(The Center Square) – The Arkansas Joint Performance Review Committee will meet again Tuesday to discuss its findings on the Board of Corrections’ actions when it hired a private attorney.
Sen. Jim Petty, R-Van Buren, made a motion to turn over the findings to the Arkansas Inspector General. He said in his motion that the BOC operated with disregard for public transparency and lacked financial and statutory authority to enter into the contract. Petty also said there are perceived and discussed violations of law and an acknowledged lack of process for board meetings.
After the motion appeared to pass, Co-chair Mark H. Berry said the staff was “looking at a technicality” following the vote and announced the committee would meet Tuesday.
The committee is questioning the BOC over its hiring of a private attorney in December for $207,000.
Sen. Ben Gilmore, R-Crossett, said the board demonstrated a “lack of process” when hiring Little Rock Attorney Abtin Mehdizadegan in December to represent them in two lawsuits with state officials, including the department’s secretary.
“What we’ve identified through this process is, it’s just that, there’s a lack of process that we have identified. If we see that from this standpoint, I think you as a board member have to see that as well,” Gilmore said to new BOC Board Member Lona McCastlain. “There’s so many things. Do you agree that there is a lack of process and that concerns you just from your standpoint as a board member?”
McCastlain told the committee she wasn’t on the board at the time the contract was approved but joined in mid-February.
“I believe that you have really good people with really good intentions trying to do the best that they can for the mission that they’ve been assigned,” McCastlain said. “I believe that because a lot of them have been on the board for so long, it’s just like someone who’s been in office for so long, it gets a bit relaxed and you’re just so accustomed to doing it a certain way. I felt like it needs to be a little more professional.”
The board met for only three minutes when it hired Mehdizadegan, according to testimony.
“Why a three-minute meeting for such a weighty matter? asked Sen. Kim Hammer, R-Benton.
BOC Chairman Benny Magness said there had been many discussions leading up to the three-minute meeting.
“It’s a little bit easier for me to answer than to make everybody in this room believe it,” said Magness. “We’d had many hours – three and a half hours, 12 at least that long maybe other times – talking about the performance of our former secretary. And I think, for a lack of better words, the board was just sick and tired of being sick and tired and not getting any changes done.”
Former Department of Corrections Secretary Joe Profiri was fired by the board after a disagreement over adding beds to some state prisons to relieve overcrowding. Profiri and Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders held a joint news conference last year saying the board should add the 500 new beds. The board sued the state, saying Profiri had not vetted his request.
Lindsay Wallace, the former chief of staff for the Department of Corrections, was named the new secretary in February.
