Today’s editorial is an updated version of one we ran December 18, 2012, demanding the resignation of our state treasurer.
DEAR Now Former State Treasurer: It’s been clear for some time now that you have no business handling other people’s money, especially the public’s.
You should have handed in your resignation last year. It was clear even then you were unworthy of a public trust.
Your testimony before a legislative committee only last December confirmed what had been evident for some time:
According to the auditors, you cost the state $783,835 by selling bonds before their maturity date-through just one brokerage firm. And you bought some $1.69 billion in bonds from one broker, almost double the amount purchased from other brokers. That was the word from Jon Moore, the deputy legislative auditor who testified before the Legislative Audit Committee last December.
A couple of the committee’s members-Jason Rapert of Bigelow and David Meeks of Conway-drew the obvious conclusion even then: Ms. Shoffner, you need to resign.
You told this legislative committee that you were hiring a new manager to help you handle the state’s investments,which was pretty much an admission that you had mismanaged them by concentrating so much of the state’s bond business with a single broker.
Naturally enough, a broker you favored with all this business defends your decisions. How’s that for an objective source? No conflict of interest there.
The committee decided to ask law enforcement agencies to look into some of your bond deals as the state’s treasurer-about $434,000 worth of them at last report. And that you made those transactions, some 30 of them, solely on the advice of the brokers, without analyzing the merits of selling the bonds the state held.
Even if you’re found not guilty of accepting payoffs, you needed to clear your stuff out of the state treasurer’s office and go some time ago. For it’s been clear for months now that you’ve mishandled the public’s money. And its trust.
If you hadn’t resigned, you should have been impeached.
Your dubious stewardship of public funds can be summed up as gross misconduct. And sure enough, that’s one of the grounds for impeachment cited by the far-seeing statesmen who drew up Article 15 of the state’s constitution.
Ms. Shoffer, you’ve embarrassed yourself, your office, and the whole state. It was way past time for you to be gone.
Editorial, Pages 16 on 05/22/2013