Ad Oversight Jeopardizing MDES

Adam Lynch

Rep. Percy Watson, D-Hattiesburg, holds a 2007 PEER report criticizing the state's lack of oversight on awarding advertising bids.

by Adam Lynch
May 15, 2008

Mississippi Department of Employment Security Executive Director Tommye Favre said she wished legislators had not endangered her agency over a battle to force more oversight on state advertising.

“I have no problem with the advertising language,” Favre told a House subcommittee investigating the issue. “I have a problem that it was attached to our (reauthorization) bill.”

Favre explained at the Wednesday hearing that Republicans’ and Democrats’ inability to agree on language to provide more oversight on state agencies’ process for contracting advertising is putting her agency at risk for expiration in July. House Democrats want more oversight, particularly as it pertains to no-bid contracts to conservative talk radio, while Republicans stand against the oversight of state taxpayer money.

A 2007 Performance Evaluation and Expenditure Review committee found that the state awarded $1.2 million in no-bid contracts to TeleSouth Communication (a carrier of conservative talk radio) in 2006 after Mississippi Department of Human Services Executive Director Don Taylor—appointed by Republican Gov. Haley Barbour—designated the company as the only one that could “provide needed services to the Department.”

PEER reported that the state Personal Service Contract Review Board did not require MDHS to show proof of Taylor’s assessment and approved the contract on his order.

PEER submitted language addressing the lack of oversight to legislators, which House Democrats inserted into the MDES reauthorization bill, but Senate Republicans refused to approve the language and rejected the bill.

Favre assured Watson that her agency’s advertising process is legitimate and has adequate oversight. Rep. Percy Watson, D-Hattiesburg, told Favre that the House did not target MDES with the oversight language because it found the department at fault in awarding advertising.

"No one has said from this committee that your agency ... is abusive with respect to advertising," Watson said, without addressing another reason for the move.

Some speculate that Democrats targeted MDES with the language because Barbour cannot exercise executive order in the matter, as the department is federally funded. Republicans will either have to successfully paint Democrats as the enemy of the state’s unemployed—who get funding through MDES—or cave in and work with Democrats if the state is to be spared the loss of $28 million in state funds from the U.S. Department of labor.

 
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