Despite increased calls for his resignation from leaders in his own party, state Rep. Mickey Gates, R-Hot Springs, said Friday that he has no plans to step down after pleading no contest this week to failing to pay state income taxes.
Pressure on the three-term Republican ratcheted up Friday after Gov. Asa Hutchinson said Gates should resign "or be removed from office."
"It is unacceptable for a public official, particularly a state legislator, to continue to hold office after being found guilty of a criminal violation of our tax laws," the Republican governor said in a statement.
It was not the first time the governor and others had called on Gates to resign.
After Gates was arrested in June 2018 and charged with failing to file state tax returns over several years, Hutchinson joined with Attorney General Leslie Rutledge and Lt. Gov. Tim Griffin in calling on Gates to resign. All three said Friday that they stand by those calls.
One prominent Republican who did not publicly call for Gates' resignation after his arrest, House Speaker Matthew Shepherd of El Dorado, said this week he told Gates he should resign after the plea.
Gates did not resign or drop out of his re-election campaign after his arrest last year. He was re-elected to another two-year term in November.
During a brief phone conversation in which Gates was asked to respond to the governor's comments, Gates said that Hutchinson "needs to go read the record," which Gates said did not include a finding of guilt.
On Monday, Gates pleaded no contest in Garland County Circuit Court for failing to pay his taxes in 2012. Gates was sentenced to probation under a first-time offender law that allows a defendant to be discharged without a final adjudication of guilt if he completes all the terms of his sentence.
The terms of Gates' sentence include six years of probation and an agreement to pay $74,789 in back taxes, interest and penalties. The amount Gates agreed to pay is significantly less than the $259,841 that investigators said Gates owed in a 2018 charging document. As part the agreement, prosecutors dropped five additional charges of failing to file tax returns from 2013 to 2017.
"Nobody has been found guilty of anything," Gates said. "There is not a verdict of anything because it's been postponed."
Asked if he believed he had never broken the law through a failure to pay taxes, Gates said, "I'm not going to get into that."
Shepherd, the House speaker, said that in his initial conversations with other House members, "many" members expressed the desire for more information before deciding whether to move ahead with attempting to remove Gates from office.
Removal would be "uncharted territory, at least in recent history," Shepherd said.
Under the state's 1874 Constitution, each chamber of the Legislature may vote by a two-thirds majority to expel a member. The current House rules, however, do not include a process through which to begin that action.
The top Democrat in the House, Minority Leader Fred Love of Little Rock, called Gates' decision against resigning "unfortunate," but said he would like to review the records from Gates' criminal case before deciding whether expulsion would be appropriate.
Meanwhile Friday, both Rutledge and Griffin continued their now yearlong calls for Gates to step down.
"By his criminal plea of no contest, Rep. Gates admitted that he did not properly pay taxes for years and owes the State money," Rutledge said in a statement. "Rep. Gates has betrayed the public trust and should not remain in a position to be paid by taxpayers while he still owes taxpayers."
In a text message, Griffin said he continued to believe Gates should resign.
"I stand by that," Griffin said. "And if he doesn't, he should be removed."
Information for this article was contributed by David Showers of The Sentinel-Record.
Metro on 08/03/2019