LITTLE ROCK — The issue: When Arkansas Attorney General Dustin McDaniel wins a lawsuit for the state, what does he do with the award money? Does he deposit it with the State Treasury so the legislature can appropriate it? Nope. Does he send it to some other department of government that has a reasonable connection to the people hurt by the defendants in the suit? Nope. Well, you might ask, what in the world does he do with it then?
It turns out, he keeps it and spends it to expand his own office however he sees fit. He also gives it to private charities of his choice, and he tends to choose those that are politically connected enough that they would be able to show their gratitude to him should he run forgovernor.
Former State Representative Dan Greenburg, son of columnist Paul Greenberg, is an attorney for an outfit called Advance Arkansas. He wrote a devastating critique of McDaniel’s practice of basically getting the taxpayers to pay all his expenses whilst keeping all the winnings he gets from those expenses to grow his own kingdom. Two of the many money-quotes from Advance Arkansas, Dan Greenberg: “McDaniel has illegally used public funds to benefit private interests in a way that violates both case law and the Constitution. In the process, he has assumed extra-constitutional spending powers his office does not have.”
“This is not simply a case of an officeholder using an office to advance his or her political aims.
There is a larger concern: The de facto establishment of a fourth branch of government in the attorney general’s office, in which the attorney general has assumed thepower to spend public money while ignoring the legislature.”
If anything, Greenberg does not go far enough.
Rather than establishing a fourth branch of government, I would say McDaniel’s actions are more like forming an independent government within the government. Consider: it is the legislature that is supposed to appropriate money for members of the executive branch to spend. McDaniel has found a revenue source which he operates without any legislative input.
As attorney general, he is supposed to guard against abuses like this in other people, but who guards the guard?
Greenberg’s whole paper is very clear and well reasoned, unlike McDaniel’s attempts to excuse the matter. The report takes every fig leaf McDaniel’s office has used to attempt to justify the action and shreds them.
Greenberg is the one who sounds like an attorney general ought to sound.
McDaniel’s office sounds like some low-rent lawyer trying to throw up any half-excuse they can think of for a used car dealership that has run afoul of the law.
So through was the Greenberg paper, and so obvious McDaniel’s abuse of office, that not only does liberal columnistJohn Brummett think he is in the wrong, but even the Arkansas’ Times hyperlefty Max Brantley has said, “Count me with the Republicans on this one.”
What you have here is a rare event. This is an abuse of power so clear that the entire political spectrum, from Brantley to Brummett, to Greenberg to me can agree on it.
The question now, what to do about it? When agreement is so complete across the political spectrum, when the abuse is so brazen, and the excuses for it so shallow, what is to be done? Who is our legal representation when our legal representative is the one we need to sue? If McDaniel persists in this illegal activity, what ought be done about it? What can be done?
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Editor’s note: Mark Moore is the lead writer for an Internet blog on matters pertaining to Arkansas culture and government, Arkansas Watch, and on Tuesday nights is the host of an Internet-based radio program, Patriots on Watch. He can be reached through The Times at [email protected].
Opinion, Pages 4 on 06/22/2011