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Listen to this articleA certified public accountant from Minnetonka who has worked in the state auditor’s office for 26 years is aiming higher: Jeffrey Wiita has filed to run for Minnesota state auditor next year.
Wiita, 49, filed papers with the Minnesota Campaign Finance and Public Disclosure Board on Sept. 9 to challenge current state auditor Rebecca Otto, a DFLer. Wiita works as a senior auditor in Otto’s office.
Wiita’s campaign website, JeffforStateAuditor.com, lays out his platform:
Wiita “wants to create a program that ensures timely governmental audits at the lowest price,” the website says. “That can happen by empowering CPA firms in the auditing of first class cities and counties through a well-regulated peer review process administered by the state auditor’s office.”
The website goes into some detail about Wiita’s background, including the circumstances surrounding his first date with his wife, Sandy, whom he married in 1983: “After knowing Sandy for nine months and eight days, they got married and have been marriSandyed ever since. Their first child was not born until March 26, 1991. No math problem here.”
There are also details about Wiita’s affinity for the outdoors: “He grew up eating moose, whitetail and fish,” the “About Jeff” page says, just above a photo of a younger Wiita posing with “his fourth moose and second timber wolf harvested in 1988.”
Wiita believes that the state auditor should be a CPA. “There has never been a Minnesota state auditor who has been a certified public accountant,” the website explains. “To Jeff, not having a CPA as state auditor is like not having an attorney as attorney general.
“Do you think the attorney general should be an attorney? Why yes. Then why do we have a state auditor who is not a CPA?”
