With the Republicans taking over both houses of Congress, youcan bet there will be many investigations of business activity (legaland illegal) in Arkansas.
And eventually, as the wheels of justice spin closer to the1996 presidential election, there should be many interestingrevelations.
But an odd little group of over-achievers based at theUniversity of Arkansas in Fayetteville seems to have gotten a headstart on Congress by looking into whether a state agency did anythingimproper in borrowing funds for housing development.
It is also looking into whether that state agency lent money tocompanies that might have been politically connected withoutexpecting repayment.
A little over a week ago, the group - called simply theArkansas Committee - was allowed to peruse a bunch of documentsrelated to the Arkansas Development Finance Authority.
ADFA was a state agency that raised money for housingdevelopment in Arkansas. It was reorganized in the mid-1980s -during the reign of Gov. Bill Clinton - so it was empowered to raisemassive amounts of cash through the sale of bonds for variousdevelopment projects.
Mark Swaney, a 40-year-old engineer who started looking intoADFA while a graduate student at the University of Arkansas a fewyears ago, is the force behind the Arkansas Committee. But admittingthat he is in over his head when it comes to double-checking audits,Swaney has enlisted the services of a former Arkansas state comptroller.
"They could move massive amounts of cash into the stategovernment," Swaney says of ADFA. Swaney wants to audit ADFA todetermine the comings and goings of that money.
Swaney's group first started seeking ADFA documents in Marchthrough state Freedom of Information Act requests. Swaney said thoserequests were turned down by ADFA, so he went to court.
When Swaney showed up at the offices of ADFA's lawyer inLittle Rock on Dec. 2, he didn't get exactly what he was after."They pulled a fast one," he told me.
ADFA allowed him to look at the documents he sought but not -as Swaney claims they promised - copy them. Instead, Swaney said hewas told to mark the pages he was interested in and ADFA would copythem and send them to him.
Right now this is a David vs. Goliath story. But if anythingis amiss once the ADFA books become available, some of the biggorillas in Congress are likely to make this an even match.
Confidence game: Were you impressed by the big jump in consumerconfidence in November that was reported by the Conference Board?
Well, take a closer look at the numbers. First of all, thesurvey conducted by the Conference Board just didn't jibe with theresults pollsters were getting during the November election, whenvoters were expressing fears about the economy.
That fear - along with crime and a few other things - was the reason voters gave control of Congress to Republicans forthe first time in decades.
What else was wrong with the board's numbers?
The group has recorded big gains in November for the last threeyears. So there may be a seasonal quirk in its numbers rather thanany real gain in confidence.
Albert Sindlinger, who I believe does a superior job surveyingconsumer confidence, says he isn't seeing an increase in confidencein his polling results. His survey shows a peak in annual consumerconfidence last April, with a moderate decline since then.
That would be more in sync with the November election results.
"What the Conference Board is measuring is the economy throughthe consumer," says Sindlinger. "We don't do that - in no way. Weare measuring household liquidity."
Sindlinger says that no matter what people are led to believeabout the economy, their spending habits (and ultimately theeconomy's health) will depend on how much money they have in theirpockets.
"Household liquidity has been on a steady, slow deteriorationsince April. Particularly among stock owners who do over 50 percentof the discretionary buying and 75 percent of the luxury buying,"says Sindlinger.
And he says that consumers' expectation of their income levelsin the future are also declining.
If you believe consumers are so darned optimistic, you have tofind another reason why they were so vengeful during the election.
Happy, prosperous voters don't throw out the people who broughtthem that prosperity.
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