Hard drives in 83 computers and four servers were destroyed, according to Claire Bailey, director of the Arkansas Department of Information Systems (DIS). She said that her office backed up information from the servers, but not the computers, and gave the backup tapes to Huckabee's former chief of staff. The DIS apparently did not retain a copy of the data on the backup tapes.
The computers from which the hard drives were removed and destroyed were located in the state Capitol; a state office in Washington; the Arkansas State Police airport hangar; the governor's mansion; and the Arkansas State Police drug office, she said.
The ethics complaint was filed on Monday by Bella Vista, Ark. resident Jim Parsons over concerns that state property had been destroyed. Parsons confirmed that he filed the complaint, but a spokesman for the Arkansas Ethics Commission -- citing a confidentiality policy -- would not confirm the existence of a complaint against Huckabee.
Parsons on Tuesday also tried to file a criminal complaint against Huckabee with Larry Jegley, the prosecuting attorney of Pulaski County. That was one day after Huckabee, a Republican, filed papers to form an exploratory committee in advance of a possible run for the 2008 GOP presidential nomination.
However, Jegley's office did not accept Parsons' complaint because it did not consider him to be a victim of a crime, according to First Deputy Prosecutor, John Johnson. If, in fact, destruction of the hard drives was a crime, the true victim of Huckabee's actions would be the state agencies that owned the computers, he said.
The state spent US$13,000 from the its emergency fund to destroy the computer hard drives and server hard drives, Bailey said. Huckabee spokeswoman Alice Stewart said the former governor wanted to delete information that wasn't needed by the new governor, Mike Beebe.
"Gov. Huckabee really wanted to go out of his way to ease the transition of the new governor, and part of that included us shutting down our own computer systems in enough time to remove the hard drives and get them destroyed and return the computers to Beebe's office for them to just install the hard drives rather than get new computers," she said.
Stewart denied that Huckabee destroyed the hard drives to expunge information that might reflect badly on him. And Huckabee himself said he was only trying to protect the privacy of data on the drives.
"This is not about destroying state property, this is about honoring our obligation to protect the privacy of the thousands of people who had personal data on those hard drives," Huckabee said in a statement e-mailed to Computerworld. "We carried out recommendations from the Department of Information Systems to destroy the hard drives. Anyone who is familiar with the ethics commission is aware that Jim Parsons is well known for filing numerous and frivolous complaints against various entities in state government."
Parsons said he tried to file the criminal complaint against Huckabee because of concerns that the governor had destroyed state property. "I think anything over $100 is a felony, and I think this is a felony," Parsons said. "I think to destroy property which is ours -- and to spend [$13,000] to destroy it -- is certainly a waste of taxpayers' money. To destroy our records is just wrong."
In his ethics complaint against Huckabee, Parsons said Huckabee should not have destroyed state records because citizens have a right to know the information contained on the drives.
According to Beebe spokesman Matt DeCample, the new administration had to use $335,000 from the governor's operating budget to purchase new computers as well as new hard drives. Currently, the governor's office has 22 refurbished computers with new hard drives, 27 new desktop computers and 22 new laptops.
"We were taken a little by surprise that he went to the extreme lengths that he did to crush the hard drives without informing anyone ahead of time and without proper authority," said Arkansas Sen. Jimmy Jeffress, (D-Crossett), last week. "This is typical for what we've experienced the last 10 years out of Mr. Huckabee. It sort of reminds me a lot of what [President Richard] Nixon did before he left office - trying to erase tapes."
Jeffress said Jegley is now trying to determine whether Huckabee's actions violated any state laws. But information included in a PowerPoint presentation on the state Attorney General's Web site says: "Tampering with a public records (sic) is a [Class D] felony." A Class D felony in Arkansas is punishable by up to six years in prison. The problem, according to Johnson, is how to determine if the records on the hard drives that were destroyed were, in fact, public documents.
Gabe Holmstrom, a spokesman for the Arkansas attorney general, said his office is also reviewing the situation to determine whether any laws were broken.
Bailey said a person on her DIS staff worked with Huckabee's office "to determine the mechanism for their transition out of office." She also said she believes that the staffer provided Huckabee's office with options for handling the sensitive information kept on the computer hard drives and servers.
"Working with that designee, they selected a combination of the write-over of the hard drives and the destruction of the hard drives," Bailey said. "The CIO's office has guidelines that describe for state agencies recommendations if the computers house sensitive data and in those recommendations it says if there's sensitive data, it is [the CIO's] recommendation that [the agencies] write over it one to three times and destroy the hard drive."
Bailey said her office does get requests from other state agencies to destroy or write over sensitive data, but does not weigh in on whether doing so is appropriate. "Our customers make the decision, DIS does not make the decision, about whether data is sensitive or not," she said. "We take care of information for our customers; We back up information for our customers, but we do not go in and analyze the data for our customers."