Embattled Secretary of State Kevin Shelley will not be called to testify tomorrow before the Joint Legislative Audit Committee.

In a conference call this morning, legislative leaders agreed to delay the JLAC hearing– and Shelley’s appearance. However, the decision wasn’t official until just this afternoon.

In case you haven’t been following every chapter of the saga, a quick recap: a recent state audit officially raised questions about whether Shelley’s office misused money from the federal Help America Vote Act. The money was supposed to help pay for election reforms, but the audit concluded that some of the money may have been used to pay consultants to attend Democratic party activities.

The committee is trying to determine whether federal election money was misspent by the Secretary and his staff… and Shelley was supposed to testify under oath about all of this on Thursday.

The simple reason for the delay, according to people on both sides of the aisle: newly appointed special counsel for both parties need more time to examine the documents. For example, the attorney representing the Republicans (Sacramento attorney Jim Sweeney) was chosen only yesterday.

While you might expect Republicans to be criticizing any delay, Senate GOP Leader Dick Ackerman said in an interview today that he supports it.

“Most of the other hearings, like the [2000 hearing to investigate then-Insurance Commissioner Chuck] Quackenbush and the [2002 hearings focused on the former Davis administration’s software contract with] Oracle, there were counsel engaged rather early”, he said. “In this one, there were not.”

Senator Ackerman also said he believes the problems can be traced back to JLAC Chairwoman Nicole Parra and her decision to require Shelley to testify under oath. That decision, in Ackerman’s mind, meant that legal counsel would have to be involved, due to what sworn testimony might mean to any number of pending Shelley investigations.

Of course, the real question now: will Shelley ever testify? Today’s agreement calls for a delay of any JLAC hearing for about two weeks. And some believe Shelley may simply resign from office before his turn at the committee hearing arrives. But his spokesperson says Shelley “fully intends to cooperate with the committee.”