Oh, if only Arkansas’ other financial dilemmas were as easily solved as the matter of what to do with the staff of the lieutenant governor’s office now that it has absolutely nothing to do.
What happens in the real world that you and I live in is that you leave the payroll, involuntarily usually, and look for other work — some place where there is something for you to do. It happens every day, and since 2007, when the great recession began, all too sadly often. About 99,000 Arkansans are out of work today and looking for jobs. They got that way because their employers no longer had anything for them to do and laid them off.
But if you are a political employee—and right now a Republican political employee—the labor-market dynamics for you are different. The taxpayers keep right on paying you while you play solitaire, surf the Internet, make paper airplanes or just stay home. If the employees were Democrats and their party in control, their jobs might be just as safe, but who knows?
It should be simple. The state auditor should take you off the state payroll because your job has gone away. But the Republican-controlled legislature—or at least the party’s leader in the Senate—is going to see to it that these loyal Republican hands are kept on the payroll.
This little tempest — we’re embarrassed to even be writing about it — came about because Lt. Gov. Mark Darr was forced to resign after he was caught cheating on his state expense account and violating the law by converting campaign funds to his personal use. So Darr vacated his little office in the Capitol and went off the payroll last week, leaving his four employees with nothing to do for the $267,000 they are paid. Since the state has no use for a lieutenant governor anyway, anytime, the legislature is going to pass a law next week saying the governor does not have to call a special election to fill the position. So the four workers will have nothing to do until January 2015, when the regularly elected lieutenant governor takes office and fires them to make way for his own staff.
Ordinarily, few would be particularly exercised about four employees getting paid for not working, but Darr’s extravagance and abuse of state fiscal controls focused attention on the office. Darr’s short career was built upon accusing the Obama administration of abuse and waste. He was running for United States Representative — and keeping his staff busy organizing that effort — when a blogger began looking at his travel receipts and campaign reports and blew the whistle. It cannot escape notice that he seemed to blame his staff for not apprising him that he was breaking the law and otherwise keeping him out of trouble.
Gov. Beebe said the four jobs should be eliminated, but he wasn’t sure he had the power to do it himself. Attorney General Dustin McDaniel offered the opinion that the jobs were useless.
The state auditor, the treasurer or the state Department of Finance and Administration would have deauthorized pay warrants for the four, but state Sen. Michael Lamoureaux came to the four’s rescue. He said he was taking over Darr’s duties as lieutenant governor and they would be working for him the rest of the year.
Sorry, but if that is not illegal, it should be. Lamoureaux is the current president pro tempore of the Senate—an honorary office the Senate gives to a different one of its members every two years. Instead of sitting in his regular seat at the short fiscal session that starts Monday, Lamoureaux will sit on the dais where the lieutenant governor sits when he’s at the Capitol when the Senate is in session. Or Lamoureaux may ask other senators to preside for a spell. There’s nothing to it: “Senator Rapert, you’re recognized. . . Mr. Clerk, call the roll. . .”
But Lamoureaux will not be the lieutenant governor, even for a day. He is still Sen. Lamoureaux, representing people in Pope County. The four assistants to nobody cannot be corresponding with Lamoureaux’s constituents, or whatever he plans to have them do for him.
The Arkansas Democrat Gazette, which would be demanding the dismissal of the four if they were Democrats, editorialized Friday that they needed to stay on the state payroll so they could answer the phone and letters and maintain the lieutenant governor’s archives. Say again! Who will be calling and writing the lieutenant governor now, and whom will they be calling and writing, and why? The lieutenant governor’s archive? Who knew Mark Darr kept an archive? Is he already compiling his papers for posterity, like Churchill? Did he not take that folder with him when he left?
This is not, as the governor said, retribution or meanness. The employees did nothing wrong, unless they actually did misguide their boss. But their work has disappeared and the taxpayers should not foot the bill. There are enough Republican officeholders who can take them in and give them something to do—and leave the world of government with a slightly better appearance. — Ernie Dumas
