Baker hazy on date of $100,000 gift, auditors say

CONWAY — Former state Sen. Gilbert Baker told internal auditors at the University of Central Arkansas that he couldn’t recall when he met with nursing-home owner Michael Morton about a $100,000 donation Morton made to UCA, the school’s chief auditor said Friday.

Pam Massey, director of the office of internal audit, said auditors couldn’t determine when Baker, a former UCA administrator and now a music teacher, met with the Fort Smith businessman.

Massey said in a brief interview that auditors asked Baker, but “he couldn’t remember exactly when.”

She said auditors did not talk with Morton, whose check was dated July 8. The UCA Foundation accepted it on July 15 and returned it March 24.

Baker took a pay cut of $82,000 when he resigned from his $132,000-a-year job as executive assistant to UCA President Tom Courtway on April 2, less than two weeks after the foundation returned Morton’s donation, which Baker had hand-delivered.

Morton also gave thousands of dollars in checks dated July 8 to eight political action committees, seven of which later gave money to the since-halted appeals-court campaign of Circuit Judge Michael Maggio of Conway. On July 11, Maggio cut a Faulkner County jury’s $5.2 million judgment against one of Morton’s 32 nursing homes to $1 million.

The FBI and two state agencies are investigating the PAC contributions that Maggio’s campaign accepted.

Morton has said Linda Leigh Flanagin, the sole employee of a consulting company Baker formed just before joining UCA, asked him to support Maggio’s campaign while Maggio was presiding over that case. Baker has said he did not ask Flanagin to make that request.

In an email Friday, UCA Foundation President Shelley Mehl said, “I do not know what date Gilbert Baker met with Mr. Morton.”

Neither Morton nor Baker, a Conway Republican, returned phone and text messages seeking comment Friday.

In another development Friday, Luke Pruett, who was listed as the “chairperson/treasurer” on Maggio’s campaign-finance reports, said he wasn’t the treasurer. Rather, he said, the treasurer was Dawn Rivers, Maggio’s girlfriend.

“She would email me spreadsheets,” Pruett said of Rivers. “I would get the information from her,” put it on the finance forms and submit them to the secretary of state’s office.

“I never saw any money,” Pruett said.

Pruett said he was never even told that he was the treasurer and added that he had never before served as a campaign treasurer.

A phone number for Rivers was unavailable, and Maggio did not return a phone message or emails seeking comment.

Maggio’s attorney, Lauren Hamilton, issued a brief emailed statement Friday afternoon to the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette that didn’t address Pruett’s account of the events.

Instead, she criticized the newspaper’s coverage of Maggio, who has been stripped of all of his cases by the Arkansas Supreme Court pending further notice.

David Sachar, executive director of the Arkansas Judicial Discipline and Disability Commission, said Friday that there’s no prohibition against an immediate family member serving as a judicial candidate’s treasurer.

Sachar was commenting in general rather than on any specific person and was not told which judicial candidate’s treasurer had come into question.

Rule 4.1 of the Arkansas Code of Judicial Conduct says judicial candidates shall not “personally solicit or accept campaign contributions other than through a campaign committee.”

Under Rule 4.4, “A judicial candidate subject to public election may establish a campaign committee to manage and conduct a campaign for the candidate, subject to the provisions of this Code. The candidate is responsible for ensuring that his or her campaign committee complies with applicable provisions of this Code and other applicable law.”

Some other judicial candidates have used close relatives to head their campaigns, but those relatives’ names appeared on the campaign-finance forms.

Graham Sloan, director of the Arkansas Ethics Commission, said Friday that nothing requires any candidate to have a campaign committee. But he added, “If you can’t solicit or accept money, you’re almost required to have one.”

“Whoever signs the report … is under oath that the information is true and correct,” said Sloan, who also was not commenting on any specific person. “They’d be going out on a limb to rely on” someone else.

Still, Sloan said, “If there was a violation [in the campaign-finance documents], I think it would ultimately rest with the candidate himself or herself. If the report was incomplete or inaccurate, the ultimate responsibility would be with the candidate.”

On Friday, Baker, now an assistant professor of music at UCA, did not attend the morning meeting of the UCA board of trustees’ three-member internal audit committee, which heard a brief summary of the audit relating to his former administrative job.

Internal-audit notes, obtained under the Arkansas Freedom of Information, revealed a wide-ranging audit that focused on Baker’s political activities, as well as his fundraising efforts and travel expenses.

On one page of handwritten notes, one comment reflected the university’s concerns about Morton’s donation. That note said, “Protect UCA — $100,000 donation if dirty.”

The notes then asked whether this donation was handled the same as other funds Baker had received for the foundation. “No deviation,” the notes add.

The audit report said there was no evidence that Baker, 57, “had committed egregious acts or fraud against the University as it relates to his duties as an administrator.”

None of the committee members — Bunny Adcock, Elizabeth Farris or Shelia Vaught — asked any questions about the report. Adcock reported internal-audit findings to the full board in a meeting later Friday, but there was no discussion then, either.

Courtway later said he would not comment on any audit-related questions.

The audit found that Baker’s travel expenses were “adequately supported” and that “there were no instances of noncompliance with applicable laws, rules, regulations, or Board policies.”

Adcock, who had requested the audit after Baker’s abrupt resignation, said the audit was intended to review actions as they relate to the university. He told his colleagues that he requested the audit “in an abundance of caution.”

He said he thought the five-page audit report was “thorough. It’s complete.”