"(a) No constitutional officer or employee of a constitutional officer shall expend for personal use any moneys appropriated by the General Assembly for the maintenance and operation of the office, and the moneys appropriated for the maintenance and operation of the offices of the constitutional officers shall be expended only for official state business.

(b) This subchapter does not apply to the purchase, maintenance, and operation of state-owned motor vehicles."

In its 1997 opinion the Ethics Commission noted that "if the State Police determine that it is in the best interest of the security of the Governor to transport him in his plane, there are no statutory restrictions preventing the Governor's use of the ASP plane, regardless of the nature of the journey." However, there was an important caveat:

"That said, the Commission is not willing to opine that the ASP plane can be used by the Governor for any reason. In this regard, the Office of the Governor furnished the Commission with a set of voluntarily adopted internal policies that restrict the use of state-owned airplanes, to wit:

1.   State airplanes do not transport the Governor on journeys that are solely political in nature.

2.   State airplanes do not transport the Governor on journeys that are solely religious in nature.

3.   State airplanes do not transport the Governor on non-official, out-of-state trips or for any personal trips solely related to outside business or investment activities."

The part of Arkansas law most closely related to the subject was written before the state owned an airplane and therefore does not address it, allowing the governor's office to utilize the plane without restriction as part of his security needs. However, neither the State Police nor Huckabee will discuss how those security needs are determined — even after travel is completed — so it is impossible to know why the airplane is so crucial for his personal safety.

In short, "security" seems to be a magic word that, when uttered, eliminates the need for the Huckabee administration to account for the expenditure of public money. Ask Huckabee how he justifies using the state-owned plane, and he cites "security" and refers additional questions to the State Police. Ask the State Police how they determine whether the plane is necessary for the governor's security, and they cite "security." Ask in retrospect why in a particular instance the plane was necessary for the governor's security, and they cite "security."

Most of Huckabee's out-of-state travel on the state-owned airplane (as documented previously in the Times) is connected to his involvement in the National Governors Association and similar organizations, arguably related to his public office. However, in August the plane retrieved Huckabee in New Hampshire, where he was making political appearances before Republican groups. He did fly on from there to a governor's meeting in another state so mat Huckabee could perhaps argue this trip was not "exclusively" for political purposes.