Texts from state Auditor Andrea Lea.
Arkansas Business has obtained text messages to and from state Auditor Andrea Lea that, as even she acknowledged, dispute her claims that she rarely used her private e-mail account for state business.
Texts between Lea and her former chief deputy, George Franks, show that she repeatedly instructed him to use his private account to send emails about official state business to her private email address. And these instructions continued for months after she was sworn into office in January 2015.
“Last [month] I made a statement I believed was accurate but based on the texts, it appears I misspoke,” Lea said in an email statement to Whispers. “Moving forward, I am implementing a new communication policy for the office to avoid any appearance of impropriety.”
That policy is currently being drafted, according to her spokesman, Skot Covert.
Arkansas Business reported last month that Lea hired inexperienced, overpriced lawyers to do a job for the auditor’s office. Two emails detailing proposals from law firms were released by Lea’s office only after Arkansas Business asked specifically for notes that Franks said he was told to send to Lea’s private email account.
Covert told Arkansas Business last month that Lea “rarely uses her personal account for state business.” And when the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette followed up on the story, Lea denied instructing anyone to use her private email address.
“When you’re coming into an office like this, you start doing business before you ever get set up on your servers and emails, so I was already using my private email to do that,” the Feb. 24 Democrat-Gazette story quoted Lea as saying. “It was incidental. There was a short period of time where there was more communication than others.”
But text messages to Franks show she instructed him to use private email as late as June 30, almost six months after she was sworn in, and that the instructions applied to all employees of the auditor’s office.
“In the future please have staff send me copy for approval to my gmail account from their private email,” Lea texted Franks, who replied, “Okay.”
In another text, the date of which wasn’t available to Whispers, Lea reminded Franks about her preference.
“Email just came through — please remember I want it to be from your private email to my private email — this one you sent through AOS,” Lea texted.
Ironically, that message was in response to a text from Franks about his conversation with a lobbyist/former legislator who “called and spoke with me about you and transparency …”
Franks resigned in July after six months in Lea’s office.
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