State office politics

LITTLE ROCK — We’re enduring a front-page brouhaha affecting a state constitutional office that is 1870s vintage.

It dates to a time when the physical execution of money management was more arduous than mouse-clicking.

It also dates to a time when we didn’t trust the consolidation of state government’s full authority in a single person-the governor. So we divvied it up among an array of state elected offices.

Alas, that time may still be with us, which would provide the only continuing justification for the existence of the office of state treasurer.

That’s the one occupied by the elusive Martha Shoffner, who had to be subpoenaed before she would deign to visit with legislators about an unfavorable audit.

She can’t rightly say why one securities firm seems to get an inordinate amount of her office’s bond business and why a bonds was sold early in a way that seems to have cost the state a few hundred thousand dollars.

One of her top aides didn’t want to talk to legislators about that without whistle-blower protection to insulate her from vengeful termination.

From the way Martha was looking at that poor woman in that front page picture, I wonder if witness protection might not be more in order.

She’s just a little unpleasant. Martha, I mean.

Remember when she ridiculed Gov. Mike Beebe’s security detail officer as a “manservant?”

Look, may I speak frankly?

Most of these state constitutional offices-treasurer, auditor, land commissioner, even secretary of state and lieutenant governor-exist mainly for political hangers-on who play a game of state Capitol musical chairs.

They get elected to perform these mostly menial or ministerial duties by having names like Charlie Daniels and Mark Martin.

Shoffner, a real estate agent, got where she is first by becoming a state representative from Newport. Then she ran unsuccessfully in 2002 for state auditor to get her name identification up. Then she cashed that in next time for state treasurer.

Auditor, treasurer-whatever. It’s an office.

Actually, the auditor writes state checks.

The treasurer cashes them and keeps up with the state government’s money. It puts short-term deposits in banks at rates set by a Board of Finance.

It uses discretion-and this is where Shoffner got into some controversy-only in the area of investing money in more sophisticated long term instruments such as bonds.

The governor’s key executive agency, the Finance and Administration Department, basically keeps concurrent books already. It easily could absorb these absurdly rarefied constitutional offices and, in the process, produce savings through work-force reductions.

But you’d have to trust the governor to run a competent department.

Or you could trust the constitutional independence of, say, Martha Shoffner. Or her predecessor, an ol’ boy term-limited in the Legislature who hired his family.

Actually, I don’t think Charlie Daniels has been treasurer yet, but only land commissioner, secretary of state and auditor.

So you could trust him. He plays an excellent fiddle.

Any change in the constitutional status of auditor and treasurer-and land commissioner and lieutenant governor, which I’d also put in my sights-would require legislative referral to the voters of a proposed constitutional amendment.

Legislators might be averse to that until I remind them of what I’m getting ready right now to remind them: If we abolish the offices of treasurer and auditor, and incorporate those duties for performance by fewer employees who would be housed outside the Capitol with the rest of the Finance and Administration Department, then we would open up significant square footage on the second floor of the Capitol that could be converted to . . . drum roll-individual offices for legislators.

We’re getting somewhere now.

By the way, the land commissioner does something about certifying and selling tax-delinquent land. We could get that done without an election.

The lieutenant governor exists merely to ascend to governor in the case of a vacancy. Somebody else could just as easily ascend, such as the president pro tem of the Senate or the speaker of the House.

I’d keep secretary of state, I guess. Don’t want to, actually, since we’d essentially continue holding a statewide election for lawn service on the Capitol grounds. But I would, I suppose, on account of not wanting election coordination directly under the governor.

And I’d keep the attorney general as constitutionally independent, though it seems to work pretty well now with Dustin McDaniel doing only what Mike Beebe tells him.

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John Brummett’s column appears regularly in the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette. Email him at [email protected]. Read his blog at brummett.arkansasonline.com.