Legislative Joint Auditing-Counties and Municipalities
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Speaker 2
0:00
We've already had the audit of and to our staff they have reached a reasonable conclusion. Without
Senator Trent Garner
Unverified
0:20
anybody needing to pull it out or any objections, we will do those together as a batch to be filed. have any comments from the committee on that? Without any objection, I'm going to file page
Chair
Unverified
0:36
34 to 43 to 32 reports with findings resolved as filed. Moving on from page 44 to 47, we have 112 reports with no finding similar to the last issue
Senator Trent Garner
Unverified
0:49
without any findings. Unless there's any objection from the committee, I will have those filed. Any objections? No. Okay, we'll move on to the
Speaker 7
1:06
agenda. The first report, we'll go through the people,
through the reports who have guests here
Representative Nicole Clowney
Unverified
1:12
to address their findings first. The first one we'll look at is Pulaski County. This will be
Speaker 11
1:29
on pages 2 and 3 of your synopsis. Mr. Chairman,
Speaker 12
1:37
I just have a quick question before we start.
Speaker 13
1:41
Yes, sir. Are these going to be reports with repeat findings? Are we going through the repeat findings first, or are
Speaker 15
1:47
we just going through reports? The way we'll
Senator Trent Garner
Unverified
1:50
typically do it is we'll just go down the order of people who are here until we get to the end, and then we'll
make decisions on when either to defer, file, or things
Speaker 18
1:59
like that. All right. Thank you. Yes, sir. The first ones are reports that were deferred from the prior meeting, and those will
Speaker 22
2:05
mostly be repeat findings, but there will also be some that refer to the prosecuting attorney. Okay.
So on page 2 under Pulaski County, under the Sheriff, review of the Sheriff's Office expenditures for the period January 1, 19, through September 15 of 20, reveal the following improper disbursements totaling 2504. $1,271 in personal purchases with no documented business purpose. $4,18 in payments to various vendors without adequate documentation. Therefore, the validity of these disbursements could not be determined. $3,75 for employee graduation party supplies, an alcoholic beverage in apparent conflict with Article 12, Section 5.
$1,91 in refunds of unaccounted for inmate trust funds. $1,91 for products that were shipped to employees' residences. $58 in early departure hotel charges. That was referred to the prosecuting attorney, and this one is as well. The sheriff's office did not timely pay some invoices totaling $1,434,614, dated August 19 through July of 20, to seven vendors. Of this amount, the county paid a total of $1,200,000 to one vendor for officer body cameras in June of 20.
These invoices were between six and nine months delinquent. In addition, $165,000 was paid to the remaining six vendors in August and September of 2020, leaving $68,000 owed to the vendors as of September 15 of 2020. This one was also referred to the prosecuting attorney. Because the sheriff's office was in arrears to seven vendors, officials and management should assess the financial prudence and necessity of expenditures. Review of sheriff's office expenditures for the period January 1 of 2019 through September 15 of 2020
revealed the following questionable disbursements totaling $45,854, $29,491 for furniture and office decorations, $12,237 for 49 televisions, $4,126 for wheels, rims, installed on the county vehicle driven by the sheriff. Continuing on page 3, $29,000, well, excuse me, it looks like we had one that bled over.
That's the response, excuse me. So that would be all of the findings that refer to the prosecuting attorney, and I believe
Speaker 18
4:25
the sheriff is here to address these findings. Sheriff, you can come forward and say your
Chair
Unverified
4:30
name and title for the record, and you can proceed with any kind of statement. Can you please press the microphone button in front of
Senator Trent Garner
Unverified
4:43
you? Sorry. Good evening. Eric Higgins, Blackstown County Sheriff.
Senator Linda Chesterfield
Unverified
4:49
Thank you. You may proceed. Wanted to address these issues, if possible, go down some of these items. I will indicate that we had a financial manager and other personnel working at the facility. They're no longer there because when we looked at the investigating, looking at the issues listed, we actually started an investigation prior to related to personal items that may have been
purchased to ensure that there wasn't any theft occurring and so we've addressed that when we look at the first item of the $1,200 in possible personal purchases some of the items listed there were sound machines things like that we put in the offices to reduce the noise from the outside area documentation on the various vendors it was improper documentation by the personnel
those were a number of items that we just did not we had documentation coming but we didn't provide our staff didn't provide the proper adequately maintaining documents to show what those items were for the item 375 for employee graduation we have a training class and at the end of the training class we do graduations for that the some of the supplies we some supplies shouldn't have been purchased okay things like that
but other items were purchased that we use for tablecloths using for recruiting purposes the $5 beverage alcoholic beverage purchase that was a deputy went out of town on transport, picking up an inmate, and when they turned in their reimbursement document, it was noted that they had that $5 personal purchase. The finance person should not have included that in the reimbursement, but they did. 191 in refunds for unaccounted
for inmate trust funds. In, I believe it was 2018, there was an employee at the county dealing with inmate finance and end up being alleged to have been involved in some thefts. That person was charged. One person requested refund for their money when they were released, and that 191 was the refund that was given to that person. 191 in purchases, products shipped to employees' residence. We accounted for those properties.
The individuals made purchases where they had accounts and didn't change the address. Purchasing from Walmart or Sam's, they didn't change the address location for that purchase. It went to their house instead of coming to the sheriff's department. We obtained those items. $58 for early departure hotel charge. We had two personnel in Nashville, Tennessee, going through training.
The training ended like 5 o'clock that evening. They checked out of the hotel. It was a $200 fee for the hotel for the two sharing the room. They checked out early, thinking they would save the county money. We paid $58 in early departure, but they were trying to save us the $142 we would have paid if they stayed overnight. The $1.4 million, this is related to service department, we didn't have body cameras or
in-car cameras, and we received a grant for $440,000 for in-car cameras. Actually, it was for body cameras, not in-car cameras. We made an agreement with the Axion Company, and in 2019, the agreement where we would We paid them $400,000 at the end of 2019. Our finance person did not pay the $400,000. We paid them three payments.
We received a notice from them that actually what happened when we were trying to send them a payment, the finance person was using the wrong account, voided the check, and did not submit the proper check. So the first payment was late coming, But we made the payments, and we were in good standings. We received a letter from the company in August 24th, and we were in good standings. With the body cameras, they didn't come in. The actual equipment didn't come in. Some of it came in end of December of 2019.
The remaining equipment came in in January of 2019. Of course, using a grant, we had to make sure we followed all the proper procedures before actually utilizing the equipment with policies related to the equipment. All that was done. We met those requirements in February and did all the training in April 14th of 20 is when the mistake was made on the first payment
or the second payment. It was corrected in May 18. And we actually submitted and paid the total of $1.2 million for the camera system. And it's also, we're basically leasing the systems for upgrades. The final payment was made $1,120 of $721,000. The other items, so $1.2 million was for that one company, Axion, to have the body cameras, in-car cameras, and the equipment
and the storage related to that. The $165,871, those six vendors, the majority of that was to a vendor related to our purchasing new computers with HSI. By the end of September, we had fulfilled all the requirements at $68, $743 that's showed that was not paid by September 15th. It was paid by the end of September. Again, we realized that staffing mistakes, and we made changes in staffing.
We also implemented, the Sheriff's Office did not have a good financial policy prior, so we reviewed and implemented a new policy related to that. Related to the $29,491 for furnitures for office decorations, We utilize staff, our maintenance staff and trustees to create office spaces. We modified some areas of our building. We needed some office spaces. We did not have a conference room command center area, so we created those spaces and we purchased furniture and office equipment related to that
and placed some of the decorative items were in common areas. The 49 televisions, the Plaks County Detention Facility was constructed in 94, opened in 95. We updated the televisions in the facility that's in the units. We created a tier system that had larger monitors in the units for proper behavior for the detainees. If they acted properly, they would move to a better unit so that you have some incentives on the behavior
so the deputies don't have as many issues with the detainees. We also updated, there's televisions, but we use them as monitors in the conference room and in some office areas in our 911 center. Those are locations that we place the televisions in, using the majority of them as monitors. The 4126 on wheels and rims installed on the vehicle that I currently drive. The vehicle was purchased prior to me taking office. was purchased in 2018 arrived in 2019 and staff uh equipped it similar to the previous sheriff's
vehicle um and the the majority of that fund was for uh rims and and tires i would not have uh approved that uh prior to it arriving the vehicle arriving and being assigned to me already been the tires and wheels already been purchased on them and put on it on the vehicle But it also includes putting blue lights in it and other equipment in the car and sirens and
Speaker 41
13:33
things like that. Thank you, Sheriff. Question of the committee?
Senator Charles Beckham
Unverified
13:40
Senator Beckham, you're recognized. Thank
you, Chair. On page three, the inappropriate expenditures for the office decorations, can you take us through those? How much
Speaker 27
13:57
of the $29,491 was actually reimbursed? And I apologize. I don't have the
Speaker 41
14:05
exact dollar amount on the reimbursements. You said page?
Speaker 49
14:11
It's page three of our report here. You
Senator Charles Beckham
Unverified
14:17
may not have the. I don't have a package. You mentioned the $29,491 for office furniture and decorations. Yes, sir. The report that
Speaker 51
14:25
we're looking at says the inappropriate expenditures were reimbursed by
Speaker 41
14:31
the finance manager. Yes. Do we have any information on that?
Simon Haynes
Unverified
14:53
Sir, if you're going to speak, can you please say your
Chair
Unverified
15:12
name and title for the record? My name
Speaker 61
15:16
is Simon Haynes. I'm a major with the Plaston County Sheriff's Office. Okay, if you
Senator Trent Garner
Unverified
15:20
have anything to add to your question.
Speaker 61
15:23
There was a, as far as what reimbursement was, there was a PSU investigation done. The majority of the items were actually authorized. There were several reimbursement things as a cup, I think, for to go into a car. You had, and it's off the top of my head, but you also had, oh, there's multiple.
Senator Linda Chesterfield
Unverified
15:57
If I look through here, I'll tell you. I don't have, I don't believe we have the exact dollar amount here, but we've worked with Finance Downtown because we initially received information about some possible personal purchases. and what we found out was that the finance person was making purchases through Amazon and had an Amazon account, and the county has an Amazon account.
And when she made those purchases, she was making the purchase to her personal account, and when it came through, she didn't get the
Speaker 61
16:39
bill, she was reimbursing the county for those items. So the items that were listed to us were the sleep noise machines, lumbar support pillows, sleep sound machine, serving tray, gift bags, personal cupholders, personal luggage tags.
Majority of those items were reimbursed by the finance director at the time. Any more questions? committee
Speaker 70
17:09
our representative love okay so look all right
Representative Fredrick J. Love
Unverified
17:14
so does that finance manager work there any longer no okay so you got rid of the finance manager all right what what what procedures have you put in place to ensure that
Senator Linda Chesterfield
Unverified
17:28
that doesn't happen again so we um wrote a policy for work
with finance for the county to mimic their policy. We have items are purchases of checks and balances where the chiefs, both the chief over detention, chief over enforcement, reviews purchases. That person cannot, any vouchers is reviewed before those purchases are
Speaker 73
17:52
made by either chiefs or Major Haynes. Okay. Yeah, the last
Speaker 76
17:58
one, and I guess this is to staff.
All right, so the testimony was that they were in arrears in regards to the payment on their bills. Okay, well, let me ask
Representative Fredrick J. Love
Unverified
18:15
you this. Did you all provide that information that you have corrected this item? Yes. Okay, staff, did you all, Ms. Steele, did you all get
Speaker 79
18:25
that information? Jimmy, do you have that information? I
Representative Fredrick J. Love
Unverified
18:33
guess I'm trying to see if we have resolved this finding
because, I mean, they're saying that the testimony is that this is all resolved. I'm just trying to see if
we got the information that would have resolved it. And I guess also, Sheriff, as a follow-up, What policy did you all put in place to ensure that this won't happen
Senator Linda Chesterfield
Unverified
19:03
again, Alvin? We have a financial policy dealing with all the purchases.
Representative Fredrick J. Love
Unverified
19:08
Well, I'm talking about in regards to your grants and
Senator Linda Chesterfield
Unverified
19:17
getting your vendors paid on time. Well, the process we go through on the payments, they're going through the chiefs and the majors. That's included in that for all purchases, including the grant purchase. And again, this was, we had an agreement with the company. She did not make a payment in December,
and it rolled over to 20. And when we were trying to make the payment, selected the wrong account, that was caught by my staff. And we voided that check and instructed her to issue the new check. What we have, the policy we have, is having the major and the chiefs monitor that unit more closely on the documents that come up to ensure that we have regular meetings every two weeks on grants.
to make sure that we're following due diligence with all our grants and make
Speaker 67
20:14
sure we're meeting all the expectations on the grants and we're meeting every two weeks on the
Speaker 90
20:36
finance. Okay. All right. so your question was are the accounts not in arrears anymore has that been corrected was
Representative Fredrick J. Love
Unverified
20:42
that your question yeah that's my question or and has the information been provided to us to ensure that this this is correct jimmy
Speaker 94
20:50
lock is here and he is the one who did the majority of the work on this and
Speaker 97
21:01
i'm going to let him answer that question excuse me the we looked at it as of september 15th 2020 we got all the payments that had been made up to that point at that point there was still $68,743 that was
Speaker 99
21:18
owed, but that could have been paid since then.
Speaker 97
21:25
I don't know. But as of September 15th, that's what
Speaker 61
21:29
we showed. Yes, all that was paid actually, as he just testified, the $1.2 million and everything else was paid up at the September 15th time as well.
Representative Fredrick J. Love
Unverified
21:38
Okay, so I guess in the
future, in regards to having findings like this, I guess, just provide that information because we want to make sure that everything is kind of, all the issues have been resolved. And that's just for everybody in here. But okay. All right.
Representative Stan Berry
Unverified
21:55
Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Representative Berry, you're recognized to ask a question. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. So,
Speaker 107
22:06
Sheriff, I guess the big concern of mine is the $4,126 for wheels. And I think this came up in our last meeting. So this vehicle, my understanding is your testimony that the vehicle was purchased prior
Senator Linda Chesterfield
Unverified
22:19
to you taking office? Correct. The vehicle was purchased prior to me taking office. And when it came in, they were putting some newer wheels on the car and updating with the blue lights, things in the car.
The way the Sheriff's Department works with the vehicles, the administration, whatever vehicles they get, they eventually roll down to investigations and other people. Ideally, you don't want, and if you take a, in this case, a Tahoe, a black Tahoe with standard wheels, standard package, it's an unmarked police unit. And everybody knows what, people on the street know what a police car looks like. They know when we're driving the Chargers, they know we've got Tahos and Durangos.
And when those vehicles go back to the investigations, it doesn't resemble every other marked police car. And so that's the purpose of it. Now, the purchase, the amount, don't agree with the amount. The person that was handling vehicles and upfitting all the vehicles did a whole lot more than expected. That person is no longer at the Sheriff's Department either, because not only the expectations
was maybe different factory wheels, and these are factory tires on the car, or reels on the car, the person bought larger tires, larger rims, created more of expense. Okay. So, excuse me for interrupting, Sheriff, but so what this
Speaker 110
23:52
says is it was a promotional aspect of the sheriff's
Representative Stan Berry
Unverified
23:57
office. You're currently driving that vehicle, is that correct? That's correct. Okay, so I don't see a lot of, and I have a little bit of experience with law enforcement all over
Speaker 107
24:08
the state of Arkansas, and I have never seen anybody driving with $4,000 wheels
on their vehicle. So to me, it's a misuse of public funds to purchase wheels that are on a sheriff's vehicle for promotional aspects, just so it looks pretty. You know, I've been a cabinet secretary. I drove with steel wheels on a vehicle and I just think it's an abuse of public funds but I would like for you to provide the invoice to the staff so I can see it. If you don't mind please it has the breakdown of the cost that you say because there's nothing about blue lights or
sirens or anything on it. So if you could provide that to the staff I'd appreciate
Senator Trent Garner
Unverified
24:56
have that? Jimmy has it. Thank you. Gentlemen, if you don't mind, try moving your mics away from each other some. We think that's what the feedback problem
Chair
Unverified
25:03
is going to be. There you go. Probably helped it out a little bit. Any questions, committee? Senator Irvin, do you still have
Senator Missy Irvin
Unverified
25:11
a question? Senator Irvin, you're recognized. Thank you. Just a follow-up. Could you submit a picture of this car? I personally have never seen rims or wheels that cost that much money.
And, I mean, I would follow up with that. I think it is a misuse. And I'm not sure if it's actually a good public image for the sheriff's office to be driving around in a car like that. I mean, I'm just giving you my thoughts. I'm not sure if we're all elected officials sitting here around this table. I doubt I could pull up in rural Arkansas on a Lamborghini and get a vote. Right. I mean, I'm just being honest with you. I mean, I don't think, I mean, those are personal decisions.
I mean, you know, but, I mean, this is an office that's being held, and I just think I would change that. I'm just being honest with you, and I don't think it's a promotional issue. I think it's a flexing of a muscle that perhaps doesn't need to be flexed. so I just would
I'd like to follow up and give you those comments thank
Senator Linda Chesterfield
Unverified
26:18
you I appreciate it, thank you very much and I want the committee
to know that I would not have approved to purchase those tires and would have spent that money it was done and I received the vehicle with those items on it yes sir,
Senator Missy Irvin
Unverified
26:35
I'll follow up I accept responsibility for that no no no if I may follow up Mr. Chair Yes, ma'am. Thank you. I agree, and I understand that. It's a decision, though, that you now make, whether you want to continue driving that car or not. I'm just giving you my thoughts about it,
because personally, I just don't think it's necessary, and I think it's actually a bad
Chair
Unverified
27:03
move. I appreciate that. Thank you. Question of the committee. I'm going to interject real
quick. Sheriff, going back to the payment to Axion, What you said in your response is a little bit different than the reporting I'm reading from
Senator Trent Garner
Unverified
27:17
that time frame. It seems that in the response it says that Axion understood that you would have to delay payment whenever the e-mails from them that the Fox 16 reporter said said they asked multiple times.
Chair
Unverified
27:29
It says here that it was a delay in funding for the grant and on the reporting seems to be mixed messages between not having the money, whether the grant came through. and there seem to be other issues of unpaid bills of as august 2020 from this report so just for the record let's be clear what's kind of the what was the understanding with with the body camera company what
Senator Trent Garner
Unverified
27:55
was the exact reason for the delay and what in the future will be done to prevent
Speaker 61
28:00
this kind of thing from happening again yes sir i'd like to answer that one for you the actual grant itself was awarded in october
Speaker 61
28:15
grant was awarded in 2019 yes sir so what happened with the grant is it's a body worn camera grant you have to meet some scorecards and some other things in relation to that we had already submitted what our budgets would be we thought the grant did not realize you got cops doing grants did not really realize
what we were getting into in regards. I wrote the body camera grant, so I can speak to this.
Chair
Unverified
28:39
Let me just interrupt to clarify. So you submitted a budget to the county to expense
Speaker 61
28:45
or budget to the federal government for the grant? In part of your application process for a body-worn camera grant, they want to know how much money. The grant was for $440,000. We created a five-year program that well exceeds $440,000. Anyone that messes with body cameras will know that they're terribly expensive body cameras themselves aren't it's just that the storage for
those are they knew the company knew once we had signed on with them it was almost simultaneous that we had found out that we had got the grant as well so their part of the beginning monies was really just I think it was around 300,000 that we needed or actually it's 298 that it budgeted for the first year from the body worn cameras a three-year grant next one was 98,000 next one was i think it's coming in around 30 something thousand um they did a scorecard they wanted
you to have a policy in place they want to do all these other things that you had we hadn't received our equipment from axon we didn't receive our equipment till december we were still doing all our other things in december of 2019 correct okay if you don't mind saying the dates just So we can keep this straight ahead. I apologize. I apologize. So it's December 2019. We lead into, we do the body camera aspect of the grant. We also did car cameras. Sheriff Higgins was going to do body cameras and car cameras regardless whether we got the grant or not.
We had the funds in place. We wanted to make sure that we were using the grant funds and had coordinated with Axon in regards to this. Now, from the time that we implemented our program, which you'd have been, I think it's cars, we did December of 19, were the body cameras, we did car cameras in January 14th, and the federal government had advised us by February 26 that we had done, the policy had been accepted, the scorecard had been accepted, everything had been accepted, and our funds were no longer frozen.
they were released to be used. When we initially started this, we thought your funds would be available immediately. So in talking with Axon, they were
Speaker 66
30:59
fine with that. It was on April the 14th. Did the grant pay the Axon directly, or did it run through some kind
Chair
Unverified
31:08
of county or sheriff's department? It's a reimbursement. Okay, you pay them, and the
federal government will pay you back? Correct. What
Senator Trent Garner
Unverified
31:20
would prohibit y'all from paying the bill originally and then reimbursed through the government?
Speaker 61
31:23
Well, because it's a grant, we wanted to make sure that we had everything in line with the grant where they said you're good to go before we submitted the payment. And talking with the people in Washington, D.C. that took us through the program. And who was that? Mary. What agency? Oh, I'm sorry. What agency? It's a section of the DOJ. Okay. And it's a body-worn camera section. Bridget Bryson was our coordinator, and Mary, and I can't remember her last name, was her supervisor.
They had kind of directed us on how to proceed with this. You know, we've learned a lot about grants under Sheriff Higgins. We never did grants before. So there was a big learning curve here, and you had the sheriff's office wasn't set up to do grants. Did not have grant personnel. Now, that's what we hopefully were going to do with a financial director. Obviously, we had, there were problems with this financial director, and therefore, they're not there anymore. Okay.
Senator Trent Garner
Unverified
32:25
I think that's an answer. I think we have more additional people who might have questions.
Representative Berry, then Senator Beckham. Yes,
Representative Stan Berry
Unverified
32:34
sir. Thanks, Senator. And I looked at the invoice, and I think Senator Beckham's got the invoice now,
Speaker 107
32:40
but I believe the invoice says that those wheels on the sheriff's vehicle were $3,600, and you paid about $400 in taxes. So there was maybe 3% of that bill that went to other things. So I want the record to show that that was not, I think it was kind of misleading.
But what gets me more than anything, Sheriff, is we got law enforcement officers in this state, in Pulaski County that's not getting paid the wages that they deserve for putting their lives on the line every day, and we're going out and spending $4,000 for shiny tires on a vehicle for the sheriff to ride as a promotional, you know, just to look good. And those tires were purchased in December, I believe, of 2019, and you were elected in November of 19, is that correct?
I was elected in November of 19. And that invoice is dated in December of 19. Did you, Sheriff, have anybody purchase those wheels for your
Speaker 67
33:42
vehicle? I received the vehicle in 19, maybe March of 19. So they
Senator Linda Chesterfield
Unverified
33:47
were added after you got the vehicle. And it had the wheels on it. That answers my question. Thank you, sir. Yes, sir. There may be an error on the invoice dealing
Chair
Unverified
34:02
with finance. Okay, Senator Beckham, thanks, Representative Rye, and now Representative Brown, thanks.
Senator Charles Beckham
Unverified
34:09
Sheriff, I have some concerns about the tires and wheels as well. My concern, obviously, is the use of public funds for this because it is a GM product. It's something that could have been ordered. Correct. What is your vehicle limited to on speed? is it a typical ssv
Senator Charles Beckham
Unverified
34:35
the speed because the tires that the gm put on there are limited speed rated at t rated which is 118 miles an hour so i'm concerned that
putting typical police vehicles are limited at much higher speed than that would you agree if you have the capability of exceeding that speed if you're in pursuit, if you join a pursuit you run a risk of putting public in danger will you assure me that you'll check on that and make sure your tires are safe for the speed you operate I will most
Speaker 142
35:09
definitely check on that President Verriere, you're next Representative
Chair
Unverified
35:11
Brown, I think Senator Chesfield I'm sorry I missed you, but I'll get you ma'am
Thank you, Mr. Chairman Sheriff Higgins, you know On page 3, it mentions $29,491 for office furniture and decorations. What I wonder, sir, if
this was an inappropriate expenditure, what would that be, sir, for that kind
Speaker 41
35:48
I'm sorry, I'm trying to find that. i'm sorry clarification you're talking about personal purchase of
Speaker 73
36:05
the furniture purchases can you repeat the
question please yes sir yes sir that's a lot of money 29 491 and inappropriate expenditure
sir i just wonder what that could have been and it didn't detail it out, but that's a whole lot.
Senator Linda Chesterfield
Unverified
36:30
that we put in the office, some promotional posters put in the common area, everything that's listed, folding table, chairs. We bought chairs and put in offices. There's five chairs, a bookcase, a folding table, conference chairs, the one we saw that
we probably would not have, it should have been a reimbursement, was the footrest, executive chair, some other chairs that we bought, office furnitures, for the most part bookcases. The report listed that we received listed all the furniture that we purchased and other items. It didn't say this particular item was inappropriate, this chair wasn't inappropriate,
or this frame was inappropriate. U-shaped
Speaker 41
37:38
desk and hutch. Blinds that we put on the
Speaker 27
37:48
windows in the office areas. Carpets and tiles. You recognize, sir. Okay,
Representative Fredrick J. Love
Unverified
38:00
keep saying that this $29,000 is inappropriate expenditure, and it's not.
I just checked with staff, so why do we continue to
Speaker 22
38:15
say it's an inappropriate expenditure? Yes, ma'am, you can. I think it's just a little confusing the way the sheriff's response kind of bleeds over into page three, and that's part of the sheriff's response saying that the portion of the expenditures that were inappropriate were reimbursed. It's the $29,000 was for furniture and office decorations, but anything in that amount that was not appropriate was reimbursed.
Speaker 156
38:43
We don't have an itemization of what was appropriate and what was not, but things that were not appropriate have been paid
Speaker 76
38:51
back. Okay. All right. I just wanted to... Is that more clear? Yeah, I wanted to clarify that because we
Representative Fredrick J. Love
Unverified
38:57
keep saying that $29,000 was inappropriate, and that's why I conferred with staff before I made the point of order. Thank
Chair
Unverified
39:04
you. Thank you. Representative Rye, I assume you're done with your question, and we'll
Speaker 159
39:09
move on to Representative Brown. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Mr. Higgins,
Speaker 161
39:14
or Sheriff Higgins, I have just a question,
and I apologize if you've already covered this, but $1,200,000 from one vendor for body cameras. How many body cameras did you buy, and how much are they? Because I've bought body cameras before.
Speaker 100
39:36
That's just too much. I'm just curious. Yeah, exactly. 235 body cameras, 121 in-car
Speaker 61
39:44
cameras. And then we also bought unlimited storage space,
Also, a whole cache of easy to use, easy to share so we can be transparent software that comes with this entire package. It is a five-year contract that we signed with this company to store this. We already have, I believe, over 100,000 videos that are stored. As most people can tell you, buying the cameras themselves is relatively inexpensive. You can get some very nice cameras for your home and other ones to wear. It's the storage in this and how you manage and redact and catalog and mark all of your stuff for evidence.
That is so expensive in this process. And we are paying what is the market rate for this and what many, many, many other agencies are using as well. Actually, if you look at what you see on TV today, the majority of those films that you see are from Axon cameras with the same type of clarity and same type of cataloging that we do today. Well, I
Speaker 161
40:50
appreciate the explanation, but the body cameras I bought were for Sherwood Sheriff's Police Department. That's why I was asking. I see. And
Speaker 165
40:57
the $400,000 from the grant only paid for the body cameras.
Senator Linda Chesterfield
Unverified
41:02
We pay for the in-car cameras, the sensors that we put on the holster, so if a deputy pulls his gun out of a holster, it automatically triggers the camera. And then the tasers that we have. The whole contract's about $4 million. If I remember from
Speaker 167
41:16
the report, what was the total amount on it? It's over
Speaker 100
41:20
a five-year period. I think it's $4.2 million. $4.2 million, okay. Senator Chesterfield,
Senator Linda Chesterfield
Unverified
41:28
you recognize? Thank you, Mr. Chair. and I want to thank my sheriff for being here today
and thank the questions that I've heard so far from the committee. I think it's important to note that his predecessor stayed in office how many years? Twelve years. Twelve years, and much of what has happened is that you have to upgrade at some point in time. You have to upgrade equipment. You have to upgrade office furniture. You have to upgrade the technology, and a lot of this is that. I don't know anything about the wheels and all of that stuff.
That's not my thing. But I would like for the sheriff to just speak to the fact that there were upgrades that needed to be done that had not been done because 12 years makes one comfortable, and it's the way we've always done it. Now we're in a new generation of law enforcement, and it does require that we do some things
differently. Would you speak to that, sir? Yes, ma'am, thank you. The Sheriff's Department did not have any in-car cameras, did not have GPS in the car.
So if a deputy was in trouble needing something somewhere in the county, in the 880, 100 square miles of the county, we wouldn't know where they're at. The communications had no way of identifying them unless they couldn't get on the radio. So we upgraded that equipment. We upgraded monitors in the detention center. We didn't have a command post. We modified, used some of the monitors to put in a vehicle so that when we have to send a unit out for protest or anything like that,
that they can monitor the drones, they can monitor radio traffic from that vehicle. It's not the vehicle we need, but we utilized what we had. Deputies in the detention center who do transport didn't have body armor. We bought body armor. We put also these cameras, the body cameras are in our transport vehicles, or the in-car cameras in the transport vehicles. Body cameras are in the detention center. Our network, everything with the IT was outdated.
Computers were outdated, and we're buying computers to update what's in the car, what's in our offices. We didn't even have Windows 10 on our computers, and we were getting ready to, Microsoft wasn't going to support that, so we upgraded that to support that. We spent a lot of money trying to upgrade the facility. We couldn't even track calls when I got there. When I asked about calls that are, how long does it take for someone to answer,
if someone calls 911, how long does it take for them to answer the call, I couldn't get that information. How long does it take for a deputy to respond to a call? How long does it take for a backup to get there? I had none of that information. So we upgraded that. We upgraded our 911 center. We are next generation 911. Right now, if you dial, you can text 911 in the county. If you're in the rural area of Placid County, you can text our 911 center. We're only one of two agencies in Placid County that does that. Little Rock, North Rock are working on that. They don't have that. So we've upgraded our system, tried to upgrade our equipment to come to 21st century.
We are in the process of upgrading locks in the detention center. We have locks that fail. People can get out of their cell in the detention center because the locks haven't been failing for years. I didn't find out how bad it was until last year. We're spending $1.9 million to replace all the locks on the cells. We're going to spend another $1.8 million to upgrade the control system. You have buttons that don't work. I found that out later by pushing the button, trying to get out of the facility, and I found out later from a deputy telling me the button doesn't work.
These are call buttons to go through doors, central control open up, call buttons that are in the units where the detainees are. If they're having medical needs, they should be able to push the button and Notified Control Center. Sheriff, I don't mean to interrupt you, sir, but we're
Senator Trent Garner
Unverified
45:37
getting a little bit off topic of what the audit was covering. I appreciate Senator Jefffield's question. Yeah, thank you, Mr. Chair,
Senator Linda Chesterfield
Unverified
45:43
for that. But I do think it's important as we look at mistakes that we also look at those things that are upgraded. And the fact that this is a new administration and that mistakes will be made,
I believe those mistakes are of the head, of the heart, and not the head. Of the head, not the heart, excuse me. because I know Sheriff Higgins, I know him personally, I know of his integrity, and I would be remiss as one of his constituents if I did not at least bring that to this body at this time. Thank you. Thank you, ma'am. Any
Senator Trent Garner
Unverified
46:14
more questions, committee? Seeing none, without objection, we will file this report. Can I make a quick statement?
Speaker 66
46:27
We might can open it back up. Yes, sir, I'll give you a little leeway. just make it quick. I'm new at
Speaker 61
46:39
this, so sorry about that. I've been through four different administrations. What a lot of people don't understand about a 24-7 situation is your office chair or your personal chair at home, you may replace once every three to five years. We have people sit those chairs of different sizes 24-7. You look on this $29,000, there's a lot of chairs
in there. Those have to be replaced, and that's just what
Speaker 132
47:01
I'm trying to point out to everybody, is that things get used up a little more in that
Senator Trent Garner
Unverified
47:06
type of operation. We understand that, but typically we may follow the procedural law and how it has to be done. That's our job. Moving on, we'll
Speaker 22
47:17
move to the next report. Thank you, gentlemen. Thank you. At the top of page
Representative Nicole Clowney
Unverified
47:22
two, we have Jefferson County under the county judge, fines of $10,000, and this is a report deferred from the prior meeting. Funds of $10,158 that were restricted for county road purposes
were expended for Sheriff's Department performance bonus and noncompliance with code. A similar finding was issued in the prior report leaving a balance of $29,434 due to the
Speaker 11
47:41
road fund. And Judge Robinson is here to address
Chair
Unverified
47:47
this. Judge, ma'am, if you can say your name and title for the record and
Speaker 176
47:52
give any comments you may have. Thank you very much. My name is Judge Gerald Robinson. I almost said sheriff. The spelling of my name is G-E-R-A-L-D Robinson, R-O-B-I-N-S-O-N.
Pamela Jenkins
Unverified
48:07
Ma'am. And my name is Pamela Jenkins. I am Judge Robinson's chief of staff. Any comments on
Charlotte Mcfadden
Unverified
48:12
this before we move on to questions? Judge? No, sir. Look at
Senator Trent Garner
Unverified
48:20
that smart sheriff. All right, just to bring it up quickly, just to repeat fighting, is there a reason why this has happened multiple times? Is it an accounting error? Is it just something that you all have done? Can you explain
Charlotte Mcfadden
Unverified
48:31
kind of what happened before, what you'll do to fix
Speaker 176
48:34
it from now on? Well, first of all, let me be the first one that I accept full responsibility
for what's found in the findings on the audit report. Um, taking over in Jefferson County, uh, you know, I was elected sheriff and took over as the county judge and, uh, the office was pretty much left in shambles. We, we didn't, we would just kind of fly by night trying to figure, figure this thing out. And, and, uh, thanks to the AAC, you know, they gave, they were a great help to helping us, uh, get through, uh, this, this, this matter.
And the issue came about we, Jefferson County, finally were in a financial state that we could even look at giving our department or the employees bonuses. And so what we did, we went through each department and said, hey, find a way that you can do this. And we checked with the auditors and all those things. Well, in my particular department, I gave this task to one of my senior personnel, and she didn't follow through.
Well, to say the least, she was disciplined for that because I didn't know about it until after, until we got the audit findings. But make no mistake about it, whether my employee did what I told her to do or not, ultimately the responsibility falls on me. And so I accept that responsibility. And once the findings were made, we immediately went into action to replace those funds back into the road department.
And so we tried to make the move quickly and swiftly. But again, it was an error on one of my employees, but still that error from the employee that has no bearing here because ultimately it's my responsibility. But once I found the mistake was done, I immediately, we took care of it. And if anyone wants to see, we took care of it by ordinance through the quorum court, and
Speaker 180
50:52
so it's all taken care of.
And I can assure you that it will not happen
Senator Trent Garner
Unverified
50:59
again. I think that's what the issue was, because county road funds can be
Chair
Unverified
51:02
turned back money. It can be ordinances for local taxes specifically designed for that purpose. And even though giving bonuses is a very well-deserved part of it, those funds are restricted for that purpose. And so when you start co-mingling, even for a good purpose, that could create an issue. If you have your assurances that won't happen again, I think that's good enough for me. Any questions on the committee? Seeing none, without any objection, this report will be filed.
Thank you, sir. Thank you. Thank you, sir. Moving on.
Speaker 93
51:34
Is Desiree Hall, did she make it in? From Scott County? No. She was.
Speaker 22
51:43
Okay, so the next report will be the City of Alexander. This will be on page four of your synopsis. This is still under reports deferred from the prior meeting.
We had a finding under the treasurer. Bank accounts were not properly reconciled as required by code. A similar finding was noted in the previous three reports. And I have Ms. Churchill down, but I'm told that she is
Speaker 11
52:09
no longer in office. I believe the current treasurer is here to address this. I'm Joanne Churchill. Yes,
Chair
Unverified
52:19
ma'am. Can you say your name and title for
Speaker 187
52:22
the record, please? Yes, I'm Joanne Churchill, City of Alexander, treasurer. Okay. Ma'am, are you
Charlotte Mcfadden
Unverified
52:27
going to comment or the other? Ma'am, my right, your left.
Melissa Ratliff
Unverified
52:32
My name is Melissa Ratliff. I'm the city bookkeeper. Thank you. Any comments?
Chair
Unverified
52:39
No, sir. Any questions, committee? Seeing none, without objection, we'll file the support. Thank you all for coming today. Thank
Speaker 90
53:03
you. The next report will be the Town of Beattieville.
Representative Nicole Clowney
Unverified
53:07
That will be on page 6. We have a repeat finding. This is, again, deferred from the prior meeting. Under the recorded treasurer, the fixed
Speaker 22
53:21
asset listing was not properly maintained to include asset additions, deletions, and totals as required by code. A similar finding was noted in the previous report, and I believe the recorded treasurer is here. Yes, ma'am. Can you say your
Speaker 194
53:35
name and title for the record? Polly Adams, recorded treasurer, town of Butteville.
Okay. Do you have any comments, ma'am? I just do want to comment that from the previous audit, I did update my fixed asset list, and it is up to date now. Okay. Okay. That's
Speaker 188
53:54
from the audit that we're discussing today or from the previous audit? The previous audit,
Speaker 194
54:00
I did, whenever I got that, wrote up for that, I did update my stuff. And are you working on
Senator Trent Garner
Unverified
54:07
fixing what this audit found now?
Chair
Unverified
54:12
Okay, everything's good from the, okay. Everything's good. Any questions, committee? Seeing none, without objection, we will file this
Speaker 22
54:24
report. Thank you, ma'am. The next report is still on page 6 under our previously deferred reports. We have repeat findings on Elm Springs under the Mayor and the Recorder Treasurer. Under the Mayor, we have expenditures exceeded budgets and appropriations in 19 for the street fund by $99,000 and in 18 for the general and street by $185,000 and $40,000 respectively in noncompliance with code.
Under the record of treasurer, we have bank reconciliations were not approved by a municipal official or employee other than the person preparing the reconciliation in
Speaker 11
54:54
noncompliance with code. I believe the mayor and the record of treasurer are here to address these findings. Please say your name
Speaker 167
55:00
and title for the record, please. My name
Harold Douthit
Unverified
55:02
is Harold Douthit. Last name is spelled D-O-U-T-H-I-T. I'm the mayor of Elm Springs, big metro pecs up in northwest Arkansas, 1,500 people. Yes, sir. I am Twyla Taylor. treasurer recorder for the
Speaker 205
55:14
city of Elm Springs. Well I grew up at that is a metropolis so
Harold Douthit
Unverified
55:20
you have any comments sir or ma'am? I'd just like to state that there obviously there are reasons for us being over our budget. We've if you've been paying attention to the news over the last couple of years we've I've been the mayor for six and a half years now and I've experienced four major floods. Our street department budget has been overwhelmed. We've had to spend money. We're still repairing streets we did receive some FEMA money we're entitled to more FEMA money but as any of you dealt with it they're two years behind so we're not
recovered any of those funds from a couple of years back but they're they're in the middle and they are coming other than that I'm here to answer questions and maybe learn
Chair
Unverified
56:09
something today so it seems to be you're saying that the flooding caused more damage, so you had to spend more money to repair it, and that exceeded your budget appropriation in excess
Speaker 208
56:22
of what y'all did? Did y'all go back and amend that budget after the fact? Actually,
Harold Douthit
Unverified
56:28
the city council looks at our budget on a monthly basis and approves
that budget based on the expenditures. Every year in the fall of the year, we amend that budget or reconcile it to the actual expenses, and I actually have the meeting minutes for the last, for the 18 and 19, where we do that every year. One thing I didn't mention was, out of our general fund, we have recently taken on a district court position where we share responsibilities of the district court that's actually held
in our city now with the city of Tawny Town. We ended up having to hire two more clerks and another police officer, and that ran us over on our expenditures out of our general fund. Thank you, sir. Any questions or committee?
Chair
Unverified
57:18
Seeing none, without objection, we'll file this report. Thank you all for coming. Thank you. Move it on. If you'll go
Speaker 22
57:30
back to page three under Scott County, we have a repeat finding under the district court clerk.
District court bank statements were not properly or timely reconciled as required by code. A similar finding was noted in the prior report. The district court clerk is here to address this. If you can,
Charlotte Mcfadden
Unverified
57:48
please say your name and title for the record, and then any comments you would like to make
Desiree Hall
Unverified
57:55
on this finding. My name is Desiree Hall, and I'm the district clerk in Scott County. I'm sorry. I've never done this before, so I don't know what I need to tell you. Yes, ma'am.
Chair
Unverified
58:07
Did you say your name as well? I'm sorry. She is my deputy clerk. Okay. You don't have to get on the mic unless you
Desiree Hall
Unverified
58:21
want to. Okay, can you just kind of explain what the issue was and what y'all are doing to correct it? Yes, it's an issue that I adopted whenever I come on five years ago, And it's just kind of been an ongoing thing where my judge had fired a lady that was reconciling our accounts, and they never got reconciled.
I didn't know how to do it. But now we are working with the AOC. We just converted to context, and so far we've had our accounts reconciled every month since then. Okay. Any questions,
committee? Representative Brigham, you recognize? Yes, sir. Thank you. Mr. Chairman. Ma'am, now that this has come up, are you making sure
that all of the receipts and tickets are used and kept? Yes, sir. Yes, ma'am. Thank you. Any more questions? Well,
Senator Trent Garner
Unverified
59:12
y'all both did excellent for your first time at legislative audit. Without any questions or without any objections, we'll file this report. Thank y'all. Thank
Speaker 22
59:22
you. The next report we'll review is on page 10. This is still under previously deferred reports. It's the town of Haynes. We have repeat findings. The first one says it's under the mayor and
Speaker 11
59:34
recorder treasurer, but the mayor did not get this finding the year before, so really it's only repeat for the recorder treasurer. Although
Speaker 22
59:41
Schedule 1 of this report shows a general fund balance of $8,100,
it was brought to our attention that as of December 31st of 2019, the general fund owed significant amounts to the street fund and the Internal Revenue Service. As shown on Note 4 on Schedule 3, when these outstanding amounts were considered, the general fund had a deficit balance of $27,000. A similar finding was noted in the previous report. Then down in the middle of the page, under the Record of Treasurer, property taxes restricted for street purposes of $404,000 were not transferred from the general fund to the street fund, and unallowable disbursements were paid from revenues restricted for street purposes of $5,000 in noncompliance with code.
Also restricted funds of $8,800 noted in previous years were not transferred, resulting in a total of $14,000 due from the general fund to the street fund in noncompliance with code. A similar finding was noted in the previous three reports dating back to 13. The town contracted with paychecks for payroll services. However, the governing body did not establish by ordinance a method that provides for internal accounting control and documentation for audit and accounting purposes in noncompliance with code. A similar finding was noted in the previous two reports dating back to 15.
The general sanitation and fire department bank accounts were not properly reconciled in noncompliance with code. A similar finding was noted in the previous report. A fixed asset listing was established but did not include all assets of the town and contained errors in costs and control totals. in non-compliance with code. A similar finding was noted in the previous seven reports starting back to 04.
Speaker 156
1:01:19
The mayor and the recorder treasurer were invited to be here.
Excuse me, the recorder treasurer was invited to be here, and I believe she is here to address this. Ma'am, if
Speaker 221
1:01:37
you could say your name and title for the record. Hi,
Speaker 222
1:01:45
my name is Charlotte McFadden. I'm a recording treasurer clerk. yes ma'am any comments only comments I have um based on the findings that that you guys found uh that 404 dollars that has been paid back um the 8882 dollars that was something that
was there when I came on so we are in the process of paying that money back but um Um, the $5,335, there was an error on my part. Um, the gentleman that we contracted to do yard cutting for the street, the invoice that he had was not, um, included the ballpark and the fire station. That should have been taken off when we contracted him to do that. And I didn't remove that from the invoice.
So I take responsibility for that. the contract with paycheck the ordinance we didn't have an ordinance for that that was a contract that was signed with the previous mayor and the recording treasurer so now we're we have an ordinance for it um I spoke to Len um legal counsel Lenny
Speaker 223
1:02:58
Richard Richmond and he's going to help us with that to make sure we get that in our next audit.
The fixed access listing, I'm not sure what they're talking about when they say that we didn't show all access because I've listed everything in the city of Haynes. And where the error is, the access should have been a certain dollar amount, but I listed down to the trash can. So
Speaker 222
1:03:25
she was telling me that I shouldn't have put that on there because there's a dollar amount that it cuts off, so that's where the error is. So going forward, I'll make sure that's listed correctly. The sanitation and fire department bank accounts were not properly concealed.
Speaker 223
1:03:42
Every account that I've done, I did it the same way. Now that I know, I can do it different. I was told that I could put that information on my financial report and list it in a separate column, showing what was paid and what
Speaker 222
1:03:56
hadn't come through. But I was told I need to do it on the back of my bank statements. So going forward, that will be done on the back of
Chair
Unverified
1:04:09
the bank statement. Yes, ma'am. Thank you. Senator Irvin, you're recognized.
Senator Missy Irvin
Unverified
1:04:14
Thank you. Thank you for being here today and your testimony. and one thing
I wanted to ask is when you come in is there I appreciate the person that came before you Ms. Hall from Scott County and I wanted to make a remark on page 3 of our report her comment was I was never taught nor shown how to properly reconcile a bank account um and so do you do you attend training do you attend um is that do you you're in the city
correct but do you was there training available to you were there when you were hired into your job what training did you receive who did you receive it from did your city send you to the municipal league for any conference or training or did you get any of that we have a city population
Speaker 223
1:05:16
of 150 people no i have never been to any training i have never been to a legislative
Speaker 222
1:05:22
meeting um and the person that trained me prior to that was the recording treasurer that
was prior to me and the mayor. So, no, I've never had the training.
Senator Missy Irvin
Unverified
1:05:36
Okay. Well, I appreciate your answers to your questions, and I appreciate the steps that you've taken because it sounds like you really have kind of taken the bull by the horns and, you know, figured it out. I'm trying. I know you are, and I really appreciate that. This legislature created a financial literacy commission this past legislative session, and this is one of the reasons I think that it was really important.
I mean, I find it uneasy that people are hired into positions and make statements that they don't know how to properly reconcile a bank account. That's not your comment. That's somebody previously, and I'm not defaulting that person. But I think it's just important to note that we've got to have some abilities to follow up, And if there's training that's needed for this type of work, then it needs to be offered through the Municipal League and through the Association of Counties, and we as a legislature need to do a better job of providing that level of training or education.
Chair
Unverified
1:06:34
Thank you. Any questions, committee? Representative Varie, you recognize?
Yes, sir. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. You know, as a rule of thumb, ma'am, even counties or cities, you can transfer, I think this is right, Ms. Marty, You can transfer
general money to the road, but you cannot use road money for the general. And a pretty good rule of thumb is make sure that you keep those separated, ma'am, because that can sure get you in a little trouble.
Senator Trent Garner
Unverified
1:07:07
Thank you, sir. Yes, ma'am. Thank you. Yes, ma'am. The first finding, that's concerning to me because it appears that the general revenue has been used in kind of like a credit card to pay for the other ones and that y'all have some issues that are owed to both the street fund and the IRS that needs to be paid. So can you address what y'all owed at IRS? What's the issue with that?
Chair
Unverified
1:07:37
What have y'all taken out of street funds? because it said there's an $8,000 plus balance and y'all owe a deficiency balance of $27,000. And what are y'all doing to rectify those bills that need to be paid? As
Speaker 222
1:07:51
far as the street fund, we're in the process of paying that back. We pay at
Speaker 223
1:07:56
least $100 a month is what we have. We were also in the process of trying to do some fundraisers and stuff before COVID hit to hopefully we didn't pay this money back. But unfortunately, it has not happened yet.
As far as the RIS, as I reported in our last meeting, we were supposed to have a meeting with the RIS. That meeting, we didn't get that meeting with the RIS. But after COVID hit, that was just out. As a matter of fact, we haven't been able to speak with them since. Yes, ma'am. So we're trying to get everything done. We're trying to get the money paid back, and we're trying to meet with the RIS. Do you know how much you owe the RIS, ma'am? I'm not sure that was something that came in before me.
I think it's like $14,000 that we owed R.S. Prior to me coming into this position, they were not paying the taxes that was coming. Let me see. We have a company now, Paycheck, that pays all of the taxes and everything for us every month since I've come in. Prior to that, they didn't have that, so money was not being paid. So I'm taking on this new responsibility and trying to get it taken care of.
Chair
Unverified
1:09:12
Yes, ma'am. Okay. Any questions, committee? Senator Beckham, you're recognized. One thing
Senator Charles Beckham
Unverified
1:09:18
I want to caution you on with the general fund owing the street fund money, we did have a bill passed this year that as long as you owe money and you're not paying a, I forgot the amount, 10%? 10% of your general revenues. 10% of your GR to the street fund, you will lose turn-back funding. Okay, so we need to be paying 10% of what we
Speaker 223
1:09:38
owe, is that what you're saying? No, of your general revenue.
Speaker 242
1:09:45
Okay, okay. Well, that wouldn't be much, okay. Any more questions, committee? Seeing
Chair
Unverified
1:09:52
none, without objection, we will follow this report. Thank you, ma'am, for
Speaker 22
1:10:03
coming. Moving on. the next report is is on page 11 the town of mcnab we have repeat findings under the mayor and recorder treasurer this is still under previously deferred reports state aid for
highway funds from previous years totaling 55,520 was due from the general fund to the street fund due to expenditures of monies restricted for streets being used for other purposes In addition, revenues restricted for street purposes in 19 and 18, totaling $3,400 in each year, were also used for other purposes. As of December 31, 19 and 18, the general fund owed the street fund $62,000 and $58,000 respectively. The town previously agreed to repay the street fund $300 per year,
Speaker 11
1:10:47
but no payments have been made since 2013. I believe the mayor is here to address this. Sir,
Senator Trent Garner
Unverified
1:10:55
ma'am, if you can say your name and title for
Speaker 245
1:10:59
the record and any comments you may have. James Conway. James Conway,
Speaker 178
1:11:08
mayor of City McNabb. Oh, sorry. LeVon Oliver, secretary, treasurer. Thank you. Any comments?
Speaker 245
1:11:17
Yes. Thank you, first of all, for allowing
Speaker 249
1:11:20
us to be here at the war. we can address the finers. And the first thing that I want to report on is some of the inaccuracies that is made on the report, such as that no money was paid back from the general fund to the street fund. We have a copy of our check in the amount of $600 that was paid to the street fund.
Speaker 252
1:11:54
And that check number... 2007. The check number?
Speaker 249
1:12:10
2007. Check number 2007 in the amount of $600 transferred on 9 September the 3rd of 2019. This was pointed out to our audit at that particular time, and it still showed up on the audit report.
Also, the additional amount to where it says that the city-state aid highway totaling $45,579 were not transferred from the general fund to the strength fund, and that the city had agreed to pay $300 per year. That we did. 2019 and 2018, an addition of $13,784. What that breakdown is $285.10 per month paid to John Deere Tractor Financial Company.
The tractor since then has been paid off. What he is saying is that that $13,000, we have been using the tractor for everything but street maintenance, and that is incorrect. And we are paying the $300 per year. As of this point now, we are paid better than $1,500, even with the COVID. So anytime that we have different functions and things,
we set aside some money so we can pay the street fund back. But that $13,000, that is totally for the payment made to the john deere tractor financial company uh for the lease on the tractor i have a copy for your records if you would like to have those okay anything
Chair
Unverified
1:14:08
else sir ma'am no sir okay any questions
Representative David Hillman
Unverified
1:14:12
Committee? Representative, you recognize? Have you done any calculations on how long it's going to take you
Speaker 252
1:14:21
to pay this back at $300 a year? Well, yeah, I really do. I'm glad you asked it. That's a good question
Speaker 249
1:14:28
because we get $723 a year from the general fund. It's going to take us 100 years plus. And believe it or not, we incurred most of that. This is not anything that this president administration did. And I also submitted
a letter and I think it's safe to say that a forgiveness letter that was sent to the legislative body asking them to consider forgiving that amount because this president of the administration wants to do the things that the legislation requires. But we encourage this and we know we'll pay it back with $700 a year. That's all we get. Okay. I
Speaker 245
1:15:03
don't think either one of us is going to be
Representative David Hillman
Unverified
1:15:07
around here by the time that's paid off. I don't either. I really don't either. Thank you.
Chair
Unverified
1:15:17
Any more questions, committee? Your representative is
Speaker 264
1:15:24
recognized. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Are you telling us that you get turn back money of $700 a year? That's all we get. Okay. Do you
Speaker 252
1:15:34
have a millage in your city? Yes, we do. What that What that comes
Speaker 249
1:15:39
to is $62.47 every month that the general fund get to operate on. And we have $390 worth of bill.
So we turn in dirt, put it in this, put it in that
Speaker 245
1:15:51
in order to take care of our bills. Follow up,
Speaker 265
1:15:54
please. Yes, sir. Have you thought about surrendering your charter? No, I have not. No. Okay. No.
Speaker 266
1:16:00
Thank you, Mr. Chair. Thank you. Any more questions,
Chair
Unverified
1:16:04
committee? Seeing none, we will file this report without objection. Thank you, ma'am, and thank you, sir. Thank you. Moving on.
Speaker 22
1:16:18
The next report we'll review is the city of Whitaker Village. The repeat findings are on the recorder treasure, and they are on page 12. This is still under previously deferred reports. uh the city transferred restricted street fund revenue as follows 5200 to the general fund in 18 1500 to the amp fund in 17 additionally property taxes of 890 for 18 were not transferred to the from the general fund to the street fund during 17 the general fund transferred 516 to
the street fund as partial repayment for restricted revenues that were transferred to the water fund Combining the aforementioned amounts with $2,500 due to the street fund from prior years resulted in a total of $9,574 and $3,484 for $18 and $17, respectively, due to the street fund. A similar finding was noted in the previous report. and then we have invoices and supporting documentation were not provided for tested disbursements in 18 and 17 of 11,690 and 11,755 respectively similar findings was noted in the
Speaker 11
1:17:30
previous report and the recorder treasurer is here to answer to these i'm
Speaker 271
1:17:35
shell robbins recorder recruiter for City of Whitaker Village. This is my first time here also. We had our water department. We were in the process of turning it over to the city of Altus, and we were having problems paying the bill, so we would put money in the water department to pay the water bill so the city of Whitaker Village's water would not be shut off.
And my mayor, he just transferred funds from one place to the other to take care of things, basically. Okay. The mayor understands that? He is
Speaker 200
1:18:15
no longer mayor. Okay. We have a new mayor. A new mayor. Okay. Yes, ma'am.
Senator Missy Irvin
Unverified
1:18:29
Senator Irving? what's the annual what do you pay your mayor
Speaker 271
1:18:31
annually our new mayor $650 a month was there on
Senator Missy Irvin
Unverified
1:18:37
page 11 I'm not sure if you does the mayor get benefits on page 11 I'm
Speaker 278
1:18:44
not sure if you can answer this question or not
Senator Missy Irvin
Unverified
1:18:50
but it says that there was a health department violation fine of 500 incurred by the mayor do you know anything about that yes ma'am i do that was uh
Speaker 271
1:19:04
mayor whitaker did not uh follow through with some water testing for uh the water department and he was fine personally for 500 but he said to pay it out of general funds so that's what i did Was that fine assessed to
Senator Trent Garner
Unverified
1:19:21
him? Yes, sir. It was assessed to him.
Okay, let me clarify. Let me say that a different way. Was it from his personal business or was it from the
Speaker 271
1:19:34
city business? City business, but it was to him personally.
Chair
Unverified
1:19:38
Okay. And this money that was paid to the business owned by a mayor, why did that happen? What was related to that? Excuse me? The 3-2-6-year-old paid to a business owned by the mayor. Do you know why that
Speaker 271
1:19:52
happened? Is that for the survey? Is that what you're talking about? Yes. Yes, ma'am. He put my
Speaker 281
1:20:02
name. He did that. He forged my name on the check.
Senator Missy Irvin
Unverified
1:20:08
Oh. Has this been turned over to the prosecuting attorney? Yes. Okay, go ahead, Marty,
Chair
Unverified
1:20:17
please. Very good. Last month, the
Speaker 284
1:20:24
committee did defer this report. And, well, it was deferred because
Speaker 22
1:20:29
of the repeat findings on the recorded treasurer, but also they wanted the mayor to come. The mayor called. He's very ill.
He's been in the hospital on oxygen. We also got touched base with the prosecutor to see where it was, and he
Speaker 93
1:20:45
said that he was still investigating. So there is an ongoing investigation. Yes, ma'am.
Speaker 271
1:20:55
Yes, ma'am. And the city does have the monies, and we will make amends to pay the street fund back from the general fund. We paid out a lot of money toward advertising for the city. that we couldn't afford.
So monies were taken from different departments to pay for advertising.
Chair
Unverified
1:21:16
Yes, ma'am. All right, well, it sounds like that's a mess. You're not really, there's a couple things that you could probably do better, but it sounds like the former mayor needs to be scrutinized in
Speaker 291
1:21:30
a large manner. All right, no questions for any of
Senator Charles Beckham
Unverified
1:21:41
Senator Beckham, sorry. there we go have changes been made to the advertising
Speaker 271
1:21:46
promotion budget yes uh the city
collects a two percent food tax from the restaurant and that money goes into the advertising and promotions department that's where that's where that money just always went okay but you're you're outspending that
Speaker 293
1:22:10
correct for that not not no sir not right
Speaker 294
1:22:13
now we're not historically you've outspent it yes yes
Speaker 271
1:22:20
thank you we did recently spend some for uh road signs
advertising for the city the uh wine fest and stuff that they have one tier our accounts are very healthy at the moment.
Chair
Unverified
1:22:37
Representative Barry, do you have a question? Your
Speaker 296
1:22:39
mic's on. Yes, I do. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Go ahead.
Representative Stan Berry
Unverified
1:22:44
Yeah, go ahead. My concern, this is my district, and, you know, I believe in holding people accountable for their actions, especially when it comes to dealing with public funds.
And regardless if somebody is sick and on oxygen, they still have a responsibility to answer to the law. And I think, did you ever get the tablet or the accessories or anything back from the mayor? No, sir. And my understanding is your testimony is that the mayor, the previous mayor, was the one that forged your name on the check. And is Mr. Phillips your prosecuting attorney in that area, Jeff Phillips? I believe so. who the prosecuting attorney is?
Speaker 22
1:23:26
Not off the top of my head. Okay, I'll find out. I do
Representative Stan Berry
Unverified
1:23:40
have an email, though, from him. Hold on just a minute. And while she's looking at it... It is Mr. Phillips. Okay, thank you. And
Speaker 107
1:23:47
Mr. Chairman, I just think, you know, this is a sad situation to allow a public official to get by with fraudulent activities involving public funds, and I plan to contact the prosecuting attorney myself
to see if this matter can't be resolved. Thank you. Yes,
Chair
Unverified
1:24:02
sir. Any more questions, committee? Seeing none, thank you so much for your testimony today, ma'am. This may be helpful to the prosecutor, so we'll make sure we forward that on to them. And without any objection, we will file
Speaker 22
1:24:18
this report. Thank you. Thank you. The next report is on page 13. Still under previously deferred reports, it is Clark County under the sheriff. We have repeat findings. The commissary account ending bank balance was not properly reconciled to the ending book balance,
and the ending book balance was incorrect by $8,700. In addition, bank reconciliations were not approved by someone other than the person preparing the reconciliation. A similar finding was noted for the previous six reports dating back to 13. pre-numbered checks were not used for drug enforcement fund disbursements to designated officer for cash on hand a similar finding was noted in the previous five reports dating back to 14 sheriff watson is here yes jason watson i'm
Speaker 304
1:24:58
sheriff in clark county thank you sir any comments before we move on yes
Speaker 305
1:25:03
sir in reference to the checks for the drug the drug enforcement fund i believe i testified here year before last um that we are actually issuing the checks those have been that has been cleared up that we we do our checks and and my testimony i believe like i said two years ago was we had never went back five years i know that was brought up at the last meeting but that had never been a visit with the auditors every year we never went back that
far would have never ignored anything like that from the auditors but regardless they we do issue the checks and our drug enforcement fund to our agents the way the auditing requires so that that's been cleared up the commissary account we are still working on it we're actually yeah I know the report says it goes back to 2013 we actually found what we think created our problem at the end of 2011 uh from a auditing with tiger corporation that provides our commissary
services this has been a very difficult auditing review because it takes tiger to do the auditing through their corporation and they're not they cannot work on it every day they are working on it there's two individuals assigned that i've spoke to both of them they've also linked up with our computers and i'm not that tech savvy so i'm i don't want to say something wrong but they're linking up to our computers i lost our secretary due to unexpected covet death that had been with
me for 10 years so covet is at our so tigers actually helped training in the computer link up process the our new secretary that is handling this we also have a new agile administrator that is also overlooking these things along with our treasurer so we've got things in place uh that are checking but as of right now they're telling us that we are in balance however the issue is still the current or the the previous backup that alderton we thought started in 2013 we think it
actually started december of 2011 from a wrong entry from our office when they entered an amount And they actually give me an amount of $758.71 because I believe at previous testimony, we knew we weren't dealing with a lot of money. The money is not missing. There's not money that's not been turned in, and there's not an inmate that's not been given money or the treasurer's office. These are wrong entries into line items the way I'm being described, so I hope I'm telling it exactly right.
but it consists it needs an audit and review from the tiger commissary side to give us the actual dates the entries were made in wrong areas so not only can we clear them up on our side but there's going to be some my understanding on the tiger corporation side too and i believe 2013 maybe when they changed systems i know that we had a lot of issues there for a little while being offline when deposits were made and things through the commissary fund so we're currently up to balance
according to tiger and according to our books however we are still working on the previous backup so we fixed it currently from 18 from when this would come about but we're still we still have a lot of work to do from the end of 2011 to about 2016 to 17. we think 17 is not bad They're just entries in wrong in line items. I think I'm describing that best. Nothing's missing. We've just got to get it in the right areas.
Chair
Unverified
1:28:46
Yes, sir. Any questions, committee? Seeing none, thank you for your thorough discussion. Without objection, we'll file the report. Thank you
Speaker 22
1:29:00
for coming, Chair. Thank you. Moving on. The next report is still on page 13. Under previously deferred reports, it's Phillips County. there were repeat findings for the county judge and the sheriff. The sheriff was unable to be here, but the judge is here. The first finding at the bottom of page 13 was referred to the prosecuting attorney.
The county expended $7,800 without an authorizing ordinance in apparent conflict with 14-14-1202, in that $6,500 was paid to purchase a trailer from a quorum court member who abstained from voting on the purchase, and $1,320 was paid to an employee to prepare jail requisitions for repayment. Then on page 14, the one at the top of the page was referred to the prosecutor and it was a repeat finding. The county housed and paid $5,900 in utilities for the Humane Society of the Delta,
a nonprofit organization without a contract for services. Also, these payments were dispersed from the road fund in noncompliance with code. A similar finding was issued in the prior report. The next finding was referred to the prosecutor. The county entered into a contract for $1,400 for maintenance services without the county judge's approval and paid the vendor $729 in excess of the contract amount for additional work. In addition, we were unable to verify that the additional work was performed. The next finding was a repeat finding.
The portion of the county judge's salary and bonus paid from the county road fund exceeded 50% in noncompliance. A similar finding was issued in the prior report. Judge Hall is here to
Speaker 307
1:30:38
address these findings. Let's say your name and title for the record and any comments you may have. Clark Hall,
Speaker 309
1:30:47
Phillips County Judge. Any comments? Well, I have two findings
Speaker 311
1:30:51
on the county judge. Which one do you want to start on? We'll start on the first one on the Phillips County Humane Society of the Delta
It was a nonprofit organization, at which time we apparently have been paying their utility bills for 10 to 12 years from the previous administration. We were not aware of it until we were trying to open up our new jail, and we were trying to get our utilities lined up when we found out that we were paying it. As soon as that happened, we shut that process off, and we also notified auditors in our district of the situation.
Speaker 312
1:31:30
We have not received any money back from the Humane Society of the Delta of the $5,919 due to the fact that they are broke and they have no money
Speaker 311
1:31:45
in their 501c3. uh i did authorize paying that utility that last utility bill because without it i could not open my detention center or the county's detention center so we moved forward the other one that
i had on my deal was the portion of the county judge salary and bonuses paid from the county road fund exceeded 50 percent in non-compliance of our code 1414811 when this uh was brought to our attention the county court has issued three a court order to correct this situation it has not been taken care of yet in the treasurer's office but I would tell this
committee that I have been the county judge
Speaker 312
1:32:41
in Phillips County for four years and five months and i have
Speaker 311
1:32:51
had four county treasurers uh they came in four years ago in five months with a problem and it is just getting worse as each treasurer is being replaced for various reasons so i would
speculate that the phillips county would be down here several times in front of this committee to discuss issues based on the fact that we uh we we have a serious situation that is progressively getting worse and we're trying to get it corrected it'll be private i just wanted yes sir okay any questions
Chair
Unverified
1:33:34
i have a few nobody else does so go back to phillips county the first page the 6 500 to pay for
Senator Trent Garner
Unverified
1:33:41
a trailer from a court member what happened with that
why were y'all buying it from a
Speaker 308
1:33:49
court member well sir uh it was a used trailer it was before we purchased it we did it
Speaker 311
1:33:55
and this is my error i know better i knew better i uh we asked permission from the quorum court to do it by resolution instead of an ordinance and i i just let that slip by me we corrected that with the ordinance and the quorum court has approved it since then we bought the trailer it's a used trailer for about a third of what it would you
retail price was for a new one it is to hold the new election equipment that we had to we bought under the the uh suggestion of the arkansas state uh state of secretary of state and those equipments are heavier and we had to have a trailer to transport them around the county to the election site. Okay. For the other couple
Chair
Unverified
1:34:43
findings we have here, I see at least three times from a quick reading that you or the quorum court tapped into restricted road funds to use for other
purposes. That seems to be a systematic problem with repeat findings. As I mentioned earlier, those funds are either through turn back or some other kind of method to be for that purpose. Why is this a continuous problem of either exceeding the amount paid to you out of that account, using those funds for the utilities for the Humane Society, or another restrictive road monies were used to pay for utilities at a justice complex? Why isn't that piggy bank over here not used for anything other than the roads?
Why is it continuously getting tapped for these
Speaker 311
1:35:33
to a treasurer. I can't answer what the treasurer does down in his office. And back to my original thing, I'm in my fourth treasurer in 40 years. As y'all
Speaker 312
1:35:43
are well aware, and everybody that's elected in this state is aware, that I have no authority over what another elected official does that's inside the county. I cannot make a treasurer do what is in compliance with state law.
Senator Trent Garner
Unverified
1:35:59
So let's get right here. So the quorum court yourself are directing them
Chair
Unverified
1:36:05
to make these payments for X, Y, and Z, whether it's the Humane Society, whether it's your salary, the quorum court approves that, I'm assuming, through a budget process. That goes to the treasurer, and then the treasurer is determining where that money comes from. Is that correct? That's my understanding. And he or she, multiple times, is using the road fund to pay for those issues, or pay for those items, correct?
Speaker 312
1:36:34
when the audit does their audit, we try to correct it when we can. But back to my problem, the county's problem has to go back to, we have had four different treasurers in four years and five months. And to be very frank, they are, I do not think any of them had any background in accounting or bookkeeping or any sense of especially the finances coming in
and managing county government along with school money and all this other. It's just overwhelming, and we have tried to get them help. We have offered to do whatever we can to get the office functioning. But there's a limit of what we can. We do not have the authority under the Constitution of the State of Arkansas to force them to do anything. Fair enough. Any
Chair
Unverified
1:37:34
questions, committee? Representative Rye and then Senator Beckham.
Yes, sir. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Judge, you know, each one of those claims
that come through, they go first to the county clerk, and then they go to the county judge. And each one of those officials have to put a code on there of what particular line item that that's to be paid for. That's right. Okay, now, you would have to sign that. I do. Well, if it was coded
Speaker 312
1:38:07
properly. It doesn't mean it's coded properly.
It is coded properly. It's coded to the right account. But that doesn't mean that's paid out of it when it gets down to the other end of the building. Yes, sir. But,
you know, if that was coded properly by the officials, and then, you know, you got to see that, you would know within that code if it was coming out of a certain fund, I think, sir. We do.
Speaker 312
1:38:33
It's supposed to come out of that fund that it's coded to. And you mean? It goes down to the county treasurer and it's coded and it's sent back to me to sign.
It tells me that that money, all I'm doing is signing that that is a legitimate bill owed by the county. Then it goes back to the treasurer for them to do their work, and that's where the money comes in. That's all I know about
it, Representative. Yes, sir. But, you know, if you're the end of the line and you're actually making sure that that's the proper code, then you would think that if that came out of a road fund that you wouldn't, you know, go along with that.
Or did they do something after you signed off on it? That's what I'm telling you. I see, sir. Okay,
Speaker 291
1:39:23
thank you. We're doing our part correctly. Yes, sir. Senator Beckham and then Senator Irvin.
Senator Charles Beckham
Unverified
1:39:30
thank you chair uh judge you you mentioned early on in the conversation here that the uh 5919 utilities paid for the humane society of the delta that you knew that you weren't supposed to pay that and you decided to pay it just to move on no sir that's not what
Speaker 312
1:39:47
i said that's not what my intent
was what happened was i was setting up a a an account with woodworth electric to provide electricity for construction of a justice detention center in phillips county arkansas when i got contacted the utility the they told me that which account did i wanted to assign it to and they told me i had two i had the penal farm account and i had to dealt the humane society account at that point i said i'm confused here because i didn't know i was paying the delta
to Humane Society's utility bill out of the road department. It just came into our bill as a bill. It didn't say on the statement from Woodruff Electric that it was the animal shelter. It just said a statement, their normal bill, Phillips County government, and we pay it. It's been paid for 10 to 12 years. I ceased that moment. I went down to, in fact, I called Audit, of local auditors down in Monticello and told them about it.
I went down to the animal shelter, and I told them, I, as a county, cannot authorize paying taxpayers money for something without a contract or without getting something directly to benefit the county as a whole. I gave them a week to come up with a plan that I could present to the quorum court. They did not. I went to the quorum court and it explained the whole situation that we had experienced, and I asked them their position on it, and they voted not to pay any more of that bill any further.
As we move forward, the county, there was a $5,918 bill incurred by the Delta Animal Shelter over a period of time that I could not, if I did not clean up and pay for, I couldn't get utilities turned on at the detention center that we were trying to build. They needed that account clear. So we paid it. Under recommendation of the county attorney and everybody I could talk to,
we paid it because I needed the facility opened up. and i did not uh i assume and rightly or wrong that at some point in time either we would have to sue the delta animal shelter or preferably the prosecuting attorney could sue them if they so choose but uh i had to do what i did in compliance to get a bond money moving forward to build a
100-bed facility in Phillips County. Did legislative
Speaker 320
1:42:46
audit suggest that you pay that and move forward? I did not
Speaker 312
1:42:51
talk to the legislative audit about paying that and move forward. I talked to my county attorneys and trying to figure out what we need to do.
Speaker 311
1:43:02
If I hadn't paid it, I'd have a $6 million building sitting on the ground now and never
Senator Charles Beckham
Unverified
1:43:10
open. I'm not sure that's justification for a legally paying $6,000 utility bill.
Representative Stan Berry
Unverified
1:43:15
May not be. Representative Barry. Thanks, Chairman. So, Judge, unfortunately, sometimes, you know, we have to
Speaker 107
1:43:29
be told that our baby is ugly in order to make it look better. and here's two and a half pages of ugliness. So the baby is ugly. My recommendation would be to get with the Association of Counties
and see if they can provide you all any assistance in order to reduce the number of pages of findings that you have down in Phillips County because it's obvious that there's a train wreck and there's more cars getting added to that train. So it's just a suggestion to do with it what you wish,
Representative Stan Berry
Unverified
1:44:06
but I think somebody really needs to come
Speaker 309
1:44:10
in and help you all get this train back on. I agree with you wholeheartedly, sir.
Speaker 312
1:44:17
And I would remind this body that in the past with Roger Norman and other legislative auditors,
we tried to address some issues that we're having here in Phillips County legislatively back in 10, 12 years ago. And unfortunately, we could not get the support nor the votes to make it happen. And that being said, we still got a train wreck. I cannot, I do not have the authority, nor does any elected official have the authority to tell another elected official inside the county
what they can and can't do inside their offices. My authority stops at the threshold of that office. As much as I can relate to them the law, I can relate to them what I have been taught. I can relate to them what the Municipal League has taught me and what the Association of Arkansas Counties has taught me. But I cannot force them to do something, and my hands are tied.
Representative Stan Berry
Unverified
1:45:28
A follow-up, Mr. Chairman? Yes, sir. And I recognize that, and I
Speaker 107
1:45:33
understand, you know, what you can do as an elected official. But, you know, in Phillips County, you've got to work together as a team. And you want to try to make Phillips County one of the most respected counties, you know, that you possibly can. And everybody's got to work together as a team. And all I'm saying is maybe the Association of Counties can come in and help you all get together, Get everybody in one room and figure it out.
But the direction that Phillips County is going right now is not a good direction. So I recognize all the issues with elected officials and what they can and they cannot do. But, you know, you're going down the wrong track right now. And hopefully you and the other elected officials in Phillips County can come
Representative Stan Berry
Unverified
1:46:19
together and try to get the train back on the track. We can always hope. Any more questions? Senator Irvin.
Speaker 291
1:46:30
Thank you. Hi. Hi, Missy. How are you doing?
Senator Missy Irvin
Unverified
1:46:34
I'm good. How are you, Clark? I'm fine. I was going to follow up on that with the legislative you served here in the House of Representatives, and I was just going to follow up on that because several of these findings have dealt with the county road fund, and I'm not wondering if we need to really take a hard look at how that money is sent and accounted for. I know counties probably would not want for it to be a reimbursable account,
but there's a lot of issues there. And so I think wanting to kind of pull those efforts back out and you're in a different role now, and I think that you might be beneficial to help provide some abilities to bring some legislative fixes to some of what you've discussed today. And so I just wanted to follow up on that because I know you've served in this capacity before. You're familiar with all that we're talking about.
So I think that's just offline or wherever you want to, but I think engaging legislatively and using both of those roles to fix a lot of these issues would be important. Well,
Speaker 311
1:47:44
I appreciate that, Ms. Gines. Yes, we did serve together, and I have served an
Speaker 312
1:47:49
elected official for 36 years in different capacities, and I'm well-versed in county government. However, for the defense of my office, is I'm dealing, I came in with an issue of a county government.
I have been at it for four years and five months trying to correct multiple issues, multiple problems, multiple actions that are not in compliance with what you, the legislators, have passed or the rules and regs established. I can't do it in four years and five months. I'm slowly moving it in the right direction.
But it's going to take several years to really get the system functioning like I want it to function and how y'all would like us to function. And I think you know my years down here serving with you that I can pretty take care of it. It's just I've got to have time to do it. But we're not giving up. But we will take care of the issue. It's just I have to do it with sugar-coating.
Representative David Hillman
Unverified
1:49:14
Thank you. Representative Hillman. Judge, you said you've been there a little over four years now. You think you've made progress on making things better for Phillips County? Absolutely. Are you dedicated to staying there long enough to get it all straightened out? I'm going to run one more time. Are we moving in the right direction?
Speaker 312
1:49:35
I would really enjoy or would be thrilled for this committee or any committee from the state to come down to Phillips County
and let us show the legislators what the changes have taken place in Phillips County just in the last four years. We are making progress, but there's a long, hard row to get it straight. Well, I think you had some very difficult
Representative David Hillman
Unverified
1:49:59
decisions to make when you came in there, and it appears to me that it's as if you've been doing the best you can under the very difficult circumstances to do that. Well, if I had more of a
Speaker 309
1:50:11
billy club, I might could do better, but I don't have that.
If you had a billy club, we'd probably refer to the prosecutor attorney. Representative
Speaker 312
1:50:24
Ryan. Sir, I do have one point I'd like to make, if I may. And that is in this article here where about the $750 overpayment to a vendor that was unknown to me about I did ask the auditor in an in-person meeting what would be the outcome. And I was told in person that anything over $500 would be referred to the state police for their investigation.
But I see in this report here that now it says the ALA doesn't turn over findings to the state police but to the prosecuting attorney. I just want a clarification on that, that in the record that my response from the auditors was that they do turn it over for investigation by the state police, which brings me to
Speaker 311
1:51:16
that. Because of that $750, sir, I'm in two federal lawsuits. Thank you.
Speaker 11
1:51:22
Ma'am, do you have anything to add? I apologize if you were told that we turn
Representative Nicole Clowney
Unverified
1:51:31
things over to the state police. We turn things over to the prosecutor, and then it's up to them to ask the state police to
Chair
Unverified
1:51:39
get involved. Thank you. Representative Riley, if you had a question? Yes, sir. Then Senator
Johnson. Yes, sir. Judge, I'm not trying to tell you what to do at all, but I've got a suggestion here, sir.
I would have the quorum court by ordinance, if you could, to make sure that you are the top official of the coding process of your county and you have an official stamp. And once you stamp that and that goes through you, if someone like the treasurer puts that in another code, then let them be held responsible for that because at least you've got it in the right direction yourself. I will take that out with the association artists. south counties. Yes, sir. Thank you. Senator Johnson, you're recognized. Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Senator Mark Johnson
Unverified
1:52:31
Judge Hall, we've been friends a long time. I value your service both here in the General Assembly and as a mayor prior to being county judge. And this is a little bit of a follow-up on Senator Irvin's comment. You have a colleague down the street, Mayor Smith, who is also a former member of this body and was also chairman of the legislative joint auditing committee. Correct. Co-chair. He testified about a lot of issues they were dealing with in Helena, West Helena last year.
And I know y'all aren't the only county in this state or cities that have problems. We know that. You know that. But you know our function on this committee and as the General Assembly. And I beseech you and Mayor Smith, help us help you. Help us come up with things we can do, both as this committee and in legislation, that will maybe make it where there's less opportunity for things to go wrong
if you don't have a, shall we say, a good treasurer or a dependable treasurer. And, again, this is not picking on any issue in your audit here, but more to I just simply ask that I appreciate you and Kevin both being very candid with us, as you have been. But we want all of our counties and cities to do better, and we know sometimes there's problems that just seem like they're coming at you, and I appreciate you keeping plugging at it.
But please, I just ask that you, if you've seen it from our standpoint, too, if you come up with ideas, please share those with us so we can maybe not have to have these kinds of things come up in the future. I know, depending on my friend, Representative Rye, who's been a county official and just made a suggestion of something that he has observed in his time in county government, that's the kind of thing that we're wanting to do. and maybe even mandate it in some cases if that's something that might be the best way to approach it.
But I just want to thank you for coming and your candor and ask you in the future, if you can, kind of give us some ideas of how we might
Speaker 311
1:54:56
work together to fix this. Thank you, Representative. And I will
Speaker 312
1:54:59
be very frank with you all on this committee. If I had been a county judge before I came down here, I'd have had a lot more things to say because I've learned a lot about the inequity of county government and the fallacies that we face.
And I regret that I did not serve as a county judge before I came down here. It made it a lot more easier. So I will keep moving forward. Thank
Speaker 309
1:55:25
you, Judge. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Thank you. Seeing
Senator Mark Johnson
Unverified
1:55:28
no other questions, I know that the
Chair
Unverified
1:55:30
sheriff was unable to make it today. I think we might try to get the treasurer, whoever they may be at this current moment, because it sounds like they're in internal to come and ask questions. But, Judge, I appreciate your candidacy today. We're going to defer this report until next time before we file it.
But unless there's something for the committee in that meantime, I don't imagine you'll need to come back personally. I think we'll allow them other people to handle
Speaker 90
1:56:04
it. Thank you, committee. Thank you. All right, moving on. The next report that we'll look at is Stone County. This will
Speaker 22
1:56:10
be the report certified to the bond board, and it starts on page 17.
Under the county judge, we have a finding referred to the prosecuting attorney and to the bond board. A review of credit card disbursements reveals 637 in questionable purchases in the county judge's office, including $3.45 for hotel rooms that were not used but reservations not canceled, $2.31 for meals without overnight travel, $3.7 in late fees and finance charges, and $24 for undocumented charges. On the next page, under the sheriff, we have repeat findings.
Let me get a drink of water. Our review of the Sheriff's Office bank accounts and selected disbursements from January 1 of 19 through June 4 of 20 revealed improper and questionable transactions totaling $70,545 due to a general lack of oversight in the Sheriff's Office. Many of the questionable purchases detailed below appear to be for items without a business purpose in apparent conflict with the public purpose doctrine in Article 12, Section 5.
A similar noting was noted in the prior report. $15,729 in unaccounted for equipment and gun purchases, including $99 for guns, accessories, and ammunition reloading equipment, $5790 for miscellaneous small equipment items, including shooting equipment, a 55-inch TV, Oakley sunglasses, body armor, fencing materials, propane cooker, small hand tools, external hard drive, cooler, storage containers, game cameras, small kitchen appliances, toolbox, iPhone, and hunting gear.
$12,000 in purchases without a documented business purpose or proper authorization by the Sheriff. $4,100 for building materials, tools, wiring, supplies, and boat and automotive parts. $3,700 for miscellaneous small equipment items, including shooting equipment, tiki torches, Apple Watch, propane heater, shop vac, laptop computer, game cameras, gun scopes, range finders, and iPad. $2,358 for personal clothing. $1,269 for food, primarily from grocery stores and
miscellaneous household items. $4,41 for fuel. $8,640 in unallowable and unauthorized purchases. $8,200 for gun accessories and night vision goggles paid for in February of 2020, although the county did not receive the items. Subsequently, in June of 20, the sheriff's office employee reimbursed this amount to the county and indicated the order had been canceled. 403 for a spotting scope purchased from the voting safety fund. This purchase was not authorized by the sheriff and was not an allowable expense from this fund.
6144 on purchases with questionable documentation. 2771 for ammunition supported by two invoices that did not match other invoices from the same vendor. $2,000 for a training course with documentation we could not verify as valid. Additionally, an employee documented as a course participant indicated that he did not attend and was unaware of the course. $1,238 in duplicate credit card payments, and $1,35 that appears to have been altered on an invoice. $4,046 in undocumented disbursements for items purchased from various vendors.
Although some of these purchases were from vendors normally used without adequate documentation, the business purpose could not be substantiated. Continuing on page 18, 5,700 in drug buy funds withdrawn from the Sheriff's Office Investigative Funds Bank Account in April of 19 and January of 20 without proper authorization. Of this amount, 4,750 was returned to the Sheriff's Office in cash by a Sheriff's Office employee on March 2 of 20. The remaining 950 was unaccounted for as of the report date.
A $5,000 bond refund paid to a released jail inmate from the municipal bond account on the instructions of a Sheriff's Office employee on January 31st of 20, although the inmate was not owed the refund. Sheriff's Office staff subsequently obtained documentation from the employee's county email account of a vehicle purchased by both the employee and the released jail inmate six days after the bond refund, with a vehicle owned by the Sheriff's Office employee listed as a trade-in on the vehicle purchased.
The employee's email account also contained documentation of other payments to the inmate from the employee's personal bank accounts. We also noted other improper and questionable transactions related to the Sheriff's Office credit card usage and transactions as listed below. $4,700 in the Sheriff's Office credit card payments not paid through the claims process as required by code. $45.97 paid from the municipal bond account on December 24, 2019. As of January 31, 2020, the municipal bond account was short $9,907 as a result of this payment,
the $5,000 questionable bond refund noted above, and a $310 unidentified variance. In February of 2020, the account was overdrawn as a result of a $63.18 disbursement made an error to another sheriff's office account that was subsequently refunded. $145 paid in cash by a sheriff's office employee in March of 20. $77.33 in unpaid credit card charges. $68.40 in documented charges. $3,000 for guns that were not accounted for.
$3,000 for apparent personal purchases made by an employee. $7.46 in charges that appear to be valid office expenses. $8.93 in undocumented charges. $309 payment on the Sheriff's Office fuel card, $284 in purchases at a farm and home store, $142 for fuel, $122 for lodging, and $36 in purchases at a grocery store. $778 in late fees and finance charges incurred on the Sheriff's Office credit cards and charge accounts with local vendors.
County officials indicated some of the purchased items in question were returned to the county by a Sheriff's Office employee after his suspension and subsequent resignation in March of 2020. These matters are currently being investigated by the Arkansas State
Speaker 11
2:02:28
Police. The sheriff is here to address this. All right. Can you please say your
Senator Trent Garner
Unverified
2:02:37
name and title for the record and any statements you'd like to make? Lance Bonds, Stone County Sheriff.
Speaker 341
2:02:47
Yes. When I did catch that all this was going on, I contacted the county judge. We called the prosecuting attorney, and he wrote a letter to the state police. So all this is under investigation, fixing to be arrests made. So I don't know how soon, but that's how I handled it when I caught that there was some theft going on. All right. Well, I'll start off.
Senator Trent Garner
Unverified
2:03:18
Let's be clear. This is a substantial amount of charges. I know. is are you saying today
Chair
Unverified
2:03:25
that this was one employee yes i am that's made all these charges yes how long did this go on i mean we got at least a year of audit and there's some prior reports as
Speaker 342
2:03:39
well i think maybe six months six months could it could have been longer
Chair
Unverified
2:03:48
but how do you miss the extensive amount of purchases?
How does your credit card, how do you not catch the
Speaker 307
2:03:56
credit card? How do you not see this coming out of your budget? How
Speaker 343
2:04:01
do you miss this amount of information? I wasn't watching my
Speaker 341
2:04:06
budget. I just wasn't watching. I had a deputy sheriff killed up there, and I wasn't into my job, and I trusted my chief deputy too much. and this is what happened.
Speaker 20
2:04:21
Okay, I think there will be some questions from committee. I see Representative Barry whenever you're ready, sir.
Representative Stan Berry
Unverified
2:04:27
Thank you, Mr. Chairman. And, you know, the buck stops here. You're the elected official of the Sheriff's Department. I just don't see when you have unaccounted guns, you know, how can somebody in the Sheriff's Department go out and purchase guns without your knowledge and I guess the bigger question is this water under the bridge I mean there's a tremendous amount of fraud and laws that were broken here and which you're ultimately responsible
Speaker 107
2:04:57
for it but what have you done to ensure that this doesn't ever happen again that you don't have
Speaker 341
2:05:05
another employee that comes in and does the same thing just watching paying more attention and I've hired a general administrator
Speaker 343
2:05:11
that well I'll let him tell you who he is and
Speaker 348
2:05:16
just watch as the bill's close for me now. But, you know, when you have
Speaker 349
2:05:21
people going out and buying guns and you can't account for those guns, then there's a problem, a serious problem.
That's why I called the state police and asked them to investigate it.
Speaker 351
2:05:33
And do you know where that investigation
Speaker 107
2:05:36
sits today? No, I know it's close. Have you talked to CID at state police, talked to Director Bryant about it?
Representative Stan Berry
Unverified
2:05:42
I would suggest giving them a call to make sure that they're tracking all this. They're
Speaker 343
2:05:46
tracking on it. I expect in the next couple of weeks. Okay.
Chair
Unverified
2:05:54
Thank you, Mr. Any more questions, committee? Let me ask this before we move on.
Has there been any effort to get reimbursement from this employee? Well, when he, after we
Speaker 341
2:06:07
figured this out, he brought in a, we've got the county judge here with me. How much check? It's $25,000. He brought in a $25,000 check. They told us to not touch, not cash. This whole $70,000, I don't think will be actually a right amount.
Speaker 345
2:06:28
Some of this stuff might can be explained.
Okay. The employee brought in a $25,000 check. After he was terminated. After he was terminated and said don't touch? No. He gave it to the county judge. The state police told me do not cash that check. Okay. State police said because it might be part of an ongoing investigation. Right. Have you recouped any of the purchased items? Some of it. Some of the guns they thought were missing are not missing. Okay.
Senator Trent Garner
Unverified
2:07:01
The gentleman sitting to your left, your right, my left, you're the new administrator. Can you say your name and title for
Stephen Williams
Unverified
2:07:09
the record? Yes, sir. My name is Stephen Williams. I'm the
Speaker 355
2:07:13
jail administrator. Okay. Came in the
Chair
Unverified
2:07:16
office in October of 2019. Under this, you say that you now have a requisite recreation process and procedures. Explain in detail what your procedure will be from here on out for credit card purchases, for everything else, redundancies, accountability, how is that going to work?
Stephen Williams
Unverified
2:07:40
October of 2019, I did not see any kind of a requisition process where there's some oversight, so I created a requisition form that is to be signed by the person requesting whatever that might be from a specific vendor, provide the pricing, and then it goes to the sheriff for him to sign off on it. Now, I was doing that for the jail, all the, like, jail food or utilities and clothing,
whatever we needed for the jail. I don't know if it was actually being done. I'd give that information, that form, to the chief deputy, but I don't think he was doing anything that was on his side. Was that process in place when this went down? No, this is because this was going on. This is the subsequent of finding this out? No. No, I started when I arrived there. It was not until the latter part of February that I started seeing some stuff on some of the bills that I was reviewing where I started seeing some items on there that didn't make sense to me why they would be on home improvements.
February 2020? Yes, sir. Okay. So then I went and took it to the sheriff
Speaker 357
2:08:50
and had him look at it, and I think that's whenever it all really kicked off. Then we started noticing everything else that was happening.
Chair
Unverified
2:08:58
Okay. Okay. Any more questions, committee? Senator Beckham.
Senator Charles Beckham
Unverified
2:09:04
What's the process for the drug buy funds to be withdrawn? Because it has some issues on the way that was handled, it looks like.
Speaker 341
2:09:14
I actually go get that money from the bank, and I give it to whoever my investigator is at the time. All of it's receded. I mean, everything's covered on it, and
Speaker 342
2:09:29
I don't know. I don't understand how he – I don't know what money's missing there. Go ahead.
Senator Charles Beckham
Unverified
2:09:47
The $5,700 that was withdrawn by the Sheriff's Office investigation funds, you have the documentation for that? Yes. and
Speaker 361
2:10:00
the employee returned it in cash well whoever my drug investigator is keeps that money they keep
Speaker 341
2:10:07
it and you gotta have cash on hand if you're doing that kind of work so so he had that money and yes it was all receded so whatever they're saying it's missing he got the 950 dollars not
Senator Charles Beckham
Unverified
2:10:24
missing right you took 5700 out you have 4750 returned right where's the 950 don't
Senator Trent Garner
Unverified
2:10:38
know okay how did the bond issue happen maybe that's my ignorance of how that works that was
Speaker 341
2:10:49
partly my fault because he caught me one day and he said he was he was dating this girl
and she had been in jail and uh he told me that i had done that we'd done a sheriff's sheriff's bond figure out and the court was over you return all that but 10 percent And I said, well, if we owe it, then we'll pay it. And I didn't think nothing else about it. So he comes into my office probably two months later, maybe a month,
and had the secretary write a $5,000 check to this female and stamp my name on it.
Senator Trent Garner
Unverified
2:11:40
So he stole $5,000. so the secretary stamped
Speaker 341
2:11:43
your name on it yes but she didn't intentionally she didn't have nothing to do with the theft part of it it was all him huh yeah she's been there only like a week so the chief deputy comes in
has her write that check and what position is a chief
Speaker 345
2:12:03
deputy can you explain and it's fairly high up in the department. Yeah, I mean, that's somebody you trust. If you have a chief deputy, he's your highest man. All right,
Representative Stan Berry
Unverified
2:12:19
any more questions, committee? Representative Berry, excuse me. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. So the $5,700 of the drug funds that we were talking about a minute ago, they went
Speaker 107
2:12:29
to the bank, and one individual drew out $5,700?
Speaker 341
2:12:32
We draw it out, not all at one time. We draw it out as we need it, but usually by the end of the year, we try to
Senator Missy Irvin
Unverified
2:12:41
have it all out because. So typically, can one person
Speaker 107
2:12:45
do that, or do you have to have two signatures, you know, to draw that money out? Just one person can go over there and draw it to some hundred dollars? Yes. Okay. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Any more questions?
Senator Trent Garner
Unverified
2:13:05
it was representative and then senator and then senator
Representative Aaron Pilkington
Unverified
2:13:07
thank you mr chair um i guess my question is this chief deputy hired i mean where did he come from was he a local boy was he someone you brought in from another
Speaker 341
2:13:23
county i mean he was this seems pretty egregious well his grandfather was county judge and he was sheriff there and that's how i knew him and he also had a very good military background he did five tours
Speaker 349
2:13:38
he just had a good military and i i was impressed with him and i trusted him too
Senator Missy Irvin
Unverified
2:13:52
much okay senator ervin you recognize hey how are y'all how are you good um so just on the drug buy funds so That was, but that's, that was, that wasn't, was that the chief deputy that went and got those out, or was that somebody else, you, or? I can't remember on that.
Usually I get it, I take it to, like right now,
Speaker 341
2:14:13
you know Damon. Yeah. So I'll take that money, I draw $1,500 out the other day, I take it to him, it's all receiped, it's all in the book, so how he stole
Senator Missy Irvin
Unverified
2:14:24
any of that, I don't know. Okay. And then are they using that money then undercover, right, to buy drugs? Are those drugs accounted for? Yes, everything. Everything's accounted. You have all that documented? Yes. Yeah, I would, there's a lot of things here that I want to work with you to, like, really address and fix.
And, I mean, I think, I know that there's a lot of people investigating this. You know, my big concern, obviously, is with the guns and the drugs and the cash and the items that are listed here. You know, there's a real dark story seems to be going on, you know, with this. And I think what's problematic for me is, you know, it kind of happened right under our noses, right?
or under your office and so that's problematic and I know you're a trusting person I know you personally but you know we've got you've got to you've got to make sure you're you're the person in charge you know the buck stops with you and if you need help you need to ask for it and especially rely on your quorum court and um and I think that's the takeaway here and for me and I want to say this is my home county i love my county but this is horrible black eye right and
i think it needs to be said it needs to be accounted for but i think at the end of the day this has to be not swept under the rug it's got to be confronted and then we've then the county sheriff's office and the county quorum court has got to address this publicly i think
right i really do i think there will be an arrest
made yeah quickly i think so but i'm saying beyond an arrest made or beyond that that the county government itself and your office itself has
got to address this publicly and say this is where we missed it this is what we're doing step by step to correct it because just like colonel barry pointed out you don't need to be the person taking that money out of that bank with one signature. There needs to be a higher level of accountability there. There's got to be a higher level of accountability on any time a gun is purchased, I think, you know, because we don't know where these guns are going or
you know, I think you've got higher level organizations and agencies also beyond the state police perhaps investigating this with the drugs and the cash and the money going to an inmate. There's got to be a higher level of accountability, and I think at some point this is going to have to be addressed to the public because, and I'll say this, because we've asked the public to fund a new jail. Well, I'm sorry, but the constituents and the people
and the citizens of Stone County are not going to support an increase in a tax to fund a new jail with this going on. It just is not going to happen. And so we got to work to get this fixed. And I appreciate you coming here. And I'm going to say this. You know, we all got, and this is not an excuse whatsoever. I mean, this is horrible, and everybody deserves to be hammered on this, in my opinion.
But we lost a really good friend in the sheriff's office. and he was killed in the line of duty and we trusted this individual. I know you did and that's not an excuse but it rocked everybody's world. But I, so
Speaker 386
2:18:21
anyway, but I will work with you. Thank you, Senator Irvin.
Senator Trent Garner
Unverified
2:18:28
I think Senator Beckham had a quick question
Senator Charles Beckham
Unverified
2:18:32
and Representative Wright and we're probably going to move on. Do
Speaker 293
2:18:37
you still use the signature stamp, or does your secretary still use your signature stamp to sign checks? Just
Speaker 366
2:18:43
when we have to. If I'm out of town, I'll okay it. But I've watched now
Speaker 293
2:18:50
what is being stamped. But your secretary still has access to your signature stamp? Yes. It's the same secretary
Senator Charles Beckham
Unverified
2:18:59
that issued the $5,000 bond? Yes.
Representative Rye. Yes, sir. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Sheriff, I don't know if it's possible, but I would look toward trying to do something like this right here. Every claim, everything that's bought, everything that needs to be accounted for in that budget, I'd do it. I'd do it. Now, it may be a lot to put on you because the sheriff, that's a big job. But, man, if you can take care of everything knowing what's going through there
and what you're paying for and see that that comes in and know that that's accounted for, man, I really believe that that's your best route because you hate to say this, but, you know, you can't trust everyone. I know. You know, and, you know, you're accountable for it. And at one time I was, and it's not easy, but I'll say this much. The more that you can get involved in that thing as far as the budgets and the amount of money that's spent for all expenditures, the better off you're going to be, sir.
Speaker 234
2:20:08
Right. Thank you. Yes, sir, Mr. Sheriff
Senator Trent Garner
Unverified
2:20:12
and Mr. Ray, I think that anybody can get burned by a bad employee. This is obviously a pretty egregious example. I can understand why you have trust in them. But that being said, you need to create systems in place that catches this before it comes to this level. I think that should be your number one goal moving forward. Redundancies, accountability. Yes, sir. I think that would be a highly suggest. Any more questions, committee? Seeing none, without objection, we'll file the support.
Speaker 90
2:20:39
Thank you for coming today. Okay. Thank you. Moving on. The next report is on
Speaker 22
2:20:48
page 26. This is under reports referred to the prosecuting attorney, the city of Lakeview. We have the first finding under the mayor and recorded treasurer is both repeat and referred to the prosecutor. Funds totaling $13.70 consisting of an undocumented travel advance and payroll advance were improperly dispersed to employees during $19. Then under the mayor, we have a repeat finding.
Although Schedule 1 of this report reflects a cash balance of $44.12 in the general fund, payroll testing revealed that as of December 31st of 2019, the city owed a significant amount to the Internal Revenue Service and to the Street Fund. As shown in Note 6 on Schedule 3 of this report, when these outstanding amounts were considered, the general fund would have had a deficit balance of 109-116. A similar finding was issued in the prior report. Another repeat finding, the city has not obtained an audit or agreed upon procedures report for the water and sewer system
Representative Nicole Clowney
Unverified
2:21:41
for 18 or 17 is required by 14-234-119. A similar finding was issued in the prior report. They have more findings,
Speaker 11
2:21:54
but those are the only ones that we requested the mayor to be here to address. And Mayor Davis is here. Mayor, can you say your name
Senator Trent Garner
Unverified
2:22:01
and title for the record, please? Any comments before we move to questions? Yes, sir. Your mic on.
Speaker 394
2:22:21
can press. It should turn green. Okay. There you go. The comment on the, I think, the paying of the improper payment to the payroll advance, I think that happened, and I guess I wasn't aware that I think one of the employees had a funeral or something out of town, and I might have paid him on a Thursday evening,
as opposed to Friday, so I'm responsible for that. I did pay him a few hours or maybe a half a day, a day early. What was the next? I can't
Speaker 393
2:22:56
remember the next one that you said. Yes, sir. We can just kind of go through questions if you want
Chair
Unverified
2:23:03
to. That's fine. So for the first finding, the $1,370, you said its employee was
Senator Trent Garner
Unverified
2:23:09
getting advanced payment, but it looks like there's undocumented travel advances.
Speaker 394
2:23:14
Well, on that travel advance, I had an employee, I had ADEQ needing me to get somebody in place to get a license, and I had a time frame to do it. The employee got, I think that was, I'm not sure what the 13th, I don't think it was that amount. I don't think that amount is correct, but anyway, I gave an advance on him going to class
to receive his water sewer license, and that's where that came from. So I think it – but I'm not agreeing with the 1370. I don't have the number before me, but I don't – Well, yeah, it looks
Senator Trent Garner
Unverified
2:24:06
like the 728 plus the 642 of the advancement you spoke about. Okay, it owes the two totals. Yes, sir. Okay. All right. For the next part, it seems like the city owes a significant amount of money to the IRS
and the street fund that's coming out of general revenue. How much do you owe the IRS? Are you all paying any payments toward
Speaker 396
2:24:29
that or the street fund right now? Yes, we're current as far as going forward.
Speaker 394
2:24:34
We've gotten all that worked out, and we had, well, I guess we did hire a tax advocate that's working on our behalf with IRS to work out a payment plan. And when I spoke with him, I guess about a week ago, he said they were pretty much at an agreement. So I'm expecting to hear from him any day on that.
But as far as being, I say, in the last nine months or so, we've been current going
Speaker 393
2:24:58
forward. Okay. And for the street fund, too, are you paying any back from general revenue toward
Senator Trent Garner
Unverified
2:25:03
that? Yes. Okay. Any other questions, committee? Seeing none, without objection, we will file the support. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. All right, thank you. Is that
Speaker 10
2:25:18
it? The next report will be Saline County.
Speaker 272
2:25:23
Page 31. I'm trying to see what page
Speaker 22
2:25:31
that's on. That'll be on page 31. We have a repeat finding on the district court clerk. The district court clerk was unable to identify $70,000 remaining in the bank account with receipts issued but not yet adjudicated, and the payments made on all unpaid individual time pay accounts. A similar finding was issued in the prior four reports dating back to 15, and the clerk is here to address this.
Speaker 399
2:25:55
Thank you. Will you please say your name and title for the record? Leah Redmond.
Speaker 400
2:26:02
I am the chief clerk of Slinghine District Court, Benton Department. And I am Clay Ford, the district judge for Slinghine County, Benton
Speaker 399
2:26:09
Department. Okay. Any comments you'd like to make for or questions? Yes, sir. I've been chief clerk for two years in researching this finding. I've found out that we may have a problem or do have a problem with our data management program, so the court is working with the administrative office of the courts to get context implemented into the court, and we're on a timeline to get that done by the end of this year.
Chair
Unverified
2:26:27
So is this $70,000 more of an account error, or is the money missing someplace? It is money in the account.
Senator Trent Garner
Unverified
2:26:36
It's money in the account. It's just not identifiable. Okay, gotcha. Any questions from the committee? Judge, do you
Speaker 401
2:26:46
have anything to add? No, sir. I've been judged for five months and three days, so I can't add
Senator Trent Garner
Unverified
2:26:53
much. Yes, sir. Seeing none, we will file this report without any objection. Thank you all so much for coming today.
Speaker 22
2:26:58
Thank you. The last report that we have guests for is the city of Gould, which continues on page 31. Under the court of treasurer, we have repeat findings. The bank accounts were not properly reconciled and reconciliations were not approved by someone other than the preparer. Similar issues were noted in the previous two reports. Cash receipts and disbursements journals were not properly posted and reconciled monthly to bank deposits and withdrawals for the general and street funds, and journals were not established for the fire department,
police, prisoner maintenance, and city hall grant funds. Similar issues were noted in the previous two reports. Continuing on the next page, the city's posted annual financial statement did not include all the city's receipts and disbursements by fund and the city's indebtedness and noncompliance with code. Adequate supporting documentation was not provided for tested disbursements of $5,531. Receipts were not issued for all funds received in the general and street funds, and receipts were not issued in the fire, police, prison maintenance, and city hall funds.
Speaker 156
2:28:05
The recorded treasurer is here. Ms. Smith? Thank you. Will you please
Chair
Unverified
2:28:10
say your name and title for the record, please?
Sheila Magrum-Smith
Unverified
2:28:13
Yes, sir. My name is Sheila Magrum-Smith. I'm the recorded treasurer for the city of Lulee. Do
Chair
Unverified
2:28:18
you have any comments, ma'am, before we move
Sheila Magrum-Smith
Unverified
2:28:21
forward? Yes, sir. all the things that she all the things that she said during the time that I was being an artist. This time I couldn't find a lot of my stuff because we were the building was being
renovated yeah, the building was being renovated and I had moved a lot of stuff and I put it in different places and I couldn't find it but since I've gotten these findings I have found a lot of stuff, and I am trying to do better with the documentation. And I remember putting some money in a wrong account during the time that I was getting turnback money
from Lincoln County Treasurer in Star City because I was in too big of a hurry. It wasn't done intentionally. All right. Any
Speaker 392
2:29:16
questions, Committee? Seeing none, ma'am, we will
Senator Trent Garner
Unverified
2:29:21
file this report without objection. Thank you all so much for coming today. Thank you, sir. Before we adjourn, we have one point of business we
Chair
Unverified
2:29:31
need to do. Representative Hillman, you're recognized.
Representative David Hillman
Unverified
2:29:35
Thank you, Mr. Chairman. As you all know, we've been having problems for a long time with a few of the towns out in the country that are not doing a good job of staying up-to-date on what they need to do. One of those is the town of Allport. We've gone further with that one of revoking their charter than we have with any of the others.
I understand they're trying to get things done again, but in order to facilitate the movement of that, we need to invite the Attorney General to the audit meeting in September. So with that, I have a motion, Mr. Chairman. Yes, sir. I move that the Attorney General be invited to the Joint Legislative Auditing Committee at the committee's September 10th meeting to explain the status of the town of Allport. That is a proper motion. Do we have a second?
Chair
Unverified
2:30:37
All those in favor say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Okay. Thank you, sir. Thank you. Mr. Chairman. Yes, sir. Representative, you're recognized.
Representative Stan Berry
Unverified
2:30:46
If I may make a comment. First of all, you know, I've learned a lot being on this committee, but I want to thank
Speaker 107
2:30:52
the legislative audit personally for all the hard work and effort. It's just a tremendous amount of work, and I just want to recognize that. But it's obvious also that we, darling, we went through a health pandemic, but I believe we have a pandemic in a lot of our cities and counties
and being, you know, accountable with public funds. And I don't know if it's from an education perspective or if they can get more help from the Association of Counties or what, but, you know, we have a terrible problem, and it's obvious just, you know, with one or two cities in my district with accounting for public funds. And anything, you know, the legislature, we create laws, but I also believe that we need to do everything that we can to possibly help these cities that have some issues.
So with that being said, any suggestions that the committee might have, you know, to rectify a lot of these problems? I think it would make the legislative audit's job a whole lot easier if we could solve the problem and be a little proactive on it. But I just wanted to make that comment. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Yes, sir.
Senator Trent Garner
Unverified
2:31:58
I see it as two negatives and a
positive for my time in audit. One, we aren't a prosecutorial agency, so we can't go after these actual crimes or things we find. Obviously, we can refer them to the Attorney General, and I found my first session, we did the report,
and only 5% actually were followed up on. Some of that makes sense because, you know, they're not really major issues. But second thing is, we're part-time legislators, so our one positive we have, we can change the law. And so that's why it's so important we remember the deficiencies and we find ways to address it in the general session. I think we have to go through a few quick reports, deferred or not, to finish it up. So if y'all give me just a little bit more leeway, I'll appreciate
Speaker 22
2:32:38
it. Mr. Berry, I thank you for – I do commend our staff. They work really hard, and through the pandemic,
they were able to really do a good job of staying productive and still cranking out audits. I appreciate that. So we'll go back, starting on page one, and we'll hit the ones that we skipped over. The city of Camden was deferred at the last meeting. The committee wanted the mayor to attend, and I have not heard from him. Staff would recommend we defer if the committee still wants him to come. Defer that one, yes, ma'am.
The next one will be on page 7, the town of Franklin. um the mayor and recorder treasurer were invited to be here and they did not come staff would recommend we defer that one as well yes ma'am without objection page eight and nine we have the town of gilmore they were also invited to be here to address repeat findings it did not come staff would recommend we defer that one as well without objection and just as a side note on that
Gilmore was one of the ones Gilmore and Twin Groves last time that we started the process of the turn back withholding their 60 days will be up Gilmore's on July 21st and Twin Groves on July 20th so by our next meeting we'll know whether or not their records have improved the next one would be on page 13 Bulton County I did talk to the district court clerk who was invited for repeat
findings and talked to our staff we think this issue has been corrected that the balances have been identified the court clerk wanted to go one more month to make sure that he was coming back to the same unidentified balance so he would know what would not be identified, and he has the judge lined up to do a court order to properly distribute the money once that happens, staff would recommend we file. Without
Senator Trent Garner
Unverified
2:34:52
objection, we'll file the Fulton County report.
Speaker 22
2:34:59
On page 17, at the top we have the Higginson Sewer Department. The only reason this one was deferred is because I failed to present it last time. We do have adequate responses to this, and staff would recommend we file it. Without objection, the report would be filed. The Spadrick Goose Camp Water Users Association we do not have a response for, and staff would recommend we defer. Without objection, we defer the report.
On page 22, we have the City of El Dorado. We have some findings. I know it's getting late. I normally read all the findings referred to the prosecuting attorney. Do you guys want me to do that or no? Do you want me to just go through one by one and see? Yes, ma'am. I want to pull
Speaker 11
2:35:47
out El Dorado. Do you want it to defer El Dorado? Yes, ma'am. I want to defer El Dorado. Do you want me to read the findings or no? No, ma'am. We'll just do it next time.
Chair
Unverified
2:36:02
Okay. And if you want to, we can batch all the rest of them. Is there
Speaker 18
2:36:08
anything you want to defer? Well, I'm not sure. I'll go through them fast. How about that? Okay, the city of Nashville, staff would recommend we file that one. Without objection, we'll file it.
Speaker 22
2:36:19
The city of Dequeen, staff would recommend we file it if there are no questions. Without objection, we'll
Speaker 11
2:36:27
file it. The town of 56, staff would recommend we file it if there are no questions. What's the population there?
Speaker 178
2:36:32
more than 56 without objection the city of Hampton staff would recommend we
Representative Nicole Clowney
Unverified
2:36:41
file that one if there are no questions without objection we've gone over Lakeview
Speaker 22
2:36:55
questions staff would recommend we file that one without objections equipment this one I'd just like to bring to your attention
this is a cyber security thing that someone hacked into their system and posed as the seller of a piece of property that they were going to purchase and the city wire transferred $10,000 and to my
Speaker 340
2:37:19
knowledge that money's not been recovered I'll say defer and see if they'll come here well there's not much they can do about it and i mean it's up to you but i'd rather defer
Senator Trent Garner
Unverified
2:37:32
and ask them how that happened okay equipment defer
Speaker 11
2:37:39
okay saint charles um staff would recommend we defer that one if
Speaker 265
2:37:44
there are no questions without objection madison county uh staff would recommend we file
Speaker 11
2:37:50
that one if there are no questions without objection. We'll file it. Okay. Marion County, the sheriff called, and he had been exposed to COVID and requested to defer. Without objection, he
Speaker 22
2:38:12
can defer. Parking is on page 32. They
were invited, and we did not hear from them. Staff would recommend we defer. Defer without objection on sedgwick um the mayor did call uh apparently the recorder treasurer is his wife and she's having some pretty serious health issues uh staff would ask if we could do a staff visit there to see if this finding has
Speaker 18
2:38:32
been corrected without objection yes ma'am we can do staff visit. Is that
Speaker 123
2:38:36
it? Did we not do Faulkner County? I don't think we did. I was going to bring
Speaker 11
2:38:51
that up. Oh, thank you. I think we're going to defer it because somebody couldn't come. That's right. The sheriff was sick and thinks
Speaker 22
2:39:02
he has COVID and was being tested and he requested that we defer. Without objection, defer
Chair
Unverified
2:39:05
Faulkner County. And we've already approved the others, so that's Thank you
Speaker 22
2:39:10
for the long meeting. We'll be back on... Oh, well, I missed those two. Excuse me. One more. Prairie County was supposed to be here, and they did not
Senator Trent Garner
Unverified
2:39:16
come. Without objection, we'll defer Prairie County. And without objection, we'll defer Madison County. Madison County.
Speaker 156
2:39:22
I thought we did that one. Quitman, we deferred Quitman. Okay. Thank you. We're adjourned. Sorry it took so long. You
Agenda
A G E N D A
COMMITTEE ON COUNTIES AND MUNICIPALITIES THURSDAY, JUNE 3, 2021 1:30 P.M. ROOM 151 – STATE CAPITOL BUILDING LITTLE ROCK, AR
Representative Johnny Rye, Vice Chair Representative Jon Milligan
A. Call to Order by Chair
B. Adoption of Minutes of the May 13, 2021 meeting
C. Review of Reports (Refer to the Synopsis)
D. The next meeting will be August 12, 2021
E. Adjournment
Documents
| Title | Type | Pages | Source |
|---|---|---|---|
| Agenda — LEGISLATIVE JOINT AUDITING - COUNTIES AND MUNICIPALITIES, Jun 3, 2021 | Agenda | 1 | Official source ↗ |
Speakers
Speaker 2
Senator Trent Garner
Unverified
Chair
Unverified
Speaker 7
Representative Nicole Clowney
Unverified
Speaker 11
Speaker 12
Speaker 13
Speaker 15
Speaker 18
Speaker 22
Senator Linda Chesterfield
Unverified
Speaker 41
Senator Charles Beckham
Unverified
Speaker 27
Speaker 49
Speaker 51
Simon Haynes
Unverified
Speaker 61
Speaker 70
Representative Fredrick J. Love
Unverified
Speaker 73
Speaker 76
Speaker 79
Speaker 67
Speaker 90
Speaker 94
Speaker 97
Speaker 99
Representative Stan Berry
Unverified
Speaker 107
Speaker 110
Speaker 93
Senator Missy Irvin
Unverified
Speaker 127
Speaker 66
Speaker 140
Speaker 142
Representative Johnny Rye Chair
Unverified
Speaker 148
Speaker 156
Speaker 159
Speaker 161
Speaker 100
Speaker 165
Speaker 167
Speaker 133
Speaker 132
Speaker 176
Pamela Jenkins
Unverified
Charlotte Mcfadden
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Speaker 180
Speaker 187
Melissa Ratliff
Unverified
Speaker 194
Speaker 188
Harold Douthit
Unverified
Speaker 205
Speaker 208
Desiree Hall
Unverified
Speaker 221
Speaker 222
Speaker 223
Speaker 242
Speaker 245
Speaker 178
Speaker 249
Speaker 252
Representative David Hillman
Unverified
Speaker 264
Speaker 265
Speaker 266
Speaker 271
Speaker 200
Speaker 278
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Speaker 284
Speaker 291
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Speaker 296
Speaker 304
Speaker 305
Speaker 307
Speaker 309
Speaker 311
Speaker 312
Speaker 308
Speaker 313
Speaker 320
Senator Mark Johnson
Unverified
Speaker 341
Speaker 342
Speaker 343
Speaker 20
Speaker 348
Speaker 349
Speaker 351
Speaker 345
Stephen Williams
Unverified
Speaker 355
Speaker 357
Speaker 361
Representative Aaron Pilkington
Unverified
Speaker 386
Speaker 366
Speaker 234
Speaker 393
Speaker 394
Speaker 396
Speaker 10
Speaker 272
Speaker 399
Speaker 400
Speaker 401
Sheila Magrum-Smith
Unverified
Speaker 392
Speaker 92
Speaker 340
Speaker 123