Gov. Mike Beebe on Tuesday questioned whether the lieutenant governor’s office should continue to employ four staff members in the aftermath of Lt. Gov. Mark Darr’s resignation.
Asked during a live streamed online Talk Business interview whether the staff members should remain in their jobs, he said, “I suspect there will be something done about that.
“If you are not going to have the office, I don’t know why you would have the staff,” Beebe said.
He said the four employees are “good people” and that he’s “not trying to be mean to those folks.
“But at the same time, the people of Arkansas would find it a little bit, I think, unusual to keep a staff for an office that doesn’t exist or doesn’t have an incumbent in it,” Beebe said.
Darr, a Republican from Springdale, on Friday submitted a resignation letter to Secretary of State Mark Martin, effective Saturday.
The lieutenant governor’s duties are primarily to preside over the state Senate when it’s in session and serve as acting governor when the governor is out of state. The job pays $41,896 a year. Senate President Pro Tempore Michael Lamoureux, R-Russellville, is next in line to serve as governor in Beebe’s absence.
Beebe, a Democrat, said it appears there is an overwhelming bipartisan consensus in the Republican-controlled Legislature to pass legislation this year keeping Darr’s post vacant until January.
If the Legislature approves the bill when it convenes next week, Beebe said he’ll sign it, potentially saving the state a few million dollars in special-election costs. A regular election for lieutenant governor and other constitutional officers is already scheduled for Nov. 4.
According to the state’s transparency website, the four employees in the lieutenant governor’s office are Chief of Staff Bruce Campbell, who is paid $75,132 a year; communications di-rector Amber Pool, who makes $57,564 a year; director of governmental relations Josh Curtis, who earns $51,564 a year; and executive assistant Raeanne Gardner, with an annual salary of $33,660.
Campbell formerly worked for the state Senate as a staff member and was director of the Department of Rural Services under Republican Gov. Mike Huckabee.
There is precedent for keeping staff members in the lieutenant governor’s office during an extended vacancy.
After Lt. Gov. Win Rockefeller died in July 2006, his aides were allowed to continue working for the rest of his term, which ended in January 2007.
Although the lieutenant governor’s post will likely be vacant for months, the four employees in the lieutenant governor’s office will continue to work there for now, Lamoureux said Friday. He said he also didn’t know whether he has the legal authority to fire them, and he planned to meet with the Senate’s legal counsel, Steve Cook, and the four employees this week.
Contacted by phone Tuesday, Lamoureux said the lieutenant governor’s office still exists, even though it’s not filled.
The staffing question isn’t the only item on Lamoureux’s agenda.
The president pro tempore said he spent many hours Tuesday trying to secure 27 Senate votes so the state can continue to provide about 100,000 poor Arkansans with private health insurance through the use of federal Medicaid dollars in fiscal 2015.
“The more I think about it, the less [deciding the future of the four staffers in the lieutenant governor’s office] becomes a priority,” Lamoureux said. “The scope of the two don’t seem to be equal policy matters. It’s not the No. 1 thing I am working on.”
Lamoureux said he always wanted to do a thorough review of the efficiency of the state government’s entire workforce.
“So maybe after the fiscal session, it would be a good time to be looking at that,” said Lamoureux, an attorney who also works as public defender for the state’s Public Defender Commission.
House Speaker Davy Carter, R-Cabot, said the need for the lieutenant governor’s staff members goes away if there is not a lieutenant governor.
“I don’t see how we can can move forward to allocate resources for them when there is not a lieutenant governor in the office” to do the job, he said.
But, Carter added, “I am certainly willing to listen if I am missing something there.”
In 2011, then-state Rep. Keith Ingram, D-West Memphis, proposed a constitutional amendment to abolish the land commissioner and lieutenant governor’s offices, effective Dec. 31, 2018. Under that proposal, the lieutenant governor’s duties and powers would be transferred to the Senate leader - the Senate president pro tempore - and the Legislature would decide where the commissioner of state lands’ powers and duties would be transferred.
In 2010, Ingram made an unsuccessful bid to cut the appropriation for then-Democratic Lt. Gov. Bill Halter and trim his staff from four employees to one before Halter lost his challenge to then-Democratic U.S. Sen. Blanche Lincoln. Ingram is now the Senate Democratic leader.
Arkansas, Pages 9 on 02/05/2014