The final audit report of Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders’ $19,000 lectern purchase was the sole item of business at today’s meeting of the Legislative Joint Auditing Committee. Nevertheless, the meeting, which started at 2 p.m., ran into the early evening as legislators questioned auditors and staff members from the governor’s and attorney general’s offices, discussed the audit process generally and made all sorts of excuses for the governor’s office’s multiple violations of the law.
Following an overview of the report by the auditors, Sanders’ Deputy Chief of Staff Judd Deere and Chief Legal Counsel Cortney Kennedy were sworn in as the first witnesses. Deere dedicated his opening statement to repeating talking points that have no basis in reality.
Sanders welcomed the audit, was cooperative throughout the process, and her office was pleased that the final audit report proved what they “had been saying all along,” Deere said. He described the audit as “wasting significant taxpayer resources just to conclude…that no laws were broken.”
(FACT CHECK: The report did not reach that conclusion. As detailed yesterday, the report identified multiple laws broken by Sanders’ office. Auditors referred their findings to Pulaski County Prosecutor Will Jones to determine whether any criminal charges should be filed.)
Sen. Kim Hammer (R-Benton) said he was “very proud of our governor” before asking why Sanders refused to speak with or provide a written statement to auditors.
“The governor has given multiple public statements about the lectern,” Kennedy said, “so there was no point in giving another one.”
(FACT CHECK: Sanders offered little information about the lectern during the months-long audit. When questioned about it in October, Sanders said only that her office “followed the regular course of law, standard operating procedure for any purchase,” and offered to put reporters in touch with the lectern manufacturer. Sanders directed reporters to Beckett Events, who did not respond to multiple reporters’ inquiries.)
Legislators next asked representatives from Attorney General Tim Griffin’s office about his opinion, issued just before the release of the audit report, that said the governor’s office is exempt from most procurement and property-disposal rules. Chief Deputy Attorney General Ryan Owsley said Griffin’s opinion was issued at Sanders’ request. Deputy Attorney General Noah Watson said the state’s procurement laws did not need to be clarified because, in Griffin’s opinion, they were already clear and supported his conclusions.
Legislative Audit chief counsel Emily White disagreed with Griffin’s opinion. Because state procurement laws exempt constitutional officers in some subsections, the logical reading is that constitutional officers are covered by the laws anywhere they were not specifically exempted, she said. Owsley pushed back, noting that constitutional officers are included in some sections and not others, so the default should be that constitutional officers are not subject to the law except where expressly included.
Committee co-chair Rep. Jimmy Gazaway (R-Paragould) called the disagreement on this point a “disputed question of law” that might ultimately be up to a judge to decide.
Sen. David Wallace (R-Leachville), the committee’s other co-chair, asked Owsley if he was saying that there should not have been an audit. Owsley said he was not saying there should not have been an audit and that he and Watson were only there because of the dispute over which laws apply.
Owsley also said the AG’s office had no opinion on the audit’s conclusion that Sanders’ office failed to draw up a business justification document for the lectern purchase in the time frame required by state law or the conclusion that the governor’s office violated the state’s Freedom of Information Act.
Rep. Julie Mayberry (R-Hensley) said she wished the governor’s staffers would have brought the lectern to the meeting so that people could see it, noting that the media had asked repeatedly to see it and only the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette was given access. “If the lectern is not being used then it’s a complete waste of money,” Mayberry said.
The lectern is “in the governor’s office suite and has been since August,” Deere said. “It has been shown to media who asked,” he added.
(FACT CHECK: Deere’s comment is demonstrably false. Several media outlets have asked to see the lectern since last September, and all were turned away by the governor’s office. Later, Mayberry seized on this and asked Deere about it a second time, at which point Deere’s story changed and he said the lectern had been available to view “until the audit was authorized.” But the governor’s office denied media requests to see the lectern between when this story originally broke on Sept. 15 and when the audit was authorized on Oct. 13.)
The auditor’s report mentioned that three vendors involved with the purchase failed to respond to auditor’s questions or provide information via the governor’s office. Rep. Tippi McCullough (D-Little Rock) asked if the governor’s office made a good-faith effort to get that information.
Kennedy answered that said she sent an email to Virginia Beckett and an email to Hannah Stone.
McCullough also asked about the $2,500 consulting fee included in the total cost of the lectern. That fee was paid to Stone and Beckett for “the work they did to get the lectern ordered” like the governor wanted it, Deere said.
The lectern did not arrive as the governor wanted it, though. It was supposed to be 39” tall at the edge where the speaker stands — “at the governor’s elbow when wearing 2-inch heels,” Kennedy explained. But the lectern they received is 44” at that edge.
Deere also appeared to struggle to provide a coherent answer when asked by Sen. Greg Leding (D-Fayetteville) to explain the apparent contradiction between the audit report’s finding the lectern had no audio equipment at all and Sanders’ statement in October that the lectern’s cost was due in part to its special audio equipment.
Deere said there was no discrepancy. Sanders was only referring to the lectern’s capacity to have a microphone plugged in, along with a reading light and holes through which sound-equipment wires could be run in the future, Deere said.
Sen. Linda Chesterfield (D-Little Rock) took issue with the contention that the governor is not bound by rules about disposal of state property. Can a constitutional officer purchase a car for $20,000 and then sell it to a third party for whatever dollar amount the officer wishes, she asked. Owsley did not answer the question, saying instead that this is “not what the issue was.” He continued to avoid the question even after Chesterfield repeated it.
Another issue that came up repeatedly during the hearing was the Republican Party of Arkansas’s reimbursement of the lectern’s purchase price. Legislators wanted to know when and why the decision was made to ask the RPA to pay for the lectern.
Deere said it was not the original intent to have the RPA pay, but after the lectern was received, the office “decided it was preferable” to repay the purchase price with private funds. He was asked more than once why this was preferable, but never gave a clear answer.
Sen. John Payton (R-Wilburn) began his questioning of the governor’s staff with the observation that “You can’t correct a mistake until you admit that you’ve made one.” He added he didn’t think the lectern was “worth $19,000 or $11,500, but the lesson could be if you just accept the fact that it was bad judgment” on the governor’s staff’s part. Payton asked Deere and Kennedy whether the governor’s office was willing to not use Beckett or Stone as vendors for anything in the future.
Deere, who praised Beckett and Stone earlier in the hearing as “some of the best in the business” and said he had great respect for them, answered that the governor’s office has no plans to use them as vendors and hasn’t used either since the lectern was purchased.
“Isn’t it naive to have ‘great respect’ for” Beckett and Stone “when they failed to provide the product ordered?” Payton asked.
Deere disputed the premise of the question. “It is not a standard lectern,” he said. The lectern is “custom to a specific height,” he added.
Despite paying Beckett and Stone $2,500 for their help ordering it, the lectern as delivered did not match the specific height that was custom ordered, making it unclear why Deere kept stressing that the lectern was supposed to have been custom-made to specific measurements.
Sen. Mark Johnson (R-Little Rock) used his time to “apologize to the governor for being put through this” and claimed the governor had been the victim of a “weaponized political process.”
Sen. Jimmy Hickey (R-Texarkana), who requested the audit in the first place back in October, took issue with the tone of some of Gazaway’s comments and questions during the hearing. Hickey asked Gazaway if he had said in a meeting recently that the audit was “out of control and needed to be reigned in.” Gazaway said he recalled a meeting, but did not recall saying anything to that effect. Gazaway noted that he had heard similar comments from other legislators, though.
Hickey also seized on an inconsistency in the attorney general’s position. After Owsley said in response to earlier questioning that the governor’s office was not an “agency” under state law, he explained this was because what matters when interpreting a statute is the words the Legislature uses. Hickey then pointed out that the appropriations for the governor’s office, the Senate, and even the attorney general’s office all use the word “agency” to refer to those offices. Why don’t those words matter, Hickey asked Owsley.
That could be standard language that no one considered changing, Owsley said. That the same could be said for the myriad additions to the state procurement laws over the years did not appear to trouble Owsley.
Roger Norman, head of Legislative Audit, told lawmakers he generally meets with the head of the agency being audited to go over the report and answer any questions. When Norman attempted to have that interview with Sanders, however, there were legislators and at least one person from the attorney general’s office in the room as well. Norman said when he saw that, he turned around and left.
When asked why, Norman said it was common practice to meet only with the agency head and agency staff. This was the first time he had seen someone try to include outside parties as well, he said.
Multiple legislators teed up openings for Sanders staffers to admit the governor’s office made a mistake, but the staffers declined every opportunity to do so.
“Could this be a simple mistake and a knee-jerk reaction to cover it?” Rep. Robin Lundstrum (R-Springdale) asked.
“This was not a mistake,” Deere said.
Sen. Missy Irvin (R-Mountain Home) was curious whether the attorney general and the governor’s staff worked together to draft the governor’s response to the audit report, since the governor’s response and the attorney general’s opinion were so similar. Staff for both offices denied any collaboration.
Hammer asked about the speed with which the AG’s office produced their opinion that the governor’s office does not count as a state agency under state procurement laws. It took only about a week after the governor requested it, Owsley said.
The average time for an opinion is 40 days, Owsley said. Multiple legislators chimed in to say they had waited on AG opinions for much longer.
Unsurprisingly, legislators had questions about Sanders’ lectern hype video that she tweeted yesterday, shortly after the damning report was released.
Deere described the video as “tongue-in-cheek.” He said Sanders had been “transparent and cooperative” during the audit, so the video was her way to “make the point clear” that everyone needed to move on now that the audit was complete.
The video was created by Sanders’ creative director, Keaton Davis, Deere said. But he added that the work was done “in his spare time,” and said Davis did not use any governor’s office equipment to create it.
Rep. Carol Dalby (R-Texarkana), an attorney, asked Kennedy about the governor’s office’s alteration of the Beckett invoice to say “To be reimbursed” after the invoice was requested through FOIA. Kennedy said adding the note is a common government practice used to keep track of information.
Shortly before this, though, Kennedy suggested the governor’s staff’s unfamiliarity with rules was because, “Few, if any, of us ever worked for a governor before.”