Arkansas Awaits Audit Verdict on Governor’s $19k Lectern, Official Confirms

The co-chairman of a legislative committee that ordered an audit of a $19,000 lectern purchased for Arkansas Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders said Tuesday that he expected the report to be made public within the next 10 days.

Republican Rep. Jimmy Gazaway said he and Republican Sen. David Wallace, co-chairs of the Legislative Joint Auditing Committee, received the auditors’ report on Friday afternoon and are analyzing it. Gazaway said he wasn’t sure whether the report would be made available to the committee ahead of time or if the panel would hold a hearing on it.

“As the chairs of the committee, we felt like it was important to review it before it’s released,” Gazaway said in a statement. “I think we should ensure it’s in good form and good order, and that’s what we’re doing.”

Gazaway has declined to comment on the report’s conclusions.

Last year, the committee granted a request to evaluate the lectern’s purchase, which had sparked widespread criticism for its high cost and questions about public records surrounding it.

The 3 1/4-foot-tall blue and wood-paneled lectern, was purchased in June with a state credit card for $19,029.25 from a Virginia events firm. The Republican Party of Arkansas refunded the state for the purchase on September 14, and Sanders’ office has described the usage of the state credit card as an accounting error. Sanders’s office stated that it received the lectern in August.

Sanders, a Republican who served as former President Donald Trump’s press secretary, has dismissed queries about the lectern as a “manufactured controversy,” and it has not been seen at any of her public events.

The audit was supposed to be completed by the end of March. However, this month, the state’s legislative auditor said that Sanders’ office had been granted an extension to respond to the audit’s findings.