"The culture here is broken," a man I'll call "Senator Z," to distinguish him as much as possible from "Senator A," told me Thursday.
For years, the state legislative culture had been dreading what might come of a federal investigation into alleged corruption in the state's funding of certain providers of what are called "behavioral health services," mainly mental health.
Something--and almost certainly not the last thing--came of that federal investigation Thursday.
Rusty Cranford of Rogers was a lobbyist for--and official of--several nonprofit operations in the behavioral health field doing business in Missouri, Arkansas, Kansas, Oklahoma and Illinois. He entered a single plea of guilty to "federal program bribery" in a favorable negotiation for him in answer to a 43-page filing of corruption-rich information released in federal court in Springfield, Mo.
The bill of information charged that Cranford, among an orgiastic array of dubious dealings, had facilitated the payment of $500,000 over several years to "Senator A."
Cranford seems rather clearly to have offered the feds "Senator A" in exchange for his deal.
The indictment described "Senator A" by his years of service in the Senate and his tenure of preceding service in the House, and by his sponsorship of a couple of bills relevant to corruption allegations. And he would seem by that description only to be state Sen. Jeremy Hutchinson, a lawyer, a nephew of the governor, a son of former U.S. Sen. Tim, and a cousin of incoming Senate President Pro Tem Jim Hendren, whose mom is sister to Asa and Tim.
Those relationships are merely familial, not criminally conspiratorial. They are noted here for identification and context, not remotely for any implication or intimation or innuendo.
But you know how federal investigators work sometimes. They want to land the big-name politicians, and they'll go light on corrupt culprits who might give them the big-name politicians.
The federal filing accompanying Cranford's plea says "Senator A" took $500,000 in various forms--wire transfers, cash, retainer fees, World Series tickets--over several years from Cranford or through Cranford's assorted entities. In exchange, according to the filing, "Senator A" would do this kind of thing: He'd help hold up a House-passed bill in the Senate so that he could lean on the state Human Services Department to change its rating system for behavioral services providers because Cranford and his associates didn't like the existing rating system getting in the way of millions upon millions in Medicaid reimbursements.
Here is what all this will come down to: Most of that $500,000 invoked in Hutchinson's case is made up of legal retainers of $9,000 a month over four years and $7,500 a month in a fifth. It is not illegal for a lawyer senator to have a client, though it ought to be in the case of a lawyer senator taking on a new client that reaps hundreds of millions of dollars in Medicaid reimbursements subject to appropriations made by the Legislature.
There is a reason the federal information revealed Thursday cited only an as-yet unindicted "Senator A," even while giving him away in other identifications. It's because of that very thing: Hutchinson is not yet indicted.
There's a reason this newspaper's reporting Friday morning referred to "payoffs" rather than "bribes." It's because remunerations pursuant to retainer for genuinely extended legal services aren't bribes. It's my understanding the FBI is busy right now trying to sort out the payments to Hutchinson and the services he can demonstrate by records.
And there is a reason "Senator Z" referred to a "broken culture." It's that, regardless of the finer legal points of Hutchinson's personal morass, a lawyer legislator hiring himself out to a client of that sort ... it reeks, notwithstanding the absence of law. I'm told the legislative staff already was at work on new rules, mainly--at this point--by determining how other states handle these issues for part-time legislators and full-time lawyers.
Meantime, I can hear some of you now: You're saying Medicaid is an open-ended invitation for big-time thievery.
But if this federal filing is to be believed, then the abuse is from a few slimy providers and their lobbyists and their financially entangled politicians, not the demented or disabled people without assets sentenced to nursing homes, and certainly not poor sick children, and certainly not some no-income fellow whom the state is now going to throw off health insurance if he doesn't get to a computer and click that he's looking for a job.
And to be clear: People suffering behavioral health issues need care and they often need financial help getting it.
This indictment is not of any federal program or service. It's an indictment of corrupt Capitol-corridor denizens elected and otherwise who hold their phones to their ears with one hand while they wrap the other arm around financial partners.
------------v------------
John Brummett, whose column appears regularly in the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, is a member of the Arkansas Writers' Hall of Fame. Email him at [email protected]. Read his @johnbrummett Twitter feed.
Editorial on 06/10/2018