The chronicles of incompetence
Gather ’round for another episode of “The Chronicles of Incompetence,” starring the Sanders administration.
The pièce de résistance is the infamous $19,000 lectern. If you’re catching up to speed on last year’s expensive furniture purchase, here’s the short version: The Governor’s Office is very bad at properly spending taxpayer dollars. They’re so bad at it that they repeatedly violated procurement laws for the lectern, and that’s the only item on which we currently have a report.
Purchase orders, finding the best vendors, basic due diligence… these things require too much paperwork and too much thinking for the gov’s staff. Standard government property disposal procedures are all too much of a bother for these newbies. Fiscal responsibility for thee, not for me, right?
But the juicy part is when the gov’s office falsified public documents to cover up their ineptitude/laziness. Staffer conveniently “forgot” to cough up certain documents; they also gave an invoice the ol’ black-marker treatment.
All of this was detailed in a lengthly report by an independent body within the legislative audit committee. Legislators met to hear the report’s findings, and let’s just say it wasn’t a cake walk for members of the governor’s staff. Rep. Gazaway and the Attorney General’s office duked it out re: whether Constitutional Officers should be held accountable (they might need a courtroom to settle their differences). Other GOP members grilled the gov’s representatives on everything from procurement procedures to document shredding habits.
If you think her staffers were embarrassed or contrite over the report, think again. Instead of owning any of their screwups, her twitter account released a cringey video, daring Arkansas (the media? the authorities?) to “come and take” the lectern. Cool move, guys.
So will there be accountability for the gov’s oopsie-daisy moments? Well, legislative audit has passed on their report to the 6th circuit prosecutor’s office as well as the Attorney General. Let’s see if those departments have the gumption to do anything about this BS.
