By Steve Brawner, © 2018 by Steve Brawner Communications, Inc.

Attorney General Leslie Rutledge met with reporters Wednesday, the main purpose being to try to put to bed a four-year-long story about her 2007 departure from the Department of Human Services. The more interesting tidbit was the bigger story that won’t go away – the continuing investigation into legislative corruption.

First, let’s sum up the part about Rutledge’s work history, because you’re going to hear about it occasionally during her re-election campaign. In 2007, she was working as a foster care attorney for the Department of Human Services. In December, she left to work for Gov. Mike Huckabee’s presidential campaign without giving her two weeks notice. She reasoned that campaigns happen fast so she couldn’t spare the two weeks, but it left the short-staffed agency in a bind. There were some hard feelings, and her supervisors placed her on a “do not rehire” list. Her file was changed to say she was discharged for “gross misconduct,” which is simply not true. She clearly resigned voluntarily.

The issue came up in 2014 during her first campaign for attorney general. It resurfaced recently when the Democratic Party of Arkansas sued in order to release the unreleased parts of her personnel file. A judge on Monday ordered it to be done. She preemptively released eight pages Wednesday.

Her opponents are Democrat Mike Lee and Libertarian Kerry Hicks. Unless something else surfaces, base your vote on something other than this.

The more interesting part of Wednesday’s meeting occurred in its first few minutes, when Deputy Attorney General Lloyd Warford discussed the office’s work alongside an ongoing federal investigation into legislative corruption.

That investigation has resulted in the convictions/guilty pleas of five lawmakers, one of whom is already in prison. All of the convictions have been related to the state’s General Improvement Fund. That’s a grant program directing state dollars unaccountably to specific local projects at the behest of individual legislators. The Arkansas Supreme Court declared the practice unconstitutional last year for the third time starting in 2006, but it keeps rising from the dead.

It was a remarkably candid few minutes for a process that mostly has occurred behind the curtain. The investigation has hung over the Capitol for, well, years now. Not much is said until someone is charged with a crime, or someone says something in court that hints at what pieces of the jigsaw puzzle might next fall into place. A central figure is Rusty Cranford, a lobbyist and executive with behavioral health provider Preferred Family Health who has already pleaded guilty to bribing legislators. Two other Preferred Family Health executives have been arrested for allegedly causing taxpayers to overpay the company $2.2 million from January 2015 to October 2017.

Warford confirmed that the attorney general’s office is actively investigating legislators and health providers who have not yet been charged. He didn’t say how many legislators, but it’s more than one. He also confirmed the office is coordinating to a limited degree with federal authorities. He said it’s “reasonably certain there will be more people charged later, us or the feds.”

Of course he wouldn’t say who is being investigated. Instead, he said this: “We’re going to follow the facts wherever they lead. There are legislators who were closely associated with Cranford. There were legislators who were in business with Cranford. There were legislators who were routinely receiving money from one thing or another from Cranford. Whether those transactions were legal or not is all under investigation.”

That’s an important question: How much of this process was legal but still wrong? Warford said the state had wasted $148 million, paying much more than it should have for services. However, it’s yet to be determined how much was stolen, and how much technically was spent legally under a system Cranford helped create.

Warford said investigators have at least 4 million documents in a vault and another 200 gigabytes of data they have collected from the Department of Human Services. Rutledge pointed out there are a lot of names contained in that information.

If you’re a legislator, you might be like one of the 11 disciples at the Passover meal, questioning if you ever crossed that line and asking, “Lord, is it I?”

Or you might be like Judas, knowing it is.