'Incompetent' or criminal? Even Republicans are calling for a legislative audit over AR gov’s $19,000 lectern
Editor's note: This story originally abbreviated "Arkansas" as "AK" instead of "AR" in the headline. It has been updated.
A Republican state senator in Arkansas requested an audit of his own party’s governor, Sarah Huckabee Sanders, over the purchase of a $19,000 lectern with a state credit card, the Associated Press reports.
“From my experience, where we’re at with this particular thing is we need to allow legislative audit go in,” Republican Sen. Jimmy Hickey told the AP. “Everyone knows them, they do their work, they’re very thorough and then they produce a detailed report that comes to the Legislature through an open committee.”
The panel will convene next week to review the “purchase of the lectern,” the AP reports, which was “bought in June for $19,029.25.” In August, the Arkansas Republican Party “reimbursed the state” for the purchase, the report adds.
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According to the AP, Hickey is also asking “for an audit of all matters regarding security and travel records for the governor or her office that were retroactively made confidential by the law she signed last month.”
As ABC News reported last month, Sanders overhauled the state’s Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) and “[broadened] what security details from the governor's travel and other constitutional officers' are exempt from the law.”
The changes also included “a retroactive clause to June 1, 2022, before Sanders took office” and was signed at the same time “a lawsuit pends against the state for allegedly withholding information related to her travel requested under the FOIA,” ABC News reported.
Little Rock, AR attorney Matt Campbell, who filed the FOIA lawsuit against the state, told the AP the issue is larger than a lectern — and is instead a question of whether Sanders’ office is “incompetent” or engaged in “actual criminality.”
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“Without an audit and without some more information, we don’t know whether this is a case of they’re too incompetent to be trusted with a state credit card because they don’t know what things should cost, or there’s actual criminality,” Campbell said told the AP. “Neither is a good answer but it’s enough of an issue that has to be answered.”
Former Arkansas State Police director Tom Mars — who served under Sanders’ father, former Gov. Mike Huckabee — "has also said that he has a client with firsthand knowledge that Sanders’ office interfered with Campbell’s open records requests,” the AP reports.
Per the AP:
In a letter he sent to Hickey after the lawmaker requested the audit, Mars said the client wishes to remain anonymous and is willing to give a confidential statement to legislative auditors and allow them to review relevant documents in the client’s possession. According to Mars’ letter, the interference includes the governor’s office altering an invoice from Beckett Events LLC, the Virginia firm listed as the seller of the lectern.
Hickey’s request for an audit has support from other state Republicans, including Legislative Joint Auditing Executive Committee co-chair Rep. Jimmy Gazaway.
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“Given the fact that this has become a matter of public concern and that the governor says she welcomes an audit and hopes that legislators complete it without delay, yes, I think we should instruct audit staff to handle this matter,” Gazaway told the AP.
Sanders’ office maintains the blowback is “nothing more than a manufactured controversy by left-wing activists to distract from the bold conservative reforms the governor has signed into law,” as Sanders spokeswoman Alexa Henning told the AP.
Speaking to reporters on Tuesday, Sanders insisted “people want to manufacture a controversy where there isn’t one.”
"This is something the state’s been reimbursed for, and I think there are some people who are always going to be angry and always looking for something to complain about and that’s what they’re picking for right now,” she said.
