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Budget panel advances $500,000 request for governor's emergency fund Wednesday, Jan 24, 2007 By Jason Wiest Arkansas News Bureau LITTLE ROCK - The Joint Budget Committee reversed itself Tuesday and endorsed a $500,000 appropriation to replenish the governor's emergency fund after balking last week because former Gov. Mike Huckabee drained the fund with non-emergency spending before he left office. "This is the little deal we had the discussion about the other day isn't it?" Sen. Kim Hendren, R-Gravette, asked jokingly before the measure advanced on a voice vote. Last week, after learning how Huckabee spent the emergency fund money, the committee voted down measures to add $500,000, or even half that amount, for Beebe's use through the end of the fiscal year June 30. "Some of us who voted yes to that deal would like to know what happened to change the deal since that time," Sen. Hendren said to replies of laughter Tuesday. "Because frankly, when I voted against the bill, I wasn't questioning whether Gov. Beebe would do the right thing with those funds." "The bottom line was, we voted them both down and we left him nothing," said House speaker Benny Petrus, D-Stuttgart. Also Tuesday, the budget panel endorsed a proposed $40,000 appropriation from this year's budget for furniture and a vehicle for Lt. Gov. Bill Halter's office. The state did not provide a vehicle during the 10 years that the late former Lt. Gov. Win Rockefeller, a billionaire, held the office. The governor's emergency fund is normally replenished on July 1, at the beginning of each fiscal year. Huckabee emptied the fund prior to leaving office in January, with six months left in the fiscal year. Richard Weiss, the state's chief fiscal officer, told legislators last week that depleting the fund was a standard practice with a change in administrations. But it was the way Huckabee spent down the emergency fund that had some lawmakers considering remedies. A report from the Bureau of Legislative Research showed Huckabee gave $100,000 to the Play it Again Arkansas program, which was created by Huckabee to collect donated used instruments for distribution to schools statewide. The former governor also gave $10,000 to the Hot Springs Documentary film Institute to purchase a vehicle to support its activities and used $13,000 to crush the hard drives of computers in his office. "I'm just wondering what we as a legislative body can do to look into whether or not that was a correct expenditure of funds and if not, what we might do to rectify the situation," Sen. Jimmy Jeffress, D-Crossett. Other committee members said that the Legislature can review, but not veto, spending executive branch funds that have been properly appropriated. Outside the meeting, Jeffress said he did not know if Huckabee's actions were illegal but he wanted to know "what we might determine if we were to look into something," which he said could be done in a number of ways between legislative sessions. "I'm not so much concerned about expenditure of the emergency fund for things it went for as I would be, you know, whether or not state property was destroyed," he said. Later Tuesday, Beebe said he would be responsible with the emergency fund. "You ought to spend it on emergencies, and you ought to have enough confidence in the person that you've got in there that they'll do it that way," Beebe said. "You take it on a case-by-case basis," he said. "If it feels right, if it looks right, if the majority of the public would have confidence that it's the kind of thing that an emergency really does exist and ought to be spent for, then it would pass the test." |
