It Takes a Library
WEBB, KANE
It Takes a Library . . . How many lawyers do you need to build the Clinton Library? BY KANE WEBB Little Rock, Ark. TWO HIGH-SCHOOL STUDENTS are asleep in the back row of the Arkansas Supreme...
...It's the kind of development you don't usually find in Arkansas...
...Waiting for the end...
...Its location near downtown has already drawn two major business developments, and longtime residents are thrilled to have anything built in this forgotten part of the city, where old water heaters and broken washing machines go to die...
...But, perhaps inevitably, the financing controversy has led to lawsuits and bad feelings— over a $200-million presidential library that should have been welcomed as the ultimate slab of nonpartisan pork...
...Loft apartments, a riverfront district full of yuppie beer halls and coffee houses, the expansion of high-tech businesses into downtown —the whole, gentrified, Jane Jacobs dream...
...It was eventually shortened to just a few blocks leading to the library...
...Another day, another Clinton controversy, in another court of law...
...Win-dowless, empty, condemned...
...Waiting for the verdict...
...She says the city is playing an illegal shell game by pledging general fund revenue to pay off a general revenue bond that financed the library land...
...Two days after his visit, the president cut the deal to have his Arkansas disbarment proceedings dropped...
...This decision to provide the land for the presidential library from our Parks and Recreation Department has raped our city zoo, parks and golf courses...
...The city of Little Rock is on the hook, with a $16.5 million bond issue...
...There have been times . . . he's vented a little bit," says Dailey...
...You just take a right at the Arkansas River and head east out of downtown until you run into absolutely nothing...
...This will probably mean a huge increase in fees or taxpayer money that goes into the city's general fund for other basic projects...
...On the other hand, one prominent local Republican and non-donor to the library says that's what post-presidential foundations are for—picking up the tabs and saving the taxpayers some bucks...
...But the Pfeifer and Harris lawsuits drag on, and now the fund-raising prowess of a nonprofit, tax-deductible foundation that may have to publish every donor's name will be put to the test...
...When a reporter for the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette asked how he felt about helping Clinton pay his rent in New York, Ford said simply, "We gave money to the Clinton library...
...It's easy to find the 27 acres destined for Clinton enshrinement...
...And by pledging their money to the library, the city may be driving the parks into a deficit...
...He can barely get the words out when I talk to him later in the day...
...But landing the Clinton Library in his city has been anything but a crowning achievement for Jim Dailey...
...He aims to convince the court, if not the people of Little Rock, that city financing of the purchase of land for the Clinton Library is legal...
...Indeed, Little Rock's zoo has been struggling for years and recently lost its national accreditation...
...We have got a subpoena...
...The city keeps winning, Nora Harris keeps appealing, and plans for the library have been kept waiting...
...What it isn't is simple...
...Jim Dailey must wince when he sees that building...
...He shouldn't have any trouble finding material...
...There's a 19th-century train station of rust-red brick that will be preserved and transformed into a public policy center...
...How will this new role for the foundation sit with donors...
...But this arrangement surely came as a surprise to library contributors, especially those in Arkansas, who must have thought they were giving money for bricks and mortar in Little Rock...
...But then, only half of the $200 million will be spent on the library...
...The city maintains that it is within its legal rights to use the fees from the parks, golf courses, and zoo to pay for the library's land and replace any shortfall from the general fund just as it has in the past...
...2004?—will be the site of the William J. Clinton Presidential Center, now bumped up to a $200-million Kane Webb is assistant editorial page editor of the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette...
...The Clinton Foundation has been served...
...The day after the foundation gets its full-disclosure demand from Congress, Skip Rutherford is traveling from Little Rock to Fayetteville, where he teaches a journalism class once a week at the University of Arkansas...
...Which is why it's something of a shock to see his name on a congressional subpoena...
...But on subpoena day, he uncharacteristically doesn't get back to a reporter...
...Harris's argument is that the city is doing this indirectly—general funds to the bonds, but with a detour through the parks...
...If it weren't for the students, there wouldn't be much of a crowd at the state's highest court this cold, gray February morning not a month into Bill Clinton's post-presidential life...
...A difficult time that never quite draws to a close...
...Or so says her attorney, for his client has opted to take the Fifth rather than testify...
...The big issue was do we want to turn this into a vote of up or down on President Clinton...
...We haven't done anything differently...
...In his capacities as a Clinton defender, both officially and un-, Rutherford has earned a reputation for always returning phone calls and never dodging questions...
...She thinks there should have been a specific bond issue to pay for the land, which the city wanted to avoid for fear of having a Clinton referendum...
...Joe Ford, a conservative businessman and CEO of Arkansas-based Alltel, a telecommunications company, pledged $1 million in 1999, specifically citing the project's impact on downtown...
...That's where the shell game comes in...
...He has presided over an unprecedented revitalization of the city's core...
...As Justice Donald Corbin puts it in a question to Harris's lawyer, David Henry: "Aren't we dealing with semantics...
...This prompts a congressional subpoena to make public the names of library donors...
...With the available options, knowing we were being pushed to have some commitment . . . I still think having the presidential library here, despite the issue continuing to be part of the Clinton story, will be a wonderful addition to the city...
...In a state like Arkansas and a city like Little Rock, where everybody knew everybody even before we all met in court, Skip Rutherford is the kind of local personality who is well-known for his well-knownness...
...The way we financed the land, I've thought about it a hundred times," says the mayor...
...Yes," answers Henry, "the city is playing word games...
...Like putting a sign on a cow that says horse...
...Next to it, sitting a little too close, is a pea-green, metal building...
...About the only thing Johnson can say is that the Clinton Foundation may still pay part of the rent for the ex-president's offices in Manhattan, even if he moves to cheaper digs in Harlem...
...Waiting for the arguments...
...I agonized on my role as mayor in the midst of all [the Clinton scandals...
...It's not easy to stay awake as Tom Carpenter, attorney for the city of Little Rock, approaches the seven justices to make his case...
...The rest...
...This self-described retired housewife isn't the only resident of Little Rock who has taken the city to court over the library...
...project by the ex-president...
...Instead, his assistant, Jordan Johnson, calls back with the Clinton Foundation's latest line: "I can neither confirm nor deny that Denise Rich contributed...
...Almost five minutes...
...Rutherford said he hadn't, either...
...The only piece left is" . . . pause . . . "Gene's...
...You are hereby commanded to produce . . ." Will Little Rock never see the end of this...
...We've been using the two-term model set by Reagan...
...Namely, that Denise Rich, the ex-wife of America's most famous pardoned fugitive, Marc Rich, has donated "an enormous sum of money" to the library fund...
...Little Rock's leaders did not want that...
...I can't comment...
...Bill Clinton's only presence in this courtroom is his name...
...Then, as if remembering his supporting role in this latest Clinton tragicomedy, he defends the decision not to put a vote before the people...
...At times like this, it seems as if Arkansas has spent most of the Clinton era in a courtroom...
...Yes, $200 million...
...The Rich money and what it may or may not have bought is hardly the first controversy over the Clinton Library...
...Gene Pfeifer checks in to tell me that he doesn't expect his appeal to be heard till summer, and the actual construction of the library seems farther away than ever...
...Harris's lawsuit against the city has been proceeding for almost three years now...
...He may be the aboriginal Friend of Bill, and he's one of the few FOBs not to be tainted by scandal...
...That's it...
...May Supply Co...
...There are a lot of pieces to this story that makes it a tough and agonizing journey...
...But certainly not waiting for Arkansas's most famous and infamous son to save the day...
...Pfeifer's suit, which is on appeal, has held up the groundbreaking for months...
...We didn't give to anything else...
...He's regularly described as a Good Guy, which is the highest of southern compliments, and even his ideological opposites usually have a good word for the Skipper...
...The library is just one more instance of the polarizing effect William Jefferson Clinton has had on his home state...
...Like a TV weatherman...
...So are the justices...
...Just persistent...
...Bill Clinton hasn't been pleased...
...But the Harlem office is the least of Rutherford's worries...
...Eugene Pfeifer III, a prominent real-estate developer and another City Hall gadfly, has sued Little Rock over its attempt to seize his three acres of land on the library site...
...That doesn't trouble me," he says...
...It would have been a mandate for or against Clinton," he says...
...Waiting...
...We've removed quite a few buildings," he says...
...City officials estimate the library will attract about 300,000 visitors and an extra $10.7 million a year...
...The decision was top-down, secretive, non-participatory, and many of the city directors didn't know a thing about it on the night it passed and some still don't have the details," Pfeifer tells me by e-mail...
...After all, there's no denying the economic benefit of a presidential library...
...Just a few local reporters, Carpenter, a lawyer for the plaintiff, and the plaintiff herself—a blunt, 68-year-old, white-haired pain in City Hall's outstretched neck named Nora Harris...
...Desolate would be a kind description...
...But not here, and not with this president...
...Dailey has all the right connections for a politician looking to get ahead in Little Rock: He's long been friends with Bill Clinton, he's a lifelong Democrat from a prominent local family, and he gets his political advice from Skip Rutherford, one of Bill Clinton's closest friends and now the subpoenaed president of the Clinton Foundation...
...The William J. Clinton Foundation, it seems, will pay for everything surrounding the presidential library except what actually surrounds the presidential library: the land...
...The way the city acquired the land, the way it leveraged the parks and zoo, the way it caved in to Clinton paranoia and refused to let the people vote on a bond issue to finance the site . . . it's all led inexorably to an erosion of public confidence in city government and, perhaps most predictably, another division along the Great Clinton Fault Line...
...Dailey has been mayor of Little Rock since 1994...
...Even something really important, like renovation of the Razorbacks' football stadium, runs a mere $106 million...
...To judge by their rough treatment of Carpenter, they seem to understand the Clintonesque game and the Clintonesque question: Is the city's financing illegal or just slick...
...At one especially ludicrous point in the Pfeifer case, the city tried to argue that the library wasn't really a library but a park, so it could pay for the land with park revenues...
...Meanwhile, on this same morning, Dan Burton's House Government Reform Committee in Washington is finding out some interesting details about the Clinton Library...
...I tried to be as supportive of him as Webb Hub-bell, another friend, but at the same time, I'm the mayor of the city...
...Either way, it's not what the residents of Little Rock signed on for...
...It's Gene Pfeifer's building...
...Bill Clinton is my friend, and I certainly don't wear a halo...
...A presidential library would seem the kind of project to quicken the pulse of every civic booster...
...Only a few buildings remain on the land...
...Things aren't quite so dramatic in Arkansas's capital...
...It's not holding up well, but it's holding up everything...
...Which is more than enough to keep legal briefs flying and tempers flaring...
...Well, there's a Camp David-like retreat in Hot Springs to pay for, an endowment to fatten, and a whole post-presidential agenda to fund...
...When Bill Clinton visited Arkansas to address the state legislature during his last week in office, he surprised local officials by declaring the library a $200 million project—more than twice the original, $85 million estimate...
...As a taxpayer, I'm delighted...
...One of the students suppresses a laugh...
...Waiting for the plausible explanation...
...As another FOB facing a subpoena, he's got a bigger controversy on his hands...
...His subject: crisis communications...
...It doesn't use general revenue directly to pay off the bonds for the library land...
...Johnson says he hasn't received any complaints so far...
...To Skip Rutherford, President, William J. Clinton Presidential Foundation...
...At one point, folks got so disgusted that they flooded City Hall with phone calls against renaming a main downtown thoroughfare Clinton Avenue...
...It was a difficult time for me...
...The city has used general revenue to subsidize the struggling parks department in the past...
...Then again, only a few buildings were there to begin with...
...She's suing the city for the way it's buying the 27.7 acres of land along the Arkansas River that one day— 2003...
...TWO HIGH-SCHOOL STUDENTS are asleep in the back row of the Arkansas Supreme Court, and the rest of their classmates, the ones with their eyes open, have that slack-jawed look of the video generation under the anesthetic of a school assignment...
...Hey, they are paying attention...
...But nothing is simple when it comes to Bill Clinton and his home state of Arkansas...
...Among other things, Pfeifer doesn't like the way Little Rock officials decided to spend more than $12 million to acquire the site by using fees from the city's parks, zoo, and golf courses—a move the city made without voter approval...
...Who can blame them...
...A few days later, it's raining cats, dogs, and subpoenas in Little Rock...
...The steady rain makes it feel colder than it is, and the drive from downtown to the future site of the Clinton Library takes longer than usual...
...Knowing what I do today . . ." The mayor trails off...
...It's all rather . . . Clintonesque...
Vol. 6 • February 2001 • No. 23
