Mess(es), self-inflicted

It might be that Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders and Co. are less occupied with the business of state these days than with extricating themselves from the mess they’ve created for themselves. It won’t be easy.

There was the surprise special session of the General Assembly that Ms. Sanders called, supposedly to ensure her safety and that of her family by exempting from the Arkansas Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) documents regarding security expenditures by the State Police as well as papers regarding her use of its airplane. As written, however, the legislation would have eviscerated the FOIA. Vigorous resistance by liberal and conservative groups put many lawmakers, caught off-guard, under the gun.

Attorney Matt Campbell, the nosy taxpayer who sought information about the State Police airplane, came across documents involving the purchase of a lectern from present or former associates of Ms. Sanders, at the curious cost of about $19,000. Originally paid from tax dollars, the invoice was routed to the state Republican Party for reimbursement after it was made public. An accounting error, a Sanders spokeswoman said.

What’s at work, say a growing number of legislators, including those of Ms. Sanders’ own Republican Party, is a pres umptiveness born of hubris. A principal example would be the press release issued by the Governor’s office last week as a potential shutdown of the federal government seemed imminent.

“The failure of Washington to strike a deal on the federal budget has the potential to suspend several programs run by Arkansas’s state government and funded with federal dollars,” it began.

Fair, accurate — or accurate enough — and to the point. But attached to the press release was a memorandum to cabinet secretaries regarding the possible federal shutdown.

“Should the Biden Administration allow a shutdown to occur … programs and employment that are wholly or partially dependent on federal funding will be suspended because of the White House’s failure to work with Congress. … The Biden Administration’s failure puts Arkansans and the programs they rely on at risk…” In fact the “failure” and a subsequent government shutdown would have been the work of that band of House Republican crazies who, as (then) Speaker McCarthy put it, were interested not in serious governance but in “burning the whole place down.”

The “White House’s failure to work with Congress”? Mr. Biden and Senate leaders, Republicans and Democrats, had much earlier reached agreement on legislation to keep the government open. The hangup was the blood feud among House Republicans, the rebel faction demanding amendments that Senate GOP elders warned would doom the bill.

A shutdown would not have been a White House failure, nor a decision by the Biden Administration to “allow” it. Ms. Sanders knows it. Her staff and advisers know it. Any sentient adult who gets his or her information from any source other than Fox News or Breitbart knows it. And the six members of the Arkansas congressional delegation, Republicans all, know it better than anyone, and said so, publicly. (All six agreed to the McCarthy compromise.)

Now confronting Ms. Sanders and her administration are some matters that can’t be resolved with a press release or “memorandum,” no matter how jaw-droppingly audacious:

• A citizen’s movement is underway to remove the FOIA from the statute book and, perhaps after strengthening it, enshrining it in the Arkansas Constitution, away from executive and legislative whims, and amendable only by popular vote. Volunteers are said to be lining up to gather the signatures needed to submit the proposal to voters.

• A senior member of the Arkansas Senate, Texarkana Republican Jimmy Hickey, has formally requested the Division of Legislative Audit examine the lectern acquisition, citing “inconsistencies” in explanations from Ms. Sanders’ office. And while you’re at it, Hickey told the audit staff, let’s examine those security expenses the legislature has just placed off-limits at the Governor’s urging.

• Campbell, whose records requests triggered both the lectern and security expenditures debates, has renewed a lawsuit contending that the State Police unlawfully withheld documents involving the governor’s travels.

• Tom Mars, once a Huckabee family consigliere and a former director of the State Police (by appointment of then-Gov. Mike Huckabee) and now a Huckabee nemesis, says he has a whistleblower as a client, a former state employee who is prepared to testify under oath that the Sanders staff altered or secreted documents concerning the lectern that were subject to the FOIA.

• Owing to Ms. Sanders’ service as press secretary to the previous U.S. president, and her continuing public expressions of admiration for him, and his endorsement of her gubernatorial campaign, the social media accounts of not only Democrats but “Never- Trumper” Republicans are abuzz with giddy taunts of “lectern- gate.”

A mess. Not soon to disappear.