I asked some questions Friday evening of Gov. Mike Beebe and Attorney General Dustin McDaniel’s office relative to McDaniel’s unilateral spending of some $13 million from a nationwide settlement with major banks over foreclosure practices.

No response from McDaniel to that list of questions.

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Beebe’s spokesman Matt DeCample responded today:

To answer your inquiry from Friday night, no, McDaniel did not consult with the governor on distribution of the settlement funds. His office did keep our office up to date on the negotiations as they developed.

Under current law, the AG is the one with the authority to determine how settlement monies are spent.

As AG, Governor Beebe worked to handle settlement money by the cy-pres doctrine, keeping money close to the subject of the lawsuit and settlement as much as possible. It appears that AG McDaniel’s published policy has similar goals.

Under current law, the a.g. indeed is calling the shots on spending of lawsuit settlement money. Is this constitutional? That’s still an open question, I think, resting so far on the shaky precedent of a single, not wholly related case that’s more than 60 years old. Did all of the spending outlined by McDaniel (and it wasn’t very specific) generally relate to the subject of the lawsuit? Well, it’s better than when McDaniel took a drug settlement and sent it to the State Police Foundation to build a building at the state cops’ shooting range (a use not mentioned in the court order on the settlement). But the $9 million in unspecified money sent to the Arkansas Development Financing Authority, including for “economic development”? That remains to be seen.

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UPDATE: More from McDaniel’s PR agent, Blake Rutherford: