Arkansas Auditor Andrea Lea instructed employees to use private email accounts, according to text messages provided by her former chief of staff.
And on Wednesday, Lea said she made an incorrect statement to the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette in a previous article. She had denied that she instructed anyone to use private email accounts for state business.
George Franks, her former chief of staff, provided text messages that said otherwise.
"Personal email address to my personal email address please," Lea said in one text.
"In the future please have staff send me copy for approval to my gmail account from their private email," she said in another.
"Email just came through- please remember I want it to be from your private email to my private email - this one you sent through AOS," she said in a third.
Lea said she did not doubt the texts' authenticity.
"I am not happy that it came to my attention that a statement I made was not accurate and I want to move forward," she said.
She provided a reporter with copies of every email she said pertained to state business and was sent through her private account.
And Lea said she planned three policy changes. She is mandating that state business be conducted on state email by all employees. She said she is drafting an email retention policy. She is providing cellphones for administrative staff "for the purposes of accurate record keeping and to prevent inadvertent intermingling of state and personal business," according to a statement.
Franks said he provided the records when requested because he felt his word was being questioned. He said he was uncomfortable with how the auditor's office was being run and quit on July 23.
"I am known among my friends for my honesty, and I have long defended my reputation," he said. "If I tell something, it is the truth. She knew that when she hired me."
The auditor's admission came after Franks said Lea did not consider a Kansas City, Mo., law firm with expertise in savings bonds for an estimated $160 million legal case because she had a recommendation for another firm from a campaign donor.
The lawyer from that Kansas City firm developed a strategy that Arkansas is using in an attempt to cash unredeemed U.S. savings bonds. The attorney said he could not get a meeting with Lea. The campaign donor -- high-profile class-action lawyer John Goodson -- instead recommended the Cooper & Kirk and Kessler Topaz law firms to represent the state in the fight.
Skot Covert, spokesman for the auditor, has denied that Goodson's contribution made any difference.
Franks said he believed Lea used a private email account because she wanted to avoid Arkansas Freedom of Information Act requests.
"She said to me that private email wasn't subject to FOI," Franks said. "I said I don't know if that was true. I disagreed."
Lea said Wednesday that private emails are subject to the Freedom of Information Act.
"I didn't have my state email set up on my laptop at home. A lot of time, it was documents, and I would say send it to my home," she said. "I 100 percent believe private email is FOIable. That's no question to me. I failed to look through it initially."
Arkansas Business, which first requested information under the state Freedom of Information Act regarding the Cooper & Kirk and Kessler Topaz contract, said the auditor's office did not initially provide emails held in Lea's private account.
"The documents included emails detailing proposals from the various law firms that Lea's former chief of staff had sent to Lea's private email account," the magazine said in its Feb. 22 article. "The auditor's office turned over those emails only after Arkansas Business learned of their existence and requested them specifically."
Metro on 03/04/2016
Text correspondence between Arkansas Auditor Andrea Lea (white background) and her former chief of staff, George Franks (blue background)
