By Billy Davis

Only David Chandler, and maybe his attorney, know what he did and why he did it. But it sure wasn’t the salary.

Chandler started as Panola County administrator, the county’s first, with an annual salary of $38,000.

That was in 1987. The Panola County Board of Supervisors was feeling the pressure to modernize county government against the backdrop of Operation Pretense, a statewide FBI sting that was nabbing county supervisors from the Delta to the Gulf Coast — and eventually one in Panola County, too.

Also against the backdrop of Operation Pretense, there were calls statewide for counties to discontinue  the venerable “beat” system and move to a centralized form of county government known as the “unit” system.  

Panola County supervisors in 1987 were balking at dropping the beat system, which would mean losing their own work crews and their own roadwork budgets. But there was agreement among the five-man board, led by Board President David Ross Craig, to take a smaller step, which was hiring an administrator.
Chandler was a field auditor for the State Dept. of Audit when Craig told his fellow supervisors that other counties, also pursuing an administrator, were wooing Chandler, too.

“I hate to see us lose David,” Craig told fellow supervisors in the May 4, 1987 meeting.

Chandler was hired the following month. His paycheck was the biggest in county government, which didn’t go unnoticed by the public.

“Administrator designee says salary justified,” a Panolian headline reported June 17, 1987.

Chandler was ready with an answer. He told The Panolian he would find cost savings within a year’s time to justify his salary and he pointed out his pay included $11,000 previously paid to the chancery clerk for the role of purchase clerk.

That was a quarter of a century ago.  

When Chandler retired from Panola County government in 2008, he was making $96,756 annually.

After he officially retired, Chandler remained as a contract employee — and illegally did so according to Mississippi’s state auditor. He was paid $7,500 monthly while the Board of Supervisors was looking for his replacement.  

Last January, Chandler’s career in county government began to unravel.

State Auditor Stacey Pickering announced January 12 that Chandler owed the State of Mississippi $292,772, a payment that included “disallowable overtime pay,” interest, and investigative costs.

Pickering said Chandler had broken state law by immediately going back to work as a retiree. The state auditor also alleged Chandler used his financial knowledge to find “loopholes” in the state retirement system and falsify documents to the Public Retirement System of Mississippi.

In February, just a month later, a federal grand jury seated in Oxford indicted Batesville businessman Lee Garner and Ray Shoemaker, the former CEO at Tri-Lakes.

The indictment was unsealed in March and it included Chandler’s name throughout. The indictment described an alleged kickback scheme at Tri-Lakes in which Chandler served as middleman for Shoemaker and Garner, who owns a nurse staffing business.

For ensuring Tri-Lakes used Garner’s business, Chandler allegedly received $5 for every hour of hospital billing, which the Feds allege totaled approximately $268,000 over two years.  

The indictment repeatedly described Chandler as an un-indicted co-conspirator. It did not take an attorney, rocket scientist or brain surgeon to realize Chandler was likely cooperating with the FBI, the same agency whose public corruption sting had helped bring Chandler to Panola County.

But the Feds weren’t through with Chandler. In October a superseding indictment included new charges for Shoemaker and also named Batesville physician Robert Corkern, accusing them of seeking a line of credit for Tri-Lakes but diverting the funds for their own use. Chandler’s name was included in that indictment, too, for allegedly transferring $400,000 in county government funds to Corkern.

For his effort Chandler allegedly pocketed a $25,000 check from Physicians and Surgeons for the bank transfer according to the indictment.   

Chandler is expected to recount his version of misdeeds — at least the ones known to the federal government — tomorrow in U.S. District Court in Aberdeen, where the former county administrator will waive indictment by a federal grand jury.

A single-page court document states only that Chandler will plead guilty to two counts in front of U.S. District Court Judge Sharion Aycock.

The two counts haven’t been made public yet. Tomorrow they will be read aloud in court, when the judge describes the allegations and federal prosecutors describe the federal government’s case against Chandler.

Chandler is represented by attorney Hiram Eastland Jr., who has said his client is cooperating with federal authorities.