Arkansas lawmakers questioned four members of the governor’s office. Sarah Huckabee SandersTuesday after a critical audit into the purchase of a $19,000 custom-made stage for the Republican governor.
The audit found that the governor’s office may have violated the law by paying for the stage out of operating costs, paying for it in advance without first asking for detailed ordering documents to confirm specifications and then shredding the bill of lading, among other things.
The governor’s office also arranged for the Republican Party of Arkansas to reimburse the state for the stage after it was delivered and after a records request related to the purchase was submitted.
During hours of sometimes blunt and pointed questioning, members of the Legislative Joint Auditing Committee pressed Deputy Attorneys General Ryan Owsley and Noah Watson, Deputy Chief of Staff Judd Deere and Chief Legal Counsel Cortney Kennedy on points of fact and interpretation of state law.
“You can’t correct a mistake until you admit you made one,” said Sen. John Payton, R-Wilburn. “What concerns me most about this whole situation is that I don’t really hear the governor’s office or the governor’s staff saying, ‘We should have done it a different way.’”
The Sanders administration has denied any wrongdoing with the stage, describing it as a “legitimate purchase.”
The $19,000 podium
The administration ordered the stage in June 2023 from Beckett Events, a Washington, D.C.-area events company, which delivered it in August, according to the governor’s office. In September 2023, the Republican Party of Arkansas reimbursed the state for the cost of the stage, three days after a request for records from the Blue Hog Report, a progressive site, regarding the stage’s purchase was submitted to the state.
Officials with the Arkansas Legislative Audit and Auditing Committee wrote that they could not determine whether the plan all along was for the Republican Party of Arkansas to reimburse the state for the stage. There was no evidence that this was the plan. They believed that the reimbursement, without the approval of the Director of State Procurement, could amount to an unlawful disposal of state assets.
A major point of contention for lawmakers was whether Sanders is subject to the General Act on Accounting and Budgetary Procedures, which formed the basis of several of the report’s findings on possible impropriety.
Sanders’ staffers and deputy attorneys general argued that the governor, as a constitutional officer, is exempt from the law.
Meanwhile, Deere argued that the stage did not in fact cost $19,000. Without the cost of the road case, shipping and consulting fees, the stage itself cost just $11,500, he said.
Pressed about the breakdown of the $2,500 consulting fee, Deere said the governor’s office has “a long-standing relationship” with representatives of the company from which the stage was purchased.
“It would be no different than anyone else and your relationship with a personal physician or a family accountant: You don’t ask those people not to charge you,” Deere said.
Another debate centered on the number of invoices for the stage, some of which were marked by an employee with the handwritten note “Reimbursable” after being stored in an administrative database, which the report said could be a potential violation. of status. Other contemporaneous copies were unmarked.
‘Is the one from June 12 correct? Or is that a lie?” asked Rep. Carol Dalby, R-Texarkana.
“A legitimate purchase,” says a Sanders official
“Could this have just been a simple, honest mistake?” asked Rep. Robin Lundstrum, R-Elm Springs, on the steps the governor’s office had taken around the podium reimbursement. “A knee-jerk reaction, in an attempt to make everything right, but that went a little too far?”
“This was not a mistake,” Deere replied. “Again, the stage was a legitimate purchase.”
“No laws were broken by the governor’s office,” Sanders’ office said in a written statement dated March 29, 2024, released this week.
The statement pushed back on every point of the audit, calling it “deeply flawed” and “a waste of taxpayer resources and time.”
“The price of the stage and travel case was not found to be unreasonable” and the governor’s office “has taken steps to improve its internal procedures,” the statement said.
Sanders released a short video on Monday featuring dramatic images of the lectern set to music with the caption: “My thoughts on stage…”
The video, which was played on Tuesday, ends with the words: “Come and take it.”
Deere told lawmakers the video was “tongue in cheek.”
This article originally appeared on Fort Smith Times Record: Arkansas Gov. Sanders’ administration toasted a podium worth more than $19,000
