Arkansas lawmakers OK plan to audit purchase of $19,000 lectern for Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders
Arkansas lawmakers on Thursday voted to audit the purchase of a $19,000 lectern for Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders, delving into an unusual controversy that’s prompted questions about the seemingly high cost of the item and claims that the governor’s office violated the state’s open-records law.
The all-Republican executive committee of the Legislative Joint Auditing Committee also voted to audit the Republican governor’s travel and security expenditures that were retroactively shielded from public release under a new Freedom of Information Act exemption Sanders signed last month.
The 39-inch tall (1-meter), blue and wood-paneled lectern was purchased in June with a state credit card for $19,029.25. It has become the focus of intense scrutiny in recent weeks and has gained national attention. The Republican Party of Arkansas reimbursed the state for the purchase on Sept. 14, and Sanders’ office has called the use of a state credit card for the lectern an accounting error. Sanders’ office said it received the lectern in August.
https://apnews.com/article/huckabee-sanders-lectern-audit-arkansas-353b5ee14e0ed13d7d1b0df694433fdcOpen linkView original on lemmy.world
Audit we now know for a fact it was purchased on Amazon for 900 bucks.
It's dropped to $729.
https://www.amazon.com/GTPET-Conference-Machinery-Lectern-Reception/dp/B0CGM72JXG/ref=sr_1_1?crid=34HIVCKEXA10Z&keywords=gtpet%2Bpodium&qid=1697158545&sprefix=gtpet%2Bpodium%2Caps%2C355&sr=8-1&ufe=app_do%3Aamzn1.fos.2b70bf2b-6730-4ccf-ab97-eb60747b8daf&th=1
2 for US$470 Hotel Brown Wooden Rostrum Speech Lectern Church Podium via Guangzhou YZY Hotel Supplies Co., Ltd on Alibaba
and it's even MDF not solid wood.Apologies for link parameters, it's the only way I could bet it to display without Alibaba booting me to the app deeplink.
Edited to add: it's definitely a knock off and not the exact same factory as the hickabee model, but the "have the same one as the white house!" pitch makes it funny enough to leave up.
Damn, they should have used the affirm payment plan. Smaller monthly payments are a little easier to hide.
Must have been a run on them cause it's sold out now.
They're selling a $19k lecturn for less than $1k!
You're making money buying it!
(After the money laundering part)
Well that would explain why it looks like a Sims user-created-addon-pack asset. Got a link?
$19k might have been believable if it was an old fancy historical piece
Even if it was a historical piece… buying it is a waste of money (restoring, sure, buying no.)
All you really need is a podium sturdy enough to handle a few heavy books, and offer some concealment- either to hide props or whatever or in case the speaker feels the need to adjust,
Sure, but I was mostly thinking about plausible deniability of money laundering rather than good fiscal management. I don't expect the latter from huckabee begin with.
Woah there, calm down, they don't have books since they're all banned.
It's also possible that they have a contract with the states corrections facilities to only buy furniture from them. WA state has to buy all it's furniture for anything public from Correctional Industries for example
That would certainly explain the make, though not the pricetag.
The price tag makes it a bit much I agree, though they charge an insane markup. Chairs are like 800 for base model, tables upwards 1200. Not exactly 19,000 but it isn't beyond them I would imagine.
That’s pretty standard if not affordable for handmade tables and chairs, and it’s a factor of ten away from the lectern, nowhere even remotely close to $19k.
I call it an insane markup because the people handmaking these things are paid a dollar and thirty cents an hour.
North Carolina has a similar policy, before you purchase anything, you're supposed to check to see if Correction Industries sells it, if so, you need to purchase it from them unless you have a valid exemption (like for instance a medical condition that requires a certain type of chair)
They may have used a furniture contractor. Our office had some dude who looked like the mafia stooge wearing a gold chain in the Simpsons to demo some chairs for us and they were shit quality and priced 3-4x higher than Amazon. I can see how going through a process like this but completely corrupt could produce a podium 20x the base cost.
According to the Associated Press, the company that sold the lectern is Beckett Events, LLC. It’s an event planning company in Virginia founded by a former lobbyist.
Here's their website:
https://beckettevents.com/
It's about 80% buzzwords. You know what, good for her for fleecing the government. She probably saw what was getting approved and thought she could do just as well as others by scamming the government. She flew a little too close to the sun here though I think.
I thought people were joking when they talked bout buying it on amazon, but thats the same one, with different wood!
Wait, that's a picture of the lectern?
I thought it was made from a solid slab or some shit, like those super expensive tables that one guy on Youtube makes. (honestly, it's a bunch of people making those tables, so insert your own favorite)
So yeah, a solid slab of wood is expensive as fuck, and then you add in labor costs... But that lectern looks like shit.
I'm sure it's custom made, but it's also pretty shit.
It's sold on Amazon.
https://www.amazon.com/GTPET-Conference-Machinery-Lectern-Reception/dp/B0CGM72JXG/ref=sr_1_1?crid=34HIVCKEXA10Z&keywords=gtpet%2Bpodium&qid=1697158545&sprefix=gtpet%2Bpodium%2Caps%2C355&sr=8-1&ufe=app_do%3Aamzn1.fos.2b70bf2b-6730-4ccf-ab97-eb60747b8daf&th=1
I can see some differences, but it was obviously made by someone who had looked at that design (or a third design that both are based off of)
The Amazon one looks like fake wood, and the overly expensive one looks like real wood. Real wood drives the price up, but $19k still seems excessive.
Another factor here, the government is informally banned from buying anything not made in America. That informal ban also applies to states buying shit from people and business in other states.
So yeah... A custom lectern, made by someone in Arkansas, made to look like a shitty lectern on Amazon... That's going to be pricey. But not $19k pricey unless they just took the first bid that they got.
The 19k one looks like cheap ass ikea veneer. No way is that real wood; the differences are easily explained with source materials being different over time.
There do appear to be differences, the microphone holder, for instance, but, yeah, $19K is a stretch, even if it was made by a craftsman in Arkansas
Let me preface this by saying I have no love for Sanders or the GOP, but either the picture from the article is incorrect or the Amazon item isnot the lectern in question. While they look vaguely close in design they're definitely not the same item.
The one linked on Amazon probably isn't even worth the $700. It's probably fiber board and veneer.
If they had a custom piece done out of a solid block of aged hardwood with metal finish work in a solid top, It's not hard to hit $20,000 on an artsy piece of furniture, especially when you are client is a politician.
I'm also not saying that it has any place in a governor's briefing room. But It's completely reasonable that quality one-off custom piece of furniture out of good materials is 19 grand.
Sorry. But Sander’s is the same basic design- a metal frame (probably formed sheet rather than cast,) with msg/laminate panels added with a veneer on them.
You don’t carve a podium from solid wood and the stuff that into a metal box
You would never cast iron into a podium, that would be heavy as fuck.
No, it was likely welded and then sanded to a mirror finish, before the horrible powder coat was applied.
And no, that does look like real wood.
It's ugly as fuck, but I doubt it's badly built.
Cast aluminum, not iron. And people have gone to dumber extents. I did, however say it was probably sheet metal with panels on top.
Heavy podiums are actually preferred- they’re less likely to topple over when some fat ass leans on them (see trump, for example,) or move when the gesticulation gets …. Excessively … thumpy.
Further… you know what a veneer is? It’s a thin slice of wood glued on top (and edges.) of course it looks like it’s solid wood.
It’s not.
There’s no real reason to do otherwise- few people will be up close to the podium that the seams would be visible.
There’s absolutely no way it’s carved from a monolithic slab- you can tell by the (terribly) book matched grain in the front panel; and the grain pattern is wonky on its edge, suggesting it’s all veneered over.
The differences in appearance are easily explained by different run in manufacturing, with different powder coat formulation and different veneer but the same build. The most i would go is to say it’s a rebadge job from China (like 90% of the stuff on alibaba and Amazon,)
A $10,000 diamond ring from a jeweler and a ring from the counter at Walmart or also the same basic design.
Most of that “value” is in the stupid little chunk of rock. That or the idiot is paying a steep idiot tax
An all republican committee is going after her? Wow she must be more insufferable than I thought.
Seems totally legit...
I’ve seen a bunch of guys online who can make that for 2k and include real Sanwa joysticks and buttons.
I’m in the wrong business…
Is that what the spiderweb in her office says?
I didn't know Charlotte was willing to curse like that.
When Templeton runs the state, she curses.