From time to time someone will scour public disclosure forms and produce reminders that the Arkansas legislative culture exists in a nebulous space somewhere between inappropriateness and corruption.
Inappropriateness seems too tame a characterization. Corruption seems too harsh.
The latest is the case of Gov. Asa Hutchinson's chief of staff, Michael Lamoureux. It stems from 2013 when Lamoureux represented the Russellville area as a leading Republican state senator. He was president pro tempore, meaning chief officer.
The Associated Press reported last week that a tax form for that year from the Arkansas Faith and Freedom Coalition, a now-inactive arm of a national religious-right political advocacy group, revealed that the group had paid $120,000 to Lamoureux's law firm in Russellville for consulting services.
The AP pointed out that special-interest groups--representatives of a nursing-home chain and a health-care company and two competing tobacco companies--had contributed to the Arkansas group paying Lamoureux.
Lamoureux told me by phone Sunday that he got the work largely through his good friend, Gilbert Baker of Conway, a former state senator who raised money for the Faith and Freedom Coalition and has been caught up in controversy since leaving the Senate because of term limits.
That includes an apparent federal investigation into money contributed by the above-referenced nursing-home magnate, Michael Morton, to political action committees in arrangements apparently facilitated by Baker. Those PACs in turn made donations to the political campaign of a now-discredited former judge named Mike Maggio, who reduced a jury judgment against one of Morton's nursing homes.
Lamoureux told me that published reports that he raised money for the Arkansas Faith and Freedom Coalition were incorrect. He said he was paid to recruit and train political candidates who were pro-life and supportive of other conservative values, and to coordinate voter-education efforts.
He said he hadn't known the identities of donors to the group until he read recent news articles. But he said he might have guessed the participation of Morton, owing to Baker's previous fundraising work for the coalition.
Lamoureux said he was never influenced in his legislative role by his private association with this public advocacy group. He pointed out that the tobacco groups rarely agree on anything.
A lawyer holding state office gets an exemption from personal financial disclosure laws that permits him to report only his cumulative income from his firm, not the actual retainers or other payments made by individual clients.
So Lamoureux apparently did nothing illegal or in specific violation of ethical regulation, a point that the Hutchinson administration has stressed in standing by its chief of staff.
But the Hutchinson administration also has emphasized tellingly that Lamoureux's private activity occurred before he became the governor's chief of staff.
So I asked Lamoureux if he believed it would be appropriate for him to accept money from that same source for similar services while working as Hutchinson's chief of staff.
He said that would be an utter impracticality.
But my interest was whether, practicality aside, it would be appropriate for him to maintain such an arrangement while on the governor's staff, considering that he had found it appropriate as a state senator.
Either way, he would be doing public service on one hand and privately paid work for a public advocacy group on the other.
Lamoureux said he would "cede the point," but that there were many overriding factors making my hypothetical reference moot.
There indeed are other factors. Maintaining a law practice while getting part-time pay as a state senator is different from being the governor's full-time salaried chief of staff whose law office has been closed.
But I submit that the right conclusion in terms of appearances in either case is contained in Lamorueux's three words: "cede the point."
Meantime, there's a second newly discovered case. It turns out that lobbyist Bruce Hawkins' management firm made a $30,000 loan, repaid on time in six months with 5 percent interest, to state Sen. Jake Files, Republican of Fort Smith and chairman of the Senate Revenue and Taxation Committee.
Both men call the loan a simple business deal. Ethics law expressly permits such loans, pursuant to the disclosure that has occurred.
But a loan can be both a business transaction and a personal favor.
Let's say I'd like $30,000 for a home remodeling project. A small one, obviously. I could seek a bank's line of credit entailing a lien on my house. Or I could go see a lobbyist--if I was a voting legislator, that is.
Some legislators are saying we probably ought to forbid such loans by statute. That sounds like a good idea.
More diligent personal adherence to public responsibility and ethical conduct and appearances ... that also sounds like a worthy idea, although an apparently elusive one.
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John Brummett's column appears regularly in the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette. Email him at jbrummett@arkansasonline.com. Read his blog at brummett.arkansasonline.com, or his @johnbrummett Twitter feed.
Editorial on 10/27/2015