The state Ethics Commission, which never met an ethical lapse by a politician that it could not indulge, issued Mike Huckabee still another Letter of Caution last week, this one for not reporting some $31,000 in secret cash gifts that he received in 2006, his last year as governor.
A Letter of Caution is the mildest reprimand in the commission’s arsenal of feather lashings, and Huckabee does not seem to mind them.
This is what the letter said: “Your actions violated the law. You are advised not to engage in the same activity again.” He won’t because he is no longer governor and is not apt to hold office in Arkansas again. But the Letter of Caution would not restrain him if he did; none of his previous reprimands did.
Huckabee, who was required by law to list all his gifts each quarter, reported only that he had received the gift of a portrait from a “Nancy Harris,” who turned out to be a portrait artist from Virginia. But that account wasn’t true.
An Arkansas Democrat Gazette reporter late last year stumbled upon a private bank fund for Huckabee that was administered by the state Department of Finance and Administration. Huckabee had hired the woman to paint his portrait, and then to pay for it he had friends solicit cash from lobbyists, supporters and people he had appointed to state jobs, boards and commissions.
He refused to identify the benefactors — until the Ethics Commission, acting on a complaint by a Republican critic of Huckabee, said that probable cause existed that he had violated the law. He then released the names and had his lawyer work out a settlement with the commission for the Letter of Caution so that there would not be a public hearing and perhaps a harsher penalty.
Though he signed the settlement and accepted the admonition, Huckabee had his lawyer maintain that he was not admitting that he had broken the law. This is called obfuscation. The commission’s director had this very kind explanation: “It’s like getting a ticket for a broken taillight. You fixed the taillight. You paid the ticket, and now you are not admitting that you had a broken taillight.” — Ernie Dumas
