LITTLE ROCK — The Arkansas Game and Fish Commission has more vehicles than employees, and one commissioner said this week that he sees no sentiment toward changing that.
“It’s a touchy, touchy deal,” Commissioner Ronald Pierce of Mountain Home said. “It’s been something that’s [been] done for ages and ages. It gets accepted. It’s taxpayer dollars. It’s not [the employees’] right. It’s something awfully hard to get rid of. People get used to it.”
Pierce said he doesn’t see a problem with the number of vehicles - 658 for 613 employees - but figures that “probably 10 to 15” employees could do without the privilege of commuting in vehicles provided by state dollars. But he doesn’t sense any push from other commissioners to change that.
According to commission data, not all of the vehicles are used for commuting. There are 175 Game and Fish Commission employees who pay taxes for using state vehicles to commute from home to work, and 181 wildlife officers commute but aren’t required to pay income tax for that benefit because of an exemption for law-enforcement vehicles.
On Aug. 3, the commission chairman, Craig Campbell of Little Rock, said in an interview that he was confident that the agency could do without some, perhaps 50 or so, of the vehicles it owns, though he described himself as ready to change his mind if further inquiry justifies doing so.
Since then Campbell hasn’t returned numerous messages left at his office.
None of the other six voting commissioners echoed Campbell’s remark about vehicles when contacted this week.
“We really haven’t discussed that matter,” Commissioner Fred Brown of Corning said. “I’m not going to speak to anything. There is a big enough mess going on.”
Brown said he was referring to a lawsuit filed by Sheffield Nelson of Little Rock, a former Game and Fish commissioner and former Republican gubernatorial nominee who alleges that the commission has violated the state constitution in setting up anew leadership structure.
Commission spokesman Nancy Ledbetter said this week that commission general counsel Jim Goodhart advised her not to comment on state vehicles now that a commission employee has been listed as a defendant in a separate lawsuit, one that targets personal use of state vehicles.
Goodhart said Wednesday that he’s “advised management to follow usual agency practice, which is AGFC employees generally should not ... make statements to outside parties regarding a pending lawsuit or any issues that pertain to the lawsuit, and if employees have any questions about particular issues or statements, they should contact our legal and communications staff.”
According to a list of Game and Fish Commission vehicles and their drivers provided by the commission in July, Goodhart drives a 2009 Chevrolet Impala; Ledbetter, a 2005 Honda Civic hybrid; acting Director Loren Hitchcock, a 2008 Dodge Charger; and former Director Scott Henderson, now assistant director for special projects, a 2010 Dodge Nitro.
Commissioners aren’t agency employees. They are appointed by the governor and make agency policy. They don’t answer to Goodhart or other agency administrators. Gov. Mike Beebe has appointed four of the current commissioners. Former Gov. Mike Huckabee appointed three.
Pierce, the commissioner from Mountain Home, said he thinks that the employees who could do without a commission vehicle work in the agency’s headquarters. He said those employees could check out pool vehicles if they need to drive somewhere for state business purposes. He said commissioners don’t get to take home agency vehicles.
He said the commission received complaints recently about an employee in a commission vehicle dropping her child off at a day-care center. He said it was in “another town,” which he declined to identify. He said there probably wasn’t anything wrong with that because the stopat the day care only added about a mile one-way to the employee’s commute. He said the employee, who works at a wildlife education center, had permission from her boss to do that but has since been told not to use a commission vehicle in that fashion.
Commission Vice Chairman George Dunklin of DeWitt said the comment by Campbell about the commission possibly doing without 50 vehicles was “just something the chairman said. I haven’t seen a study to see if [Campbell’s assertion is] true or false.”
Regarding whether the commission is undertaking such a study of its vehicles, Dunklin referred to another commissioner, Rick Watkins of Little Rock. Dunklin said Watkins heads the commission’s committee that oversees its vehicles.
Watkins declined to comment.
Dunklin said the reason the commission probably has more vehicles than people is because “some are trucks and the fisheries have specialized equipment to haul fish in.”
According to the list of commission vehicles, there are 31 vehicles that seem to fit that description by Dunklin.
Those include the commission’s oldest vehicle, a 1976 Ford dump truck; seven flatbed trucks; two tractors; one flatbed with a crane; and five other dump trucks. Also, there are 15 trucks, including some with tanks, assigned to fisheries.
If these vehicles are excluded, there are still 627 other vehicles available to the commission’s 613 employees.
The commission’s list seems to indicate that just because there are more vehicles than people, that doesn’t necessarily mean that every employees gets a vehicle. Several are assigned to different departments and to a specific individual.
Richard Weiss, director of the state Department of Finance and Administration, said he knows of no other state agency with more vehicles than employees.
Commissioner Ron Duncan of Springdale said he objected to commission vehicle purchases “before your newspaper started questioning the number of state vehicles.”
He said he was the lone vote against buying 50 new vehicles “a few months ago.” Asked to clarify his objection, Duncan said he didn’t have a problem with buying the vehicles but felt that “one or two” vehicles weren’t old enough to be replaced.
Duncan said he thought the acting director of the agency, Hitchcock, has called for a study of commission vehicles.
Duncan said there have only been a few examples of misuse of state vehicles in state government and that he doesn’t think that warrants wholesale changes.
“I would be opposed to any knee-jerk reaction right now,” Duncan said.
Commissioner Emon Mahony of El Dorado declined to comment.
Mike Armstrong, assistant director of the commission, is among state officials named as a defendant in a lawsuit filed in July in Pulaski County Circuit Court. Attorney Eugene Sayre alleges that state workers using state vehicles for personal trips have committed an illegal exaction and should reimburse the state.
Sayre has cited Arkansas Code Annotated 19-4-903, which states that all state owned or leased vehicles can be used only for official business. State officials have said that employees who are allowed to commute in state vehicles are considered to be required to do so because of the needs of their jobs.
State government as a whole has 8,653 vehicles, nearly 2,000 of which are used for commuting. About half of those are law-enforcement officers who don’t have to pay income tax for the commuting benefit.
Beebe on Aug. 4 called for the Department of Finance and Administration to perform a review of state vehicles, which employees are assigned them and whether commuting is justified for each.
Weiss said the deadline for state agencies to respond to a second round of questions is Tuesday.
“This is a huge chore for us,” he said.
Weiss said agencies have responded to a first round of questions seeking an accounting of each vehicle, including its location, its function and whether it is assigned to a particular employee.
He said the second round of questions seeks more detailed information on the vehicles that are used for commuting - whether the vehicle is needed for the employee’s job, whether the employee uses the vehicle to drive to a job site or to an agency office, and what would be the downside to making the employee commute in his personal vehicle.
On average, all state agencies and institutions spent $14 million a year on vehicle purchases from fiscal 2006 to fiscal 2010.
The finance department has said that from April 1, 2009, to March 31, 2010, it cost $17.3 million to maintain, repair, fuel and insure state vehicles, not counting those at the Game and Fish Commission or the Highway and Transportation Department.
State agencies pay employees 42 cents a mile for using personal vehicles on state business. For fiscal 2010, that amounted to $16.3 million for agencies that report to the governor.
During the past five years, the Department of Finance and Administration says, agencies under the governor’s control and higher-education institutions averaged $17 million a year in mileage reimbursements.
The Game and Fish Commission and the Highway Department have spent comparatively little on mileage reimbursement. The Highway Department - which by far has the most vehicles in state government (2,385) - spent $25,156 in fiscal 2010. The Game and Fish Commission spent $4,220 the same year.
Front Section, Pages 1 on 09/16/2010