lt Govs wife is a board member and the DMH Directors Deputy’s spouse is on the Executive Staff. Methinks this could be problematic or perhaps “unethical”. Maybe someone should pay more attention to where the money is going and less attention to DMH photo ops at the Capitol. Regional Mental Health Directors are sick of being scapegoats for the inept members of the legislature who are apparently enamored with the DMH shell game. Follow the money! I mean you want to be Gov so badly. You want to expose the malfeasance?! Open your eyes!
CC Presidents now make over $200 grand a year, live in a pretty nice house on campus, and have power over hundreds of millions. It's worse than you can every imagine. They are professional liars grinning in your face.
We are unhappy in Shad's "selective" prosecution of the little guy/girl - and how he deliberately looks the other way regarding his connected "friends" who he needs to stay in and play the game. Sickening.
Edney is a spineless toad who does what he told.
11:34 translated: "Blow as much money as you can if it is for 'progressive' causes."
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