The intrigue continues over whether Secretary of State Kevin Shelley will, in fact, appear before a joint legislative committee investigating him and his office, as the chair of the committee has now given Shelley until Thursday morning to respond.

Monday’s marathon hearing of the Joint Legislative Audit Committee (JLAC) lasted until after 10 pm. But only a representative of Shelley showed up, and alone faced tough questions about how federal election money was spent.

Today, Shelley sent a letter to the JLAC chair, Assemblymember Nicole Parra (D-Bakersfield) and said he needed time to consult with his lawyers before deciding whether to take the committee up on its request that he voluntarily testify.

(You can read the letters sent between Parra and Shelley by clicking here)

Late this afternoon, Parra told reporters on a conference call that if the Secretary doesn’t voluntarily testify, she will seek a subpoena to force him to appear. And, she says, he will have to testify under oath.

Parra says the questions will be limited to the controversy over the federal election funds, and will not stray into the criminal investigation of Shelley’s political campaign, where there are allegations of money laundering.

Her comments about what questions will be asked sound vaguely similar to the Watergate line of “what did he know, and when did he know it?”

Parra says Shelley should have to explain why there was no coordinator of the federal election money for 6 weeks; who decided that staffers being paid with federal money did not have to submit formal time cards (which would presumably show exactly how much work they actually did); and did Shelley personally take any action to stop federally funded consultants from attending partisan political events, once those activities were exposed to public criticism?

With or without the subpoena, it now seems likely that Shelley will have to show up to answer those questions in person at the next hearing of the committee– on Thursday, February 3rd.