LITTLE ROCK — Regarding the controversy over public officials who have treated the use of state-owned vehicles as a perk of office, some readers have asked how long this has been going on.
How long have ya got?
Out of curiosity, I went down to this newspaper’s “morgue,” the repository of old news clippings, and came up with this nugget from the old Arkansas Democrat headlined, “Travel by State Workers Climbs by Leaps, Bounds.” It was dated Aug. 9, 1967.
The story kicked off a series about the travel practices and expenses-some of them bogus-of state employees, prompting the governor, Winthrop Rockefeller, to order better oversight, spot checks of expense accounts and “conformity” with standing laws and regulations.
The file of clippings didn’t go back any farther, but if it had, no doubt there would have been earlier news accounts on the topic.
An interesting news account from January 1976 had then-Gov. David Pryor so concerned about the proliferation of state vehicles, particularly as used by commuters, that he dedicated a special cabinet meeting to it.
“At this time,” he said in a memo to executive-branch officials, “my feeling is that too many employees are driving state vehicles to and from work when their job responsibilities do not dictate a need for these car assignments.” Among the items he threw out for discussion was whether the state should provide gasoline to commuters who traveled more than 10 miles from home to office.
“Where we choose to live is . . . not necessarily influenced by where we choose to work,” he noted.
As a result of Pryor’s action, dubbed “an austerity move” in one news account, a now-defunct state department, Commerce, started requiring employees to, of all things, provide receipts for the meals they ate while traveling on state business. Shocking!
Needless to say, Commerce employees reportedly were not happy about this development. So, no doubt, was anyone else who could see the handwriting on the wall. Within three years, it was written into state law that employees could use state vehicles to commute, but they had to pay a whopping 15 cents a mile for every mile over 10.
Almost every governor since Rockefeller has called for administrative or legislative review of state vehicles and travel. The administrations of Bill Clinton and Frank White were rife with vehicular controversy.
Throughout the 1970s and well into the 1980s, state officials wrestled with the issue. Laws were enacted or updated in practically every legislative session. During one bad economic patch in 1987, Clinton actually froze all out-of-state travel by state employees, but it lasted only a few months. Too many complaints.
Curiously, I’ve found few news accounts mentioning constitutional officers. Not that governors can tell other constitutional officers what do to. The lieutenant governor, attorney general, secretary of state, auditor, treasurer and land commissioner don’t stand for election as part of a gubernatorial ticket. Each is elected independently. The current crop favors gas-guzzling SUVs and, to a lesser extent, luxury cars.
Back in 1988, there was a minor brouhaha over the fact that the state’s top officials, including the House speaker, were hitting the highway in style-state-owned Lincoln Town Cars, Buick Park Avenues and the like-while other state workers were stuck with compacts or, heaven forbid, their own vehicles. Nothing came of it, maybe because of the ensuing brouhaha over credit card usage, then only a few years old in state government. Nothing much came of that one, either.
Let’s face it, taxpayers are always going to be scandalized by the spending practices of public officials. When they are, governors might tweak the regulations and legislators might tweak the laws, but memory is short and eventually these matters are forgotten.
Still, spending a few hours perusing news archives on a slow news day is never a waste of time. As the office wag observed, quoting an age-old text with which many of you will be familiar, “What has been will be again, what has been done will be done again; there is nothing new under the sun.” -
———◊-
———
Associate Editor Meredith Oakley is editor of the Voices page.
Editorial, Pages 81 on 07/25/2010