As Auditor, Anthony’s top priority would be to audit the Office of the State Auditor. The Auditor’s Office has a history of not meeting the legal responsibility of auditing the Commonwealth’s 209 agencies at least once every three years. Over the past 12 years, the number of annual audits performed by the Auditor’s Office has steadily declined. As a result, Massachusetts residents have seen government failures that could have been prevented

For the first time, the Auditor’s Office will be audited by a truly independent third-party auditing firm to assess the office’s shortcomings and recommend additional changes. Previously, the office has been audited by the National Association of State Auditors, Comptrollers, and Treasurers, which is incentivized to offer glowing reports on its own members.

In addition, Anthony will reform the office’s entire approach to auditing, which is broken:

1. Data used in audits are outdated by years by the time they are released in a report.
2. Staffers are frequently rotated between multiples audits, creating misunderstandings of complex problems in the inner workings of a state entity or agency.
3. The Auditor’s reports consistently do not mention the steps state agencies and entities have taken to rectify problems before, during, and after deficiencies are identified.
4. There is a history in the Auditor’s Office of mixing politics with official business and issuing “sensationalized press releases” of politically motivated audits with “grossly mischaracterizing” findings.

Finally, the Auditor’s Office has been allowed for too long to be crippled by extreme underfunding.

• A lopsided Legislature, dominated by the party that also controls the Auditor’s Office, has level-funded the $20 million annual auditing budget despite a failure of the office to meet statutory obligations.
• By comparison, budgets for the other constitutional offices – Secretary of State ($54MM), Attorney General ($57MM), and Treasurer ($1.2B) – are multiples higher.
• Anthony endorsed legislation to more than double the State Auditor’s baseline budget to $42 million, which is a similar amount to what other states with similarly-sized budgets spend to audit their spending. 

Anthony Amore will address these problems by speaking truth to power as an independent auditor accountable to the voters, not the Beacon Hill establishment. He will

1. Take a proactive posture to auditing, ensuring problems are discovered quickly.
2. Reform the office’s broken processes for performing government audits.
3. Act as a good government advocate who will pressure the Legislature and Governor to responsibly fund the Auditor’s Office so it may finally meet its legal requirement.