Two in auditor race spar over credentials

Each of the two candidates seeking this month’s Republican Party nomination for state auditor claims to be uniquely qualified to hold the constitutional office that writes the checks to pay state bills and conducts the Great Arkansas Treasure Hunt.

Rep. Andrea Lea of Russellville and Ken Yang of Benton are the Republicans vying for the post now held by Charlie Daniels, a Democrat who is retiring from his $54,305 a year position when his four-year terms ends in January.

The winner will face Democrat Regina Hampton Stewart in November.

Lea, 57, the married mother of three adults and now a grandmother, cites her record and experience as a former Pope County justice of the peace, a Russellville City Council member and now a third-term legislator.

The graduate of Arkansas Tech with a degree in emergency management and administration is chairman of the Legislative State Agencies and Governmental Affairs Committee and co-chairman of the Arkansas Legislative Council’s Personnel Committee. That legislative work, Lea said, gives her a greater understanding of the work at the auditor’s office.

Lea said the office requires a leader who is able to manage the 35-member staff effectively and positively and has an understanding of state budgets and how government operations work.

“That is something that I uniquely have,” she said, adding that she has a broader range of life and work experience than her opponent.

Yang, 25, is a graduate of Hendrix College with a degree in history. He is the chief financial officer for his family’s Sin-Sin Restaurant in Benton, where he has helped out since he was a child. He would continue to do that while also working as the state’s full-time auditor, if elected.

Yang was the campaign manager for Secretary of State Mark Martin in 2010. He worked in that state office in 2011 as education coordinator, then worked in the field for two 2012 presidential candidates, Newt Gingrich and Mitt Romney.

His private-sector business experience includes drafting budgets, creating a payroll, working with vendors and managing staff, he said. That, and his conservative stance, would make him the stronger Republican nominee, he said.

“People are going to vote for the person who is the most conservative and has the most experience. My opponent has no experience for this office. I, on the other hand, do,” he said.

Yang said Lea has repeatedly voted in support of implementing “Obamacare” while in the Legislature.

“That’s not very conservative,” Yang said, referring to the 2010 Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act.

Lea said in an interview earlier this year that she is “absolutely against Obamacare.” She said her support of the state’s move to provide poor Arkansans with private health insurance paid for with federal dollars is a “conservative response to Obamacare’s effects on Arkansas.”

Lea said last week that Republican voters in a Republican primary want to pick the candidate who is best-qualified.

“The difference between the two of us is a record and results versus rhetoric,” Lea said. “I am 100 percent prolife. I voted that way. I’m endorsed by the NRA [National Rifle Association], and I’ve been endorsed by Conservative Arkansas [a political action committee]. I have a record you can go and look at, and that is different than rhetoric.”

Neither candidate has an accounting or business degree.

The auditor is considered the general accountant for the state, responsible for tracking appropriations and balances for state agencies and writing more than 3 million state checks a year.

Other duties include serving as the payroll officer for the executive, legislative and judicial branches and conducting state efforts to restore more than $170 million in unclaimed property, such as the contents of abandoned safety deposit boxes, to its rightful owners. That is done through the annual Great Arkansas Treasure Hunt. More recently, the auditor has begun putting unclaimed property up for weekly eBay auctions, the money from which can be paid to the rightful owners of the property if they come forward later to claim it.

Both Yang and Lea said they look forward to continuing the auctions and the treasure hunt. The treasure hunt entails the annual publishing of a list of all unclaimed property and the names of the last known owners.

Yang said that if he is elected, he would evaluate the auditor’s operations for ways to improve it.

“As a conservative, we are going to look at how efficient we can be and how to save taxpayers’ money,” he said. “Are we serving the people of Arkansas as best we can with the budget that we have? Do we have too many people on staff? Do we have too little on staff? Is our budget too much or too little? Those are all questions we’ll look at once we are in office.”

Lea, who intends if elected to commute to the state Capitol from Russellville, said that the office is running fairly smoothly but that about a third of the office staff is of retirement age. As those people leave, reductions through attrition can occur if the office is overstaffed, she said.

Lea also said she would work to ensure that continuing education programs for county elected officers are relevant. The auditor’s office manages the funding for training.

She plans to serve as an ex-officio member on the boards for the Arkansas Teacher Retirement System and the Arkansas Public Employees Retirement System, and not delegate that role to others.

“Again, I think I’m uniquely qualified. I’ve served on the Retirement Committee.We’ve worked on legislation we’ve had on those funds, discussed those funds at length, figured out ways to shore it up and ensure that it will be there. I’ve had experience with that, and with meeting with [Arkansas Teacher Retirement System Executive Director] George Hopkins and the actuaries and finding out the best way to handle that.”

Yang also sees the auditor’s role on the retirement boards as important.

“I, as someone who has worked in county and state government, understand what these public employees do,” said Yang, who interned in the Saline County prosecuting attorney’s office while in high school and worked as a district court case coordinator in that same office while in college.

“And while I was at the secretary of state’s office, I was the education coordinator,” he said. “So my job was to get in touch with teachers all around the state, working with them and understanding what they do. That will all work well with serving on those two influential boards.”

Both Lea and Yang announced plans in 2013 to run for state auditor. As of March 31, Lea had total contributions of $37,623.57 and had $49,644.66 in cash on hand, including loans. Yang had total contributions of $34,584 and had $38,654.87 in cash on hand, including loans.

Information for this article was contributed by Michael Wickline of the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette.