The Arkansas Democrat-Gazette reported this morning that state Treasurer Dennis Milligan has asked for legislative authority to hire a staff attorney for up to $83,000 a year and to give investment manager Ed Garner a raise from $97,400 to $109,106.

Milligan needs a lawyer, no doubt. He’s been billing the state for work of a private attorney defending him in a defamation case.

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As for Garner, the former Republcian legislator from Maumelle, a Milligan spokesman told the D-G:

Garner “has proven his ability and his panache for investing and being able to increase the investments” managed by the treasurer’s office.”

Panache. Dictionary says that means “flamboyant confidence of style or manner.”

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It is flamboyantly confident to speak of Garner as a paragon of fiscal integrity worthy of  an 8 percent raise in a year when other state employees apparently will get nothing.

Run a search on his name in the circuit clerk’s on-line index. You’ll find him named in legal actions over the years for failure to remit taxes (sales and income tax withholding) or license fees owed by a Little Rock bakery he owned, one action as recent as last June.

Panache indeed. When he was deadbeating the state on taxes, Garner was a ranking member of the House Revenue and Taxation Committee.

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