Maggio’s holdings focus of judicial panel inquiry

CONWAY - A state judicial agency will investigate the sources of Circuit Judge Michael Maggio’s 2013 investments or holdings, which totaled more than $25,000 and which followed three years in which available records show he reported no such holdings to the secretary of state’s office.

Late Monday, however, an attorney for Maggio said he had indeed reported that same information in 2012 and that it would be resent to the state today.

“We have received additional information on the Martha Bull complaint, and it will be investigated,” David Sachar, executive director of the Arkansas Judicial Discipline and Disability Commission, said earlier Monday.

Bull is the 76-year-old patient whose 2008 death at a Greenbrier facility owned by nursing-home tycoon Michael Morton led to a negligence lawsuit and ultimately to a Faulkner County jury’s$5.2 million judgment in May against the home.

Maggio lowered the sum to $1 million three days after he heard a July 8 plea from the home to reduce it. Maggio’s order also came after Morton wrote thousands of dollars in checks dated July 8 to eight political action committees. Seven of those PACs, six of them almost exclusively, gave money to Maggio’s since-halted campaign for the Arkansas Court of Appeals.

In the past month, complaints relating to that decision and campaign contributions to Maggio have been filed with the judicial commission and the Arkansas Ethics Commission.

Sachar said the newest complaint, submitted by attorney Thomas Buchanan on behalf of two of Bull’s daughters, will be added to one the judicial commission already was investigating.

The originally submitted paper document and the online version of Maggio’s statement of financial interest for 2012 were lacking sections 3 and 4, the parts where he would have reported his judge’s income and any investments or holdings, secretary of state’s office spokesman Alex Reed said Monday. It was unclear what happened to the pages.

In a letter that was hand delivered to the judicial commission Monday, Buchanan cited two investments or holdings of more than $12,500 each listed on Maggio’s 2013 statement of financial interest.

“There are no such investments or holdings disclosed in the Statements of Financial Interest covering calendar years 2012, 2011, or 2010,” Buchanan added.

“My clients respectfully ask the Arkansas Judicial Discipline & Disability Commission to investigate the source of the two investments or holdings referenced, along with any improper solicitation and/ or acceptance of money, mutual funds, annuities, [stock], investments, holdings or gifts by Judge Maggio,” Buchanan wrote.

The state requires only that the public official report income and holdings at a level of more than $1,000 or more than $12,500. The person does not have to disclose a specific sum.

Maggio’s attorney, Lauren Hamilton, said in an emailed statement late Monday that she could not “speculate as to what happened with sections 3 and 4 but it [the 2012 form] was completed and sent in and fully complete.”

“He’s had these [insurance] policies before the Bull case and as I said it’ll be resent to the [secretary of state’s] office [today] and this will be resolved,” Hamilton added.

Hamilton said Ethics Commission “instructions on completing a Statement of Financial Interest do not specifically require the disclosure of whole life insurance policies. However, Judge Maggio disclosed the ownership of two whole life policies from Northwestern Mutual and Hartford Insurance Annuity in his 2012 and 2013 Statements of Financial Interest in an abundance of caution with the goal of providing transparency.

“In an effort to diffuse any further questions about his ownership of these policies, Judge Maggio will amend the past four years of his filings to reflect his long term ownership of these whole life insurance policies. The allegation that Judge Maggio did not complete all sections of his 2012 Statement of Financial Interest is false and a complete five-page filing was confirmed as received by the Secretary of State’s office on January 23, 2013. A copy of the 2012 filing and fax confirmation sheet from the Secretary of State’s office has been provided to the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette and will further be forwarded to the Secretary of State’s office to correct any clerical errors.”

The filing that Hamilton sent to the newspaper contained a fax-verification confirmation of five pages the state received on Jan. 23, 2013. The substitute document and others Maggio filed for 2013 and for 2008, 2009, 2010 and 2011 all run seven or eight pages long, however.

Online secretary of state’s office records show Maggio did not report investments or other holdings for 2011 or 2010.For those same years, he did not report any income other than his judge’s salary of more than $12,500. He did not report income he had previously reported from Emily Maggio, his now-former wife.

Their divorce records are sealed, and the date of the divorce was unavailable Monday.

For 2008 and 2009, however, Maggio reported an investment with the Edward Jones investment firm of more than $12,500 in the names of himself and his wife at the time. He also reported that his wife’s income then was more than $12,500.

For 2008, he also reported more than $12,500 from Maggio Family Ltd. Partnership of Conway.

Maggio has been a judge in the 20th Judicial Circuit - which includes Faulkner, Van Buren and Searcy counties - since Jan. 1, 2001. Circuit judges in Arkansas made $136,257 annually in 2009. His salary this year was listed as only slightly larger at $138,981.96, according to public records on the Democrat-Gazette’s Right 2 Know website.

Maggio was administrative judge in the circuit when the Arkansas Supreme Court recently stripped him of all of his cases pending further notification. His term expires at year’s end.

Maggio, who has five children, has had problems with liens in the past.

In late December 2005, the federal government released Maggio and his wife from a more than 2-year-old tax lien of $34,233.98 after it was paid, according to a document filed Jan. 9, 2006, in the Faulkner County circuit clerk’s office.

In May 2009, the Democrat-Gazette reported that state officials had filed about $3,200 in tax liens against property Maggio owned.

County records available in 2009 also reflected other liens from which Maggio had been released after they were paid, including one for $9,115.61 for January 2001 for Arkansas individual income taxes. That lien, filed in 2007, was released in March 2008, about two months before he won re-election. Total state liens pending in May 2009 totaled $3,246.01, according to public records.

Maggio also is under investigation for online comments he made about women, sex,bestiality and race among other topics. He has acknowledged making the anonymous comments and apologized for them.