Auditor candidate Kevin Roach wants more transparency in government spending at all levels

Missouri auditor candidate Kevin Roach wants more transparency in government at all levels statewide.

Too many government records are not easily accessible to the public, Roach said during a visit Wednesday to Cape Girardeau.

"We have over 3,700 government entities in Missouri," he said, adding the state ranks seventh in the nation in the number of government entities operating in the state.

"We have to raise the level of what is accessible to the public and press," said Roach, a Ballwin, Missouri, alderman who is one of four Republican candidates for the statewide office.

The winner of the August primary will take on Democratic auditor Nicole Galloway in the November general election.

If elected, Roach said he wants to make financial records of all levels of government accessible to the public online.

If cities or other local entities are not technically able to post their finances online, the auditor's office should post them on its website, he said.

"I want to modernize the operations of state auditor," Roach said in a sit-down interview with the Southeast Missourian.

The St. Louis County Republican said he wants the auditor's office to be restructured so it can connect with all governmental entities every year. However, that doesn't mean the state office needs to do a full audit of every entity every year, he said.

The state auditor should be evaluated on the number of government dollars they scrutinize, not the number of audits, he said.

Still, the auditor's office should do more than 100 audits a year, Roach said.

State audits last year included audits of only six of Missouri's 1,100 towns, Roach said.

Too many times, there has been "an illusion of accountability" with Missouri's state and local governments, according to Roach, who has studied forensic accounting and investigation of financial fraud.

While Galloway has been criticized by her Republican opponents, she said on her website her office has uncovered more than $100 million in waste, fraud, abuse and mismanagement, and some of the audits have led to charges filed against corrupt public officials.

Roach said wasteful spending by all levels of government is a bigger problem than actual fraud. "Waste is not illegal," he said, but taxpayers should have access to information on how their tax dollars are being spent. In many cases, they are not being provided access, he said.

Roach said he recently walked 193 miles from his hometown of Ballwin to Warrensburg, Missouri, in a successful effort to open up online access to University of Central Missouri financial records.

A business consultant who also operates a software development company, Roach is not a certified public accountant, but he said the state auditor does not need to be an accountant.

The state auditor is in charge of 130 employees, Roach said. "You need to be a manager and a leader," he said.

mbliss@semissourian.com

(573) 388-3641