Cook: Is Secretary Of State Employee Campaigning On Public Time?

State government employees are prohibited from campaigning on state time, but a Mark Martin employee may be ignoring the law on this important point.

One basic rule for state government employees is to not participate in partisan politics during regular office hours. In fact, it’s against state law to campaign on public time.

Today Mark Myers, a Department Director for the Secretary of State’s office, decided to spend his morning at his $75,000 a year state government job pushing out Republic Party talking points against Mike Ross on a mutual friend’s Facebook page.

Our mutual friend posted a link on his Facebook page to the story I wrote yesterday about Asa Hutchinson’s Farm Bureau flub.

Lo and behold this morning at 9:00 a.m., I noticed that my friend and Myers were in the middle of an online debate about Mike Ross, Asa Hutchinson’s chance of victory, and Obamacare.

I posted Myer’s Facebook posts below. Since our mutual friend doesn’t work for state government, and is not in public life, I did not include his name.

To confirm that Mark Myers was actually on state government time while posting about politics I called him moments after his Facebook posts at his Secretary of State’s office. Myers was in his office and seemed flummoxed by my call.

Myers did not deny that he was campaigning on public time by posting partisan attacks on Facebook during regular office hours.

Myers said he didn’t use a state government computer to make the Facebook postings, but that he posted the comments on his personal cell phone. Myers did not deny that he was in his state government office while making the posts.

Mark Myers declined to comment on the appropriateness of engaging in partisan politics on state government time. However, Myers sadly attempted to blame-shift after being busted for breaking the law by noting our mutual friend’s employer wouldn’t be pleased he was also on Facebook talking about politics.

Arkansas law expressly prohibits state employees from engaging in politics during office hours:

Arkansas Code 7-1-103 (2)(A)(i): It shall be unlawful for any public servant, as defined in § 21-8-402, to devote any time or labor during usual office hours toward the campaign of any other candidate for office or for the nomination to any office.

Violating this provision is a Class A misdemeanor offense.

I served as the Chief of Staff for the Lt. Governor’s Office for almost four years. During my time there, it was made clear to all staff members that we would not be involved in partisan politics, candidate campaigns, etc. during regular office hours.

We made sure everyone knew doing so was against the law and it was wrong ethically. We also made it clear that staff was not allowed to use personal social media for any political purposes during regular business hours. Perhaps Secretary Martin should implement a similar policy.

Reading Mark Myers Facebook posts below it’s clear to me he was campaigning during regular office hours by attacking Mike Ross and advocating for Asa Hutchinson.

In my opinion, it’s no different if Myers was in his government office calling people using his personal cell phone and went after Mike Ross on various issues and said Hutchinson was gonna win the Governor’s race. That’s not what he was hired to do, he’s on the taxpayers’ time.

Why is Secretary of State Mark Martin paying someone $75,000 a year just so they can campaign for fellow Republicans on state government time?

Sadly, based on numerous other examples, it doesn’t seem like Mark Martin has any clue what goes on in his own office.

Secretary of State’s Mark Myers Facebook Post during Office Hours:

· Mark Myers Except Mike Ross was for Obamacare before he was against it. Nice fistbump with Anthony Weiner too. http://www.washingtonpost.com/…/07/31/AR2009073
House Committee Approves Health-Care Package
www.washingtonpost.com
The House Energy and Commerce Committee Friday night approved a sweeping package… See More
2 hours ago · Like

NAME DELETED Is Asa for or against the Arkansas system? And again, is he a member of the Farm Bureau or not?
2 hours ago · Like

NAME DELETED “Ross said he voted in Congress against the federal Affordable Care Act and voted to repeal it, but he said it has good parts and bad parts. He said the part that gave the state the ability to implement the private option, which uses federal Medicaid money to subsidize private insurance for low-income Arkansans, is “one of the good parts.”

“It’s the right thing to do, it’s fiscally responsible, it makes sense, I would have voted for it, I would have signed it, and as governor I’ll protect the funding for the Medicaid private option,” he said.

– See more at: http://m.arkansasnews.com/…/gubernatorial-candidates…
Gubernatorial candidates spar on private option, minimum wage, taxes
arkansasnews.com
LITTLE ROCK — The four candidates for Arkansas governor sparred Friday on topics such as the private option, the minimum wage and taxes.
2 hours ago · Unlike · 1

Mark Myers Asa has said multiple times-apparently Max can’t understand English-that he would’ve signed the Private Option; however, he has caveated that with that like all Arkansas’s programs that it is subject to continuing to be the fiscally responsible thing to do. Which brings up is Ross for Ross’s tax cut plan being implemented next year or against it being implemented next year. And, I have no idea if he is a paid member of the Farm Bureau. And, if that is all Ross has to bang on against Asa, then Ross is about to lose by 7-8 percent, maybe 10%.
2 hours ago · Like

· Mark Myers Let’s be clear and not play the DC game. The bill Ross voted out of committee was the House base bill. Without the base bill passing Ross’s Committee on Energy and Commerce, then there would have been no vote on the House floor. The other bills were substituted on the floor. Ross voted to substitute them by voting for the self-executing rules, then voted against final passage AFTER it was clear there were enough votes for it to pass. Again, no bill out of Energy and Commerce, then there is no vote on passage of ACA.
about an hour ago · Like