By Rob Moritz
Arkansas News Bureau
LITTLE ROCK — A month after threatening a former state teacher pension fund attorney with a subpoena, members of a legislative committee had no questions for her when she finally appeared before the panel Thursday.
“As the saying goes, I think we’ve wallered in this long enough and I don’t know that there’s anything else that we need to hear about this,” Sen. Jimmy Jeffress, D-Crossett, said during a meeting of the Legislative Joint Auditing Committee’s Standing Committee on State Agencies. “I think we pretty well know what happened.”
The panel earlier asked the full committee to subpoena Christa Clark, former attorney for the Arkansas Teacher Retirement System, to appear to answer questions about violations during her tenure. The panel’s approach Thursday did not sit well with Sen. Bobby Glover, D-Carlisle, who sits on the audit committee’s executive panel, which was asked to subpoena the attorney to the meeting.
“I would suggest in the future if you’re going to do something like this, there is no sense in us going through a lot of trouble in making sure somebody is going to be at the meeting if you’re not going to ask any questions,” Glover said. “We’re just wasting time.”
Clark originally was asked to attend the Oct. 7 meeting of the state committee after an audit discovered several apparent audit violations, including that the $10 billion retirement system paid for services before entering into contracts.
The apparent violations occurred under former system director Paul Doane, who resigned last year amid complaints about his travel expenses.
Clark, who resigned Oct. 19, was asked to attend the Nov. 13 Legislative Joint Auditing Committee meeting and told if she failed to do so she would be subpoenaed.
On Nov. 12, she notified the executive committee that she couldn’t attend the meeting because she was ill. The panel voted to recommended she be subpoenaed if she failed to show up for the meeting.
At the Nov. 13 meeting, the audit committee decided to give Clark another month to appear before its state agencies panel before issuing the subpoena.
Clark declined to comment as she left Thursday’s meeting.
George Hopkins, executive director of ATRS, told the standing committee in October and the Legislative Joint Auditing Committee in November that he is taking steps to correct the problems discovered in the audit.
