Tycoon’s $100,000 UCA gift returned

Baker had a role in July donation

CONWAY - Nursing-home tycoon Michael Morton gave a $100,000 check dated July 8 to the University of Central Arkansas after he and then-UCA executive Gilbert Baker visited together, records obtained Friday show. UCA later returned the gift.

Checks dated July 8 and totaling $24,000 to eight PACs from Morton or his businesses have since become part of two state investigations of Circuit Judge Michael Maggio of Conway.

Seven of the eight PACs later gave Maggio a total of $12,950 as of Jan. 31, records show. Six of them gave almost exclusively to Maggio.

July 8 was also the day that Maggio heard a plea from a Morton-owned nursing home to reduce a Faulkner County jury’s judgment in a negligence lawsuit against it. Three days later, Maggio reduced the award from $5.2 million to $1 million.

The UCA Foundation, which handles university donations, returned the $100,000 to Morton of Fort Smith in a March 24 letter.

Days earlier, the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette quoted Morton as saying Linda Leigh Flanagin, who worked for a consulting company Baker formed, had asked Morton to support Maggio’s since-halted bid for the Arkansas Court of Appeals. Morton said the request came while Maggio was presiding over the trial or subsequent judgment issue.

The lawsuit - tried in May - resulted from the 2008 death of Martha Bull, a patient at the Greenbrier Nursing and Rehabilitation Center, one of 32 nursing homes Morton owns in four states.

In an Aug. 1 letter, UCA President Tom Courtway thanked Morton for the contribution to the university’s academic facilities fund.

In a handwritten note beneath his typed letter, Courtway wrote: “When Gilbert came back from his visit with you, I was impressed and very encouraged. Thank you so much for this most generous donation - we all appreciate it very much - it really helps us as we move ahead in planning the nursing building. TC.”

In a March 24 email to Kathy Carroll, the foundation’s executive director, foundation President Shelley Mehl wrote that “in July 2013,” Baker had given her a $100,000 check for the academic facilities fund.

“Mr. Baker said that the donor wished this gift to be anonymous,” Mehl added. “The UCA Foundation properly receipted this gift on July 15, 2013.

“After discussing the unfolding situation with Gary Aday and Lavon Morton, I am instructing you to issue a check to return this gift to the anonymous donor.”

Aday is chairman of the foundation’s board and Lavon Morton is the past chairman, Mehl said in an email Friday. Both serve on the foundation’s executive committee, and Morton is not related to Michael Morton, she said.

In the March 24 letter to Michael Morton, Mehl wrote: “While we appreciate such private support, given recent developments we feel it is in everyone’s best interest to return this gift. Enclosed is our check … for $100,000.”

Morton had not been a UCA donor in recent years before the $100,000 donation, Mehl said.

Morton did not return messages left on his office and cellphones Friday.

Baker - a former state senator, ex-chairman of the Arkansas Republican Party and U.S. Senate candidate in 2012 - resigned Wednesday as executive assistant to Courtway after a Democrat-Gazette article connected him to the officers of some of the PACs.

Baker, 57, did not return email or phone messages seeking comment Friday.

UCA released written records relating to the donation after the Democrat-Gazette requested them under the Arkansas Freedom of Information Act.

Mehl said the the private, nonprofit foundation maintains that it is not subject to such requests. “But in the interest of open disclosure and in support of UCA, we are providing the enclosed documents,” she wrote.

UCA Provost Steve Runge told Baker, who has tenure, in a letter Friday that Baker now is “a nine-month faculty member at the rank of Assistant Professor in the Department of Music.” Baker, who made $132,000 a year as executive assistant, will now make $50,000 annually, Runge wrote.

Earlier this week, Baker declined to answer specific written questions, including whether he solicited officers for the PACs and whether he is the person who asked Little Rock lawyer Chris Stewart to form the PACs.

Baker has previously confirmed that he hired Flanagin for LRM Consulting Inc., which he formed in 2012, but said he did not tell her to ask Morton to support Maggio during the lawsuit case.

Flanagin, 51, of Little Rock has not returned repeated phone messages seeking comment.

Stewart has declined to identify the client who asked him to create the PACs because of attorney-and-client confidentiality.

Stewart said Wednesday that he was “in the process of officially closing down the PACs that were set up for that client” in order “to separate myself and my law firm from matters that I had and now have no control over.”

Stewart and his wife, Julie, were among the contributors to Maggio’s campaign. Each gave the campaign $2,000, and Stewart’s law firm gave Maggio’s campaign an additional $2,000, according to campaign-finance records.

Attorney Thomas Buchanan, who represents two of Bull’s daughters, asked the state Ethics Commission in a letter Thursday to add Baker and Flanagin to its investigation.

Buchanan noted that his clients had made previous complaints to the commission about the PACs, Maggio, Stewart and others.

The Arkansas Judicial Discipline and Disability Commission also is examining allegations related to the PAC contributions and Maggio.

The state Supreme Court has stripped Maggio of all his cases in the 20th Judicial Circuit until further notice.

Maggio has not commented on the PAC developments but has apologized for online comments he made about a wide range of topics, including a confidential adoption case, women, sex, race and bestiality. The judicial commission is also investigating that issue.

Front Section, Pages 1 on 04/05/2014

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