Mississippi County Judge Randy Carney told the CN Tuesday that his office plans to respond to a recent request under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) by the City of Osceola "in a lawful manner with a Christian attitude."
Carney told the quorum court's finance committee Tuesday afternoon that he has retained legal representation for the county in the matter of the possible county seat consolidation and new courthouse construction. He said that the attorneys would be handling the county's response to the FOIA request, and that it should be completed within the requested amount of time with no need for an extension.
"This morning I retained the services of Mike Rainwater out of Little Rock to represent us in the courthouse thing and on the consolidation issue," he said. "I spoke with him for the first time this morning. He wanted a local attorney to work with, so I contacted Jim Harris and this morning we hired them both. I asked him also to check on where we are with this jail fee thing, that's been out there for too long. We need to put it behind us, and I'm sure the City of Blytheville would like to see it put behind them as well. I know there are no slam dunks but I don't see how we could lose this [the jail fee issue]."
As to why the county is not using the services of county attorney Sen. David Burnett, Carney said that Burnett doesn't always have the time to dedicate to such intricate issues, and that he is a citizen of Osceola, which could cause conflict.
Osceola announced last week that they had retained the services of former Arkansas Attorney General Dustin McDaniel to assist in their attempts to stop the closure of the Osceola courthouse. After making a speech at the July quorum court meeting, McDaniel took action by submitting a 39-item FOIA request to the county, requesting a broad selection of documentation related to the county seat consolidation process.
The purpose of Tuesday's finance meeting, which was preceded directly by a meeting of the county's police and fire committee, was to locate funding for work needed to the county jail facility's roof and air conditioning systems.
Sheriff Dale Cook told justices that he has had to shut down 25 percent of his inmate housing capacity due to failed air conditioners, and the remaining units are aging and could go out at any time.
"At this point I'm having to make the call every day about who we have room for," he said. "The courts are sending in more misdemeanors than we have room for, and I've had to close down two felony dorms and try to have some of those people transferred out. Right now Judge Shannon Langston is having to look at who we have and who is being sentenced every day and decide who to let go because we don't have room."
Repairs to the building's roof and all 42 air units will cost an estimated $600,000, which is not in the county's budget, but justices decided to fund the project another way due to the dire circumstances.
"We don't have the money in the budget, but this is an emergency situation," said Justice Michael White. "We've worked so hard to build a reserve but I don't see how we could do this without dipping into some of it...with all due respect to Justice Nelson, when he spoke about a $2 million surplus last week, he was also including our operating budget, payroll and all. Our surplus is actually a CD of about $700,000."
After some discussion, Justice Rick Ash proposed that instead of doing half of the repair job for around $300,000, as was being proposed by Cook, that the county do the whole job on short-term financing. Finance director Brenda Burke said that a short term loan of $600,000 could likely be paid off in less than two years.
Both committees voted to pass such a resolution on the full court for consideration, and a special emergency meeting of the full court has been scheduled for Thursday at 2 p.m. in the Mississippi County Annex building.