STATE AUDITS DESERVE WIDEST PUBLICITY

State auditor-elect Claire McCaskill will be sworn in next week at a ceremony in Jefferson City. Even before that formality, however, she is letting it be known that she intends to use publicity and persuasion to build clout in an office that is legally toothless in enforcing its recommendations.

"A successful audit by the state will be if they find things that can be improved," McCaskill told the Associated Press. "My job will be to protect the staff from interference. We are going to measure our performance by how many people we get to read what we have to say."

Good luck. Neither state audits nor any other kind of audit has ever been known as a page-turner, and they aren't likely to be made so, no matter what McCaskill does or says. It was ever thus.

McCaskill, the first non-CPA to hold the office in more than 20 years, is taking over an office noted for its lack of enforcement powers. The state auditor generally can neither file charges, nor sue over audit findings, nor force changes in agency operations, no matter what she finds. The constitutional theory behind the office's powers' being set up this way is that it is sufficient for the auditor to conduct the difficult business of auditing and then publicizing these findings. It is then up to the news media to report the facts and an aroused public to force accountability in the relevant offices of state government.

Speaking for ourselves, we can say that reporting on state audits is routine for the Southeast Missourian and will continue to be so no matter who is in office. We have appreciated the efforts of past auditors as they issued press releases and occasionally held press conferences to explain audit results. When a state agency is the subject, usually this reporting job falls to the Associated Press, whose reports we publish every day. When the entity being audited is closer to home, we always try to give publicity to the results.

We wish Auditor-elect McCaskill well in her efforts to get more attention for the work product of this important state office. Still getting large numbers of people to curl up with lengthy state audits to read isn't very realistic.