Lawmakers grill Arkansas Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders' administration over $19K podium

Arkansas Governor Sarah Huckabee Sanders casts her vote on Super Tuesday at Dunbar Recreation Center on March 5, 2024 in Little Rock, Arkansas.

Arkansas lawmakers questioned four members of Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders’ administration Tuesday following a critical audit into the purchase of a custom $19,000 podium for the Republican governor.

The audit found the governor’s office potentially broke the law by paying for the podium out of operating expenses, paying for it upfront without first requesting detailed ordering documents to confirm its specifications and then shredding the bill of lading, among other issues.

The governor’s office also arranged for the Republican Party of Arkansas to reimburse the state for the podium after it had been delivered and after a records request had been filed regarding the purchase.

During hours of sometimes blunt and strident questioning, Legislative Joint Auditing Committee members 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 cannot correct a mistake until you admit you made one,” said Sen. John Payton, R-Wilburn. “What troubles me most about this whole situation is that I don’t really hear the governor’s office or governor’s staff saying, ‘We should have done it a different way.’”

The Sanders administration has denied any wrongdoing with the podium and described it as a “legitimate purchase.”

The $19,000 podium

The administration ordered the podium in June 2023 from Beckett Events, a Washington, D.C.-area event 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 podium, three days after a records request from the Blue Hog Report, a progressive site, related to the podium’s purchase was submitted to the state.

Officials with the Arkansas Legislative Audit and the Auditing Committee wrote that they couldn’t determine whether it had been the plan all along for the Republican Party of Arkansas to reimburse the state for the podium. There was no evidence that was the plan. They found the reimbursement, without approval from the State Procurement Director, could amount to improper disposal of state property.

Draft schematics of the podium at issue in a Joint Legislative Audit Committee hearing on Tuesday, April 16, 2024, as included in the audit report released April 15.

A major point of contention for lawmakers was whether Sanders is subject to the General Accounting and Budgetary Procedures Law, the basis of several of the report’s findings of possible impropriety.

Sanders’ staff members and the deputy attorneys general argued that, as a constitutional officer, the governor is exempt from the law.

Meanwhile, Deere argued that the podium did not, in fact, cost $19,000. Without the costs of the road case, shipping, and a consulting fee, the podium itself cost only $11,500, he said.

Pressed on the breakdown of the $2,500 consulting fee, Deere said that the governor’s office has “a long-standing relationship” with representatives from the company that purchased the podium.

“It wouldn’t be any different than any of you and your relationship with a personal doctor or a family accountant: You don’t ask those people not to charge you,” Deere said.

Another debate hinged on the number of invoices for the podium, some of which were marked by a staff member with the handwritten note, “To be reimbursed,” after it was filed in an administrative database, which the report notes could be a potential violation of the statute. Other contemporaneous copies were unmarked.

“Is the June 12 one correct? Or is that a lie?” asked Rep. Carol Dalby, R-Texarkana.

‘A legitimate purchase,’ Sanders official says

“Could this just be a simple, honest mistake?” asked Rep. Robin Lundstrum, R-Elm Springs, of the moves made by the governor’s office around reimbursement for the podium. “A knee-jerk reaction, in an effort to try and make everything right, that just went a little too far?”

“This was not a mistake,” replied Deere. “Again, the podium was a legitimate purchase.”

“No laws were broken by the Governor’s Office,” Sanders’ office said in a written statement dated March 29, 2024, and released this week.

The statement pushed back on each point in the audit, calling it “deeply flawed” and “a waste of taxpayer resources and time.”

The podium and travel case price was not found to be unreasonable,” the statement said, and the governor’s office “has taken actions to improve its internal procedures.”

Sanders released a short video on Monday of dramatic shots of the lectern set to music with the caption, “My thoughts on the podium…”

The video 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: Lawmakers grill Arkansas Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders’ administration over $19K podium