Days after her December 2007 resignation as a child welfare attorney at a state agency, Leslie Rutledge, now Republican candidate for Arkansas attorney general, was barred from ever rejoining the staff.
Rutledge didn't give advance notice when she ended her 14-month tenure as a Department of Human Services attorney, and a little more than a week after she left to join former Gov. Mike Huckabee's presidential campaign, agency officials decided she should never work there again.
According to the department's personnel records, which were obtained by the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette through a Freedom of Information Act request, Rutledge's file was amended after her departure to say that she had been removed due to "gross misconduct."
Where her termination was once ruled "voluntary," someone scratched out the designation.
"Please put a do-not-rehire on Leslie," Lisa McGee, a staff attorney, wrote Dec. 12, 2007, to other agency officials in an email that was left in Rutledge's file.
Rutledge -- who is running against former deputy prosecutor and state Rep. Nate Steel, D-Nashville -- was ruled "ineligible" to come back to Human Services, according to the documents. Her termination was listed as a code "21" -- the number the department assigns to workers who leave their jobs due to "gross misconduct."
No records explaining what was meant by "gross misconduct" were included in the documents. Department spokesman Amy Webb said that her agency handed over everything it was obliged to by state law and that she couldn't speak as to what misconduct Rutledge had committed.
Speaking on the phone from the campaign trail Thursday night, Rutledge said that until recently she had no idea her personnel records had been modified since the day she left. She denied any misconduct while she was working as an attorney working with parents and children in foster home cases.
"The real troubling part of all of this is that personnel records can be changed 10 days after someone has tendered their resignation voluntarily or can be changed at all and [they would] not be made aware of it. Is that common practice in state government?" Rutledge said. "How many other records are changed for individuals who have left the state [government] and they aren't aware of it?"
When asked what policy, procedure or thresholds must be met by Human Services officials to modify an employee's file, Webb said staff would have to research the policies in effect in 2007.
Rutledge said that she knew staff wanted her to stick around but was at a loss to explain why she was put on a do-not-rehire list.
"Whether it was politically motivated because I was going to work for a Republican governor and these individuals were [working] for a Democrat, [Gov. Mike Beebe,] I don't now." Rutledge said. "It's clear that they went back and scratched it and it went from voluntary to not [voluntary]. That's something as attorney general that I'll look into."
Regardless of what happened at the agency seven years ago, Webb said, it shouldn't impact her agency's working relationship with Rutledge if she is elected attorney general. "We're happy to work with any of the candidates," Webb said.
Rutledge took the job as an "emergency" hire in early October 2006 after a year and half working at a Jacksonville law firm and a 10-month stint as a deputy legal counsel for then-Gov. Huckabee.
She said that she didn't give two weeks' notice because she needed to act on an offer to join Huckabee's bid for president and spent her last weekend with Human Services preparing her case files for an easy handoff to whoever would take over her cases.
"They asked, 'Well, can you work another two weeks?' and I said, 'It's a presidential campaign. It might be over in a couple of weeks.'"
Webb said that Rutledge had 85 clients in her time there and that she went to court on 20 to 40 of those cases.
Asked if Rutledge's sudden departure negatively impacted, or at least, delayed some of her clients' cases, Webb said she didn't know.
"In general, if we have an attorney who leaves, it's necessary to try to rearrange and get things rescheduled [with the court] so witnesses could be prepped and all children could be handled ... by another attorney," Webb said. "We'd work through that process like we would with any attorney who left."
Rutledge, who has practiced in Little Rock since working for the Republican National Committee, frequently moved from job to job early in her career.
Between her 2001 graduation from law school and her late 2007 departure from Human Services, she worked in five different positions, ranging from criminal law to advising for Huckabee.
Steel said that Rutledge's frequent job changes and short tenures matter when it comes to taking over as the state's top law enforcement official.
"I have been hoping since the beginning that others would pay closer attention to her background and qualifications for the office," Steel said. "The attorney general is a unique position. ... The public should be looking [for a candidate] who understands criminal justice frontwards and backwards."
Steel added, "I don't think bouncing around a lot is part and parcel with the candidate we've seen for the attorney general in the past."
Rutledge said that her varied career, which includes clerking at the state Court of Appeals for three years, is exactly the type of background and experience that's needed.
"Working as a prosecutor, advising state agencies as counsel to the governor, working with foster children, my opponent is critical of that because he doesn't have that," Rutledge said.
Information for this article was contributed by Michael R. Wickline of the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette.
Metro on 09/12/2014