Baker tied to group seeking to limit suits
But files don’t mention payment
CONWAY — Former state Sen. Gilbert Baker was the contact person for a corporation that works to limit lawsuit litigation in Arkansas since at least January 2013, shortly before he began working as a top administrator at the University of Central Arkansas, and he retained that position until Monday, records show.
Public records do not say whether Baker was paid anything in that role — a key question in determining whether Baker should have advised UCA of his position with the tax-exempt corporation, Arkansans for Lawsuit Reform.
Neither Baker nor Marvin Parks, the corporation’s treasurer and a longtime Baker friend, returned repeated phone messages seeking comment.
In an earlier text message, however, Parks said, “It is not my practice to communicate with the media. However, any ‘formal’ statements regarding Arkansans for Lawsuit Reform” would come from him.
Baker’s longtime cellphone number — but not his name — was given as the contact for Arkansans for Lawsuit Reform on Jan. 3, 2013, on a lobbyist-registration form filed on behalf of Bruce Hawkins’ DBH Management Consultants, which listed the litigation group as one of its clients.
Baker joined UCA on Jan. 15, 2013. A conflict-of-interest form that Baker completed Jan. 22, 2013, does not mention the organization, and Baker did not mention it to UCA officials, said university spokesman Christina Madsen.
Baker’s phone number was also on DBH Management’s subsequent registration forms filed with the secretary of state’s office, but his name appeared nowhere on them nor on the 2013 federal tax return for Arkansans for Lawsuit Reform, an Arkansas Democrat-Gazette review found.
On Monday, after the Democrat-Gazette began asking questions about Baker’s ties to the litigation group, DBH Management filed an amended lobbyist registration form with the Arkansas secretary of state’s office. That form made no mention of Arkansans for Lawsuit Reform nor of Baker’s phone number.
Until Monday, the most recently updated registration form was filed April 21, with that information still present.
Hawkins did not return phone messages or an email seeking comment.
Baker resigned from his job as executive assistant to the UCA president on April 2 after becoming entangled in contention surrounding money given to Circuit Judge Michael Maggio ’s since-halted appeals-court campaign by seven of eight political action committees largely financed by nursing-home owner Michael Morton.
The Fort Smith businessman’s checks were dated July 8, 2013, three days before Maggio lowered a Faulkner County jury’s judgment in a negligence lawsuit against one of Morton’s 32 nursing homes from $5.2 million to $1 million.
The FBI and a state judicial agency are investigating the contributions. No one has been charged with a crime.
Morton has said Linda Leigh Flanagin, the sole employee of a consulting company that Baker created in late 2012, asked him to support Maggio while Maggio was presiding over the lawsuit, filed in the 2008 death of patient Martha Bull. Baker, a Conway Republican, has said he did not tell nor ask Flanagin to make the request.
Flanagin has declined comment.
The UCA Foundation also returned a $100,000 donation Morton made on July 8, 2013, in a check delivered by Baker, who took an $82,000 pay cut when he gave up his administrative job and was reassigned to teach music.
Arkansans for Tax Reform is a tax-exempt 501(c)(6) organization, according to its 2013 federal tax return filed with the Internal Revenue Service.
Parks released a copy of the 2013 federal tax return to the Democrat-Gazette as required by law, but did not provide anything more than the first page of the 12-page form until the newspaper made a follow-up request. That form does not mention Baker’s name nor phone number.
The form lists six people as officers or directors and says they had no reportable compensation from Arkansans for Tax Reform or related organizations.
The organization lists $203,500 as consulting expenses but does not say who got that money. Lobbyists are often called consultants, and information on whether some or all of that money went to Hawkins or Baker was unavailable.
The Arkansas Supreme Court has stripped Maggio of all of his court cases pending further notice. He is still being paid, and his term as a circuit judge runs through year’s end.
Campaign-finance records show that $15,000, or more than one-fourth of Maggio’s appeals-court campaign donations totaling $58,650, came from Parks, his wife or a lobbying group he founded; Hawkins, his wife and one of his PACs.
Parks and his wife, Kristi, gave Maggio’s campaign $2,000 each; KASSL Inc., a political consulting firm that Marvin Parks organized and incorporated in 2003, also gave Maggio $2,000. All three contributions were on Dec. 9, 2013.
On Dec. 23, 2013, DBH Management Consultants gave Maggio’s campaign $2,000. Phyllis Hawkins gave it $2,000 that same day, and Hawkins Insurance Agency gave an additional $2,000 on Dec. 26, 2013. The D. Bruce Hawkins 2 PAC gave the campaign $2,000 on Dec. 5, 2013, and $1,000 more on Jan. 28.
Maggio’s attorney, Lauren Hamilton, said in an email Monday that Maggio, “as well as every other” judge in Arkansas, “welcomes the legal, ethical and constitutionally protected support of friends and supporters.”
In the 2008 elections, when KASSL gave a total of $8,881 to 29 candidates, Baker got the most at $2,866, according to followthemoney.org. The next highest sum given to anyone was $350.
According to Parks’ LinkedIn profile, KASSL is a “contract lobbyist” dealing primarily with health care and insurance-related matters but is available for “any area related to Arkansas.”
Baker’s and Morton’s support for lawsuit limitations is no secret. In 2003, Baker was a co-sponsor of state legislation to overhaul the lawsuit system. The Arkansas Supreme Court later declared portions of that law unconstitutional.
Morton has said he would like to see limits on the damages that courts can award in Arkansas. He also said he believes that state law doesn’t allow plaintiffs to successfully sue him personally in connection with issues in his nursing homes.
“Lawyers are continually trying to pierce corporate veils and sue me personally. If judges are doing the right thing, judges tell them they can’t,” Morton said.
Matthew Hass, chief executive officer of the Arkansas Trial Lawyers Association, which opposes the lawsuit legislation Baker and Morton have supported, said Baker was the senator behind the overhaul efforts in 2003. When it came up in 2013, he said, “We knew going into the 2013 legislative session that … Gilbert Baker [would be] leading the charge.”
But when opponents learned Baker was joining UCA, that made things look different to them. And if Baker was lobbying for the group, he should have registered accordingly with the state, Hass said.
Hass said he would “find it surprising … if indeed [Baker] was paid money by this group.”
If he was paid, “in any form or fashion, it should have been reported” if the pay totaled more than $500, Hass said.
Hass said that Baker was always watching when the Legislature took up tort issues but that he never said he was there on the issue’s behalf.
“I can’t prove he was up there to work on this,” Hass said. “He could have very well been here on UCA business.”
Madsen said Baker lobbied some on UCA’s behalf in 2013.
Geoffrey C. Hazard Jr., who has written books on the law and ethics and who is a professor emeritus at the University of California, Hastings College of the Law, said Monday that whether Baker was paid for his involvement in Arkansans for Lawsuit Reform “could make a difference.”
“If he was getting financial support from some other source, that raises a question” of whether Baker should have mentioned the position on his conflict-of-interest form, Hazard said.
But if Baker was not being paid for the position, he would not be expected to put such information on the form, Hazard said. “That isn’t something you would put on a disclosure statement” to the university, Hazard said.