It's really not their fault. There are just so many state owned vehicles available that an employee is almost dared, compelled to go use one for his, or her, own personal use.
It's well documented that the Arkansas Game and Fish commission had more vehicles than employees. To over come this imbalance some of the Commissioners took more than one vehicle home. Since only one vehicle can be driven at a time, the other rested safely at their farm or residence until required for personal duty.
When asked to located and document the number of state owned vehicles and their users, Mr. Richard Weiss, the Head of the Dept. of Finance and Admin., all but admitted that he wasn't capable of doing so. And to his credit he has met that expectation. And what has his boss, the Governor Beebe done concerning this failure to investigate and report? Governor Beebe has continued to use the State Police to drive him around so that he can't be accused of abusing a state owned vehicle. The fact that at least three State Police are thus unable to help defend the citizens seems to be of little or no concern when compared to the possibility of misuse of a state vehicle, or whatever his rational is for using the Professional Police Officers as chauffeurs.
Now we learn that Sheila Sharp, the Corrections Department Head of Administrative Services has used a state vehicle to take her family on a Florida vacation. At least in her defense it wasn't her personally assigned state vehicle, she took a larger one to better hold all the family and baggage.
OK, it's not as bad as I've written. She was on her way to a convention on state business; her family just went along for the ride. The fact that she had to take a gas guzzling Dodge SUV, assigned to the computer “Geeks”, rather than her assigned Chevy Impala was to accommodate her daughter, son-in-law, and two grandchildren. But that's not what got her into trouble. What got her into hot water was the fact that she didn't tell her boss beforehand that she was commandeering the “Geeks” SUV and taking the clan on a working vacation. This prior notification was all that was required, then all else she did was OK, Mr. and Mrs. Taxpayer.
Ms. Sharp has only been with the Department 14 years and her current job is Head of the Administrative stuff so how could she be expected to remember such a piece of trivia.
She was one of 15 state employees who went to this convention. Eleven of them flew, if you can believe that. Passing up the opportunity to take the entire family to Florida and flying? Perhaps they checked with the “Geeks” and learned that Ms. Sharp had already commandeered their SUV.
But talk about being completely in the fog of life. If you can believe it, two of the folks that attended the conference actually carpooled down and back! What were they thinking? Two traveling for the cost of one? I can only assume that their careers will be suspect when this information gets out to our state executives.
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