The purchases and spending of Arkansas PBS from July 1, 2021, to present will get a closer look after today’s vote from the Arkansas Legislative Joint Auditing Committee.
A request to delve into the Arkansas PBS books came from Rep. Jeff Wardlaw (R-Hermitage) and Sen. Terry Rice (R-Waldron) during a meeting of the Legislative Joint Auditing Executive Committee on Wednesday. In that meeting of state lawmakers, Wardlaw said Arkansas PBS had violated certain state procurement rules.
Legislative Audit, a group charged with monitoring state government spending, found that Arkansas PBS made several purchases just below the $20,000 threshold that would have required PBS to obtain bids before making the purchases. Legislative Audit also found multiple instances of PBS entering agreements for goods and services from two companies that were owned by the same person, with those purchases being for amounts that would have cumulatively required competitive bidding if purchased from a single supplier.
Wardlaw said on Wednesday that it was the invoices provided by Legislative Audit that prompted him to ask for a closer look at PBS’s procurement. “The things we found out from those invoices, I think it’s important that we take a deeper dive and look at those processes and make sure that the agency is following those to a T,” Wardlaw said.
Sen. Dan Sullivan (R-Jonesboro), who scrapped with Arkansas PBS in the past and threatened to withhold some state funding in 2022 over concerns that a contractor was “left-wing,” pushed to expand Wardlaw’s request. “I’m assuming this will [also] involve who they (Arkansas PBS) hire, the hiring procedures, and the number of people who have been either terminated or [have] voluntarily quit,” Sullivan said. Sullivan also wondered if the requested examination would include allegations that PBS did not follow FCC guidance related to a federal grant the organization received.
“I have no objection of incorporating anything else anybody wants to incorporate,” Wardlaw stated.
Wardlaw and Rice requested that the inquiry cover the period from July 1, 2021, to present, which includes fiscal year 2022, for which Arkansas PBS has already been undergoing an audit. Legislative Audit postponed completion of that audit in August once the issues regarding PBS’s procurement procedures came to light.
Arkansas PBS has been in Republican legislators’ crosshairs for a while now. Last month, Sen. Missy Irvin (R-Mountain View) complained that Arkansas PBS Executive Director Courtney Pledger incorrectly used the term “Medicaid cuts” during a roundtable discussion on the PBS program “Arkansas Week.” Irvin demanded that PBS correct Pledger’s statement and that someone from PBS apologize to Arkansas DHS Secretary Kristi Putnam, who, according to Irvin, was simply following state and federal law regarding Medicaid eligibility.
(More than 427,000 Arkansans were cut from the Medicaid rolls from April to September of this year in a post-pandemic list cleanup. Critics of the six-month purge said it was rushed, and that 184,500 of those people lost health coverage not necessarily because they no longer qualified, but because they didn’t provide the correct paperwork or couldn’t be reached.)
In August, Sullivan requested that the Arkansas Legislative Council postpone consideration of Pledger’s proposed salary increase. The ALC personnel subcommittee acquiesced to Sullivan’s request and delayed consideration of Pledger’s raise until after the audit of PBS is completed.
Wardlaw and Rice’s recommendation to audit Arkansas PBS was approved by a voice vote, with no dissenting votes noted.