Republican lawmaker’s effort to pin down governor on state buying regulation dies in committee

Rep. Julie Mayberry (R-Hensley)

An modification from Rep. Julie Mayberry (R-Hensley) to explicitly apply state buying regulation to Arkansas’s seven constitutional officers — together with the governor — failed within the Joint Funds Committee’s Particular Language Subcommittee yesterday.

The modification seems to be a jab at Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders, who allegedly did not follow state purchasing laws when she bought a $19,000 lectern from a buddy.

The legislative audit report on lecterngate was launched on April 15, including some political fireworks to what initially had been predicted to be a low-drama fiscal legislative session.

The audit report documented seven “areas of potential noncompliance with state law” by the governor’s workplace and referred these findings to Pulaski County Prosecutor Will Jones to find out whether or not any prison expenses needs to be filed.

A number of days earlier than the report was made public, Legal professional Normal Tim Griffin issued an opinion relating to whether or not the governor’s workplace needed to comply with procurement guidelines below the Normal Accounting and Budgetary Procedures Regulation, which state businesses should comply with. Griffin (shock!) concluded that Sanders and different constitutional officers should not have to abide by these guidelines.

This was, ahem, a helpful ruling for Sanders. Certainly, in her workplace’s official response to legislative auditors, Sanders leaned closely on that very argument.

As Matt Campbell explained earlier this month, Griffin’s tendentious opinion is probably going an irrelevant sideshow as a authorized matter. It additionally doesn’t cowl the total scope of doable authorized sizzling water going through the governor. (Campbell, who got here on board with the Arkansas Instances as a reporter final fall, was the blogger who uncovered the lectern scandal to start with.)

“Griffin’s opinion appears little greater than an try and create a smokescreen that Sanders can conceal behind when the report is launched,” Campbell wrote on the time. Be that as it could, it not less than offers speaking level for the governor.

Enter Mayberry. She proposed including an modification to Senate Invoice 53, which is an appropriation measure for the state Division of Transformation and Shared Providers, the company answerable for sure buying and monetary file protecting. Her modification would clearly specify that Arkansas’s seven constitutional officers would the truth is depend as state businesses below the state’s buying regulation. (Along with the governor, the constitutional officers are lieutenant governor, lawyer common, secretary of state, auditor, treasurer and land commissioner.)

“This has been the overall apply of our auditors for many years, and we’re simply clarifying,” Mayberry mentioned.

However after all, that might undermine the governor’s argument that she was exempt from the buying guidelines. Mayberry’s proposal would make the lawyer common’s opinion moot going ahead, however there’s no cause to imagine that her modification’s language would have been retrospective, or apply a brand new authorized wrinkle to Sanders’ hijinks previously.

Complicated issues much more, Mayberry mentioned that her modification was “not a change … it’s a clarification.” Which is sort of one other approach of claiming that Griffin’s opinion was simply incorrect.

All of that is sort of summary, and it’s laborious to think about any of it will have any bearing on the governor’s potential authorized hassle or the broader scandal itself. Sen. Jonathan Dismang (R-Searcy), a loyalist of the governor, complained that Mayberry’s modification was “odd.”

Just like the AG’s opinion dutifully pumped out for the governor, it’s greatest seen as symbolic: A declaration that the principles that apply to the governor, too. Consider it as Mayberry making an attempt to tear up the governor’s (already doubtful) “get out of jail free” card.

A symbolic gesture dinging the governor has no probability on this Legislature, nonetheless, and never a single lawmaker made a movement to approve Mayberry’s modification. (The Particular Language committee is notoriously loaded with governor’s buddies and lobbyist favorites, so the modification was really DOA.)

Symbolism apart, one benefit of Mayberry’s proposal is that it simply is smart. Why would the state need to create considerate ethics guidelines about buying and property guidelines for state businesses however then let the governor and different highly effective state officers fully off the hook? Why would anybody desire a particular exemption for the governor, or the treasurer or lawyer common, to do one thing corrupt?

And that is the bigger downside for Sanders, and why her excuse about being exempt from state regulation rings so hole.

If she behaved unethically — maybe funneling cash to a pal who was not within the lectern-selling enterprise by buying an pointless lectern, of peculiar high quality, for a bit greater than I paid for a brand new steel roof — then that’s dangerous conduct. If her excuse is that she behaved unethically and abused the ability of her workplace however, technically, she didn’t run afoul of the Normal Accounting and Budgetary Procedures Regulation due to a loophole … I imply, OK.

It’s not a lot of a protection to make to the general public as a political matter, and Campbell makes a convincing argument that it received’t assist her a lot in courtroom both. She’s simply greedy at straws.

My guess is that Sanders goes to be livid at Mayberry, who determined to attempt to snip a kind of straws, not less than symbolically. I affiliate Mayberry principally with anti-abortion activism, however she requested good and difficult questions throughout final week’s legislative listening to on the audit: “If the lectern just isn’t getting used then it’s an entire waste of cash,” she mentioned on the time. And final 12 months, she was sharply crucial of Sanders’ makes an attempt to intestine the Freedom of Info Act.

There aren’t many Republicans within the Legislature with the heart to tackle the Queenfish, however Mayberry continues to poke.

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