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AG SAYS ‘NO EASY ANSWER’ ON RETIREMENT CONTROVERSY

By Ray King/OF THE COMMERCIAL STAFF
Thursday, September 24, 2009 11:37 PM CDT

Arkansas Attorney General Dustin McDaniel said Thursday the controversy surrounding retirement payments to elected officials improperly is “difficult.”

Arkansas Attorney General Dustin McDaniel addresses the County Judges Association at a fall meeting luncheon Thursday afternoon at the Pine Bluff Convention Center. Pine Bluff Commercial/Ralph Fitzgerald

“I don’t know where this is going to go but however it shakes out, we’re going to let the chips fall where they may, move forward, and be better for it,” McDaniel said during a luncheon address to the Arkansas Association of County Judges fall meeting at the Pine Bluff Convention Center.

He was speaking about reports that some elected officials had put in retirement paperwork, then remained in office and have been drawing both their salaries and retirement benefits. He said the matter is still being investigated.

McDaniel said his office has interpreted the law to mean that officials who retire “have to go off the payroll for 90 days, even if they’re still making the decisions on who to hire and fire, and even if they’re still running the office.”

“The question is who is responsible for the millions of dollars in retirement benefits that were misappropriated and if the money was paid improperly, how do we get it back,” he said.

In a wide-ranging address to the judges association, McDaniel touched on a number of subjects, including the problem of maintaining jails that meet state standards.

“It’s not like there’s money growing on trees to fund jails,” he said. “Every city and county, big and small has the same problems and the legislature adopted a new law that raises fines and fees to address jail costs.

“If you have problems, call me because I take this job seriously and I want you to be able to have adequate funding to operate jails that meet minimum constitutional standards,” McDaniel said.

On another subject, the attorney general described a helicopter trip that he, Gov. Mike Beebe, the directors of the Arkansas State Police and State Emergency Management Agency, took in January after an ice storm hit the northern part of the state.

“When we landed in Clay County, we learned that 100 percent of the electric power was out in the county,” he said. “The hospital emergency room had a propane generator and there was a propane generator that was running phone service and both of them were running out of gas.”

McDaniel said one company had the contract to provide propane gas to both those generators, but told county officials they couldn’t get to them because of the storm.

“There was a local company that could provide the propane but Clay County was told that if they used that local company, the other company would sue them for breach of contract,” McDaniel said. “On the way back, the governor and I were trying to figure out how to get that gas to Clay County and I was drafting a bill to sue that gas company because people were suffering.

“After a phone call to a company executive, we got that worked out, and we got legislation through that fixed it for everybody from this day forward,” he said. “Anybody that tries that again is going to find the attorney general camped out on their lawn.”

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