Year in review

Well it’s been quite a year for Faulkner County Sheriff Marty Montgomery and staff; they should feel very fortunate to still be employed and not facing criminal charges. For much of the year the department has been under investigation for spending infractions that turned out to be far worse than anyone knew, well except for the violators that is.

But much in the same way the sheriff’s office has ignored criminal acts, the judges and prosecutors have allowed the sheriff and his staff to get away with misspending our tax dollars. This is quite a system of justice we have in this country, a person can be convicted of embezzlement as long as they are not holding public office would seem to be the lesson we get from this mess.

We’d like to offer our ‘thanks’ to special prosecutor Stephen Tabor for his ‘outstanding job’ of defending the people of this county. It’s too bad that he’s from Sebastian County, we could have shown him our ‘thanks’ at the polls this coming November.

The Faulkner County Detention Center also received favorable rulings by our justice system in a lawsuit brought by the ACLU for the chronic overcrowded conditions of the jail. A U.S. Magistrate dismissed the case saying he was “not entirely satisfied" with the average numbers of inmates held at the facility, but that the "totality of the circumstances" called for the lawsuit to be dismissed.

U.S. Magistrate Judge H. David Young also noted that the ACLU failed to show that the county was deliberately indifferent to the inmates' serious health and safety needs, he said he found no evidence of deliberate indifference. "Deliberately indifferent" whom was he kidding, stuffing 200 inmates in a facility built to hold 121 inmate (140 inmates by fire code regulations) isn't indifferent to their safety?

Chalk up another one for Sheriff Montgomery and the County; they seem to be living ‘charmed’ lives as justice takes another one on the chin. By our count last year our lady of justice is way behind, she has some serious making up to do if she is to win this fight.

It’s also been quite a year for the County Judge’s Office and the Quorum Court. County Judge John Wayne Carter seen a lawsuit accusing him of violating bidding procedures by allowing a JP at the time’s company to repair a county building be dismissed by a special judge appointed to hear the case. What’s with these special legal eagles these days, do they not see anything as illegal?

Now we come to our Quorum Court and it Finance Committee. It would seem that after a year like this the court should be feeling a slight bit impotent when it comes to it power in controlling the budgets of the county’s agencies. After all they have tried to get to the bottom of the spending problems at the sheriff’s office and demanded that new procedures be established as they agree to give the sheriff an additional $86,000 appropriation only to see that misspent as well.

The Quorum Court and the County Judges office need to come to the realization that the only way to prevent the misspending at the sheriff’s office is to come down hard on the violators and get rid of those credit cards that the sheriff and his staff freely hand out to anyone who needs to by something. They also need to spoon feed money to the sheriff and make the department submit a request to the county for things prior to their purchase.

Yep it was quite a year, here’s to hoping for a better one this year. . .