Spending is again a problem at the FCSO.

At the last F & A Committee meeting committee members met to start the budget process for next year's budgets just as they do every year at this time. This year however more problems arose when the committee reviewed spending at the Faulkner County Sheriff's Office.

Log Cabin Reporter Daniel Doyle reported that the F & A committee "grappled with the jail spending" once again. If you recall this is the department whose head, Kyle Kelley, resigned in the middle of an investigation into illegal spending. An investigation where a special prosecutor found what he called "egregious incidents of theft and fraud" but due to the limited scope of investigation issued by circuit Judge Charles Clawson, Jr. no charges were filed and no money was recovered.

This latest problem however is one of inadequate record keeping. Apparently members of the sheriff's staff hadn't calculated some of the November appropriations before presenting it to the committee. Doyle writes,

Secretary Mike Hutchens was so frustrated he called it "stupid" that sheriff's officials hadn't calculated certain FCSO appropriations for November's monthly finance ordinance.

"What we were supposed to be doing tonight were normal appropriations, like at any other F&A meeting," Hutchens said. "There's so much to go through, I'm not even sure right at the moment what to say as far as 'what went on.'

It is amazing that after more that 2 years of spending problems at the department they still cannot manage to balance their checkbook so to speak. We think this is one of the biggest problems that led to the theft of taxpayer's money, inadequate controls on spending.

We had a discussion with Chief Deputy Steve Wallace about the departments spending procedures shortly after the helicopter purchase was announced. We asked Wallace if it was a common practice to split purchases between two different departments and his reply was shocking to say the least.

According to Wallace the sheriff's office is in charge of seven different budgets with similar line item appropriations set up in each department. If they don't have enough money in one then they arbitrarily take money from another without any approval by the quorum court. According to the law this is illegal. The law states that all funds must be spent as they are appropriated, this means that if 5,000 is appropriated to the Emergency Squad for fuel it must be spent for fuel in that department. The only way for this money to be spent by other departments is by a re-appropriation by the court.

Wallace claims that his office has no other choice in the matter. We see this as wrong, their only legal choice is to go to the Finance committee, that meets once a month, and request more money. This is how the system is supposed to work. Judging by the lack of proper record keeping we say that they are not even aware of overspending until after the fact. This 'procedure' must change in order to protect us from misspending.

We had a talk with Sheriff-elect Karl Byrd who tells us one of his first priorities will be hiring a fiscal control officer whose job it will be to make sure spending is done properly. Byrd will be asking the Quorum Court for this officer as soon as he takes office. It is our hope that the JP's heed his request for the protection of our tax dollars.