LITTLE ROCK — ARKANSAS’ secretary of state can be annoying on occasion, namely just about every time he opens his mouth. It can’t be easy for his staff to try to make his statements sound good and then, having failed at that impossible task, have to make excuses for them.
Last week Mr. Martin was complaining about how hard it is for his office to obey the law, namely the Freedom of Information Act. As if that isn’t just the kind of duty he signed on for when he ran for the job, beating out a much better candidate who, as a county clerk, was too busy following the law to complain about it.
Secretary Martin says his office has been getting entirely too many requests for public information, as if his job weren’t to serve the public. It seems inquiring minds want to know, among other things, how much of our (that is, the taxpayers’) money he’s spending and on what. The public has every right to know. Indeed, we thought that was the purpose of the Freedom of Information Act: to assure that the people’s questions were answered.
There’s a simple way to avoid such questions, and that’s to avoid questionable spending. Instead, the secretary of state mentions that other officials-like the governor and attorney general-can keep their working papers confidential. As if he’d like to do the same.
Yet he says he doesn’t want such an exemption for his office. Then why mention the exemption? Maybe that’s just Mark Martin being Mark Martin, that is, unclear, dithering, and given to talking more than thinking.
Exempting the secretary of state from the law would doubtless make his job simpler, but it would also deny the public the facts it needs to judge his job performance, which at this point ranks between dismal and scandalous. No wonder he doesn’t seem to enjoy answering questions about it.
Our secretary of state complains that his office “has seen such an abuse of FOI to such an extent so we can’t even brainstorm ideas freely among our people and reject some ideas and accept others because every idea that comes forward is subject to public scrutiny.”
The solution to that problem, Mr. Martin, is simple, too: Avoid advocating any ideas in official communications you’d be ashamed to see on the front page of the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette. Or just return to private life, where you wouldn’t have to report to the people of Arkansas, who, FYI, are your boss. That’s what that Latin phrase about Regnat Populus means on the official state seal. And on your own seal of office. Respect that principle and maybe you could avoid sounding like one of those state officials (like some over at the Game and Fish Commission) who considered drafting a Secrecy of Information Act for themselves.
MARK MARTIN complains that he’s received so many requests for information-which doesn’t surprise, considering how he’s conducted the secretary of state’s office-that he may need a larger budget to meet them all. Whata pity he can’t use some of the estimated $60,000 his office just spent on legislative redistricting without proper authorization, and which he’s having to justify or at least reclassify to make it legit.
Then there’s the $54,500 Secretary Martin spent on a contract with a consulting firm out of Rogers to do “values-based strategic planning,” which included holding a retreat for his higher-up staffers. All of which sounds like just a lot of hot consultant speak to us.
Here’s one value Mr. Martin would do well to base his strategic planning on: Respect the law. Don’t whine about it, and don’t even come close to violating it. An ancient sage called this approach building a fence around the law.
We’re passing on this advice to Mr. Martin completely free of charge and without any need to meet with us to amplify it. Indeed, the idea of going off on a management retreat with Mark Martin and Minions has about as much appeal to us as one of those endless committee meetings in which the participants talk about everything and do absolutely nothing.
Our secretary of state would have done well to retain the services of his former executive assistant, Teresa Belew, who quit in April because of her concerns about his not following the law, specifically the Freedom of Information Act that he’s now complaining about. As if the problem were the law and not his attitude toward it.
The lowest defense Mr. Martin has offered for his questionable spending is to say he’s just being picked on because he’s a Republican. As usual, he’s got it exactly backwards: It is he who’s become an embarrassment to the state’s GOP, which is supposed to be the party of economy in government.
The secretary of state’s office is much burdened, all right, but mainly by the way this secretary of state has been administering it.
Editorial, Pages 14 on 06/21/2011