LITTLE ROCK — The Arkansas Ethics Commission on Friday gave the green light for elected officials to create legal-defense funds.
But the elected officialwho asked whether a fund could be set up has decided against doing so.
Former congressman Asa Hutchinson, the attorney for Benton County Judge Dave Bisbee, said Bisbee won’t set up a fund because of thecommission’s restrictions on donations.
Earlier this month, a Benton County jury acquitted Bisbee, a Republican, of two ethics-related misdemeanor charges and deadlocked ona third charge. He has been a county judge since January 2009 and previously served 16 years in the state Legislature. Hutchinson defended Bisbee at trial.
The commission said a defense fund would be OK as long as no donation exceeds $100 and any leftover funds are contributed to charities.
Hutchinson said the donation limit “is not very helpful. The restrictions really make it unworkable.”
The $100-per-donor limit on contributions would virtually require direct-mail advertising seeking donors, Hutchinson said.
“We don’t think it would be appropriate for the county judge to do that,” he said.
The people who would have contributed to a legaldefense fund for Bisbee would be longtime friends without a stake in the job performance of the county judge, Hutchinson said.
He declined to say how much Bisbee’s bills would be but said they would be substantial since the trial lasted four days.
Attorney Duane A. Kees of Asa Hutchinson Law Group in Rogers said in a letter to the commission that the firm’s intent was to set up an irrevocable trust for the legaldefense fund with a trustee having complete control over the fund.
Kees said the plan was for Bisbee to have no control over the funds nor receive any benefit from them except for the payment of his legal fees.
The contributions to the fund would have been unlimited and open to the public, he said, and the trust would have donated any leftover funds to charities of the trustee’s choosing.
The commission said alegal-defense fund would directly benefit an elected official and is related to the official’s conduct in office.
Accordingly, such a fund would be permissible only if no person donates more than $100, which is the limit in the state’s gift law, the commission said.
“Although the fund itself would exceed $100 in value, because the definition of ‘gift’ excludes anything with a value of $100 or less, it would be permissible for a trustee to receive such funds for the elected official’s defense provided each such donation does not exceed $100,” the commission’s opinion said.
The opinion said that a fund would be a “unique arrangement under which the potential for improper influence is unlikely.”
Rita Looney, chief counsel for the commission, emphasized to the commission that with the $100 limit, no one would donate large sums of money.
The commission said that collective gifts are generally not permissible, but “having a trustee receive and distribute the funds” would be an “additional safeguard.”
In 1996, the commission offered a different view on a legal-defense fund set up by Gov. Jim Guy Tucker.
Tucker set up the fund to help pay his legal bills for charges he faced in federal court.
In 1995, 92 people contributed a total of $107,150 to the legal-defense fund and 70 people contributed more than $100. At least two of those donors received board appointments from Tucker before he left office.
An attorney for the state Ethics Commission at the time said ethics laws require an official only to report the source of funds, the date contributions were made and descriptions of the gifts, and Tucker met those specifications.
There was no discussion at the commission’s meeting Friday about previous legal-defense funds set up by elected officials.
Commission off icials couldn’t be reached for comment later Friday.
Hutchinson said he knew that Tucker had a legal-defense fund but didn’t know the details or whether gift rules were the same 15 years ago.
“Could be that we asked for an opinion and Jim Guy did not,” Hutchinson said. “Sometimes you get in trouble by asking. We want to be careful we did everything right. It’s not unusual to have legal-defense funds set up. I was a little bit surprised by the very conservative, almost prohibitive, approach by the commission.”
He contended that donations of more than $100 would be legal as long as theyweren’t given in connection to Bisbee’s job.
Bisbee lost the Republican primary runoff June 8 in his bid for re-election.
Information for this article was contributed by Seth Blomeley of the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette.
Arkansas, Pages 11 on 06/19/2010