Last week, a Garland County Quorum Court committee made a decision in secret that affects every man, woman and child in Garland County.
The Criminal Justice Advisory Committee, which includes elected officials -- and, yes, judges are elected officials -- met without advance notice to the media and voted to temporarily close the Garland County Detention Center.
The meeting was a clear violation of the state's Freedom of Information Act, which, according to the Arkansas attorney general's FOIA handbook, requires "any meeting, formal or informal, regular or special, of a governing body including sub-bodies" to notify the public it is meeting.
The Sentinel-Record was not notified of the meeting, nor was it informed of the committee's decision. And let us be abundantly clear on the second point: there was no public notification that the facility would be closed to both male and female inmates just four years after the $42 million, taxpayer-funded jail opened.
A notification was sent to "judges, court personnel, prosecuting attorney, HSPD and State Police," according to Chief Deputy of Corrections Steven Elrod, who chairs the committee -- just not the people who are paying for the jail's construction and operation.
Elrod said he suggested the temporary closure, and a "recommendation was made to close the jail with no objections noted by the committee."
Was there a quorum present when this recommendation was made? To whom was the recommendation made? Who ultimately made the decision to close the jail? The committee was ostensibly formed to make recommendations to the quorum court -- was that recommendation ever made? According to Elrod, JP Matt McKee was not present at the meeting. Neither was Judge Joe Graham nor Prosecuting Attorney Michelle Lawrence.
These are all good questions, ones that reporters usually ask when they are present at such meetings.
The Sentinel-Record learned of the committee's action on Friday only after a concerned citizen, on condition of anonymity, forwarded a copy of a memo to the aforementioned entities about the closure to the newspaper. As a result, the first time our readers learned of the closure was over their morning coffee on Saturday -- three days after the committee's decision. That is simply unacceptable.
The blatant disregard shown to the public is also unacceptable.
The jail being operational is crucial to the community's safety and well-being. To simply close the facility and not inform the citizenry is a substantial breach of public trust.
When elected officials meet in secret and make decisions that have a significant impact on safety with little to no regard for the public, it is a problem. Folks deserve to know if a service that they are paying for with their tax dollars is not being provided to them. Closing the jail without telling the public is simply intolerable.
It is especially galling that the FOIA violation was made by a committee that includes sitting judges. As we just observed, judges are elected officials. Like any other elected official, they are not above the FOIA.
For any county officials who may be scratching their heads, wondering why the public not being at one meeting should raise such alarm, The Sentinel-Record would remind you that the $42 million county detention center opened in June 2015 only after voters passed a temporary 0.625 percent sales tax to finance its construction and a permanent 0.375 percent levy to operate and maintain it. It was built after overcrowding at the previous detention facility on Ouachita Avenue reached a critical level.
Seventeen civic organizations supported passage of the issue in 2011. The words of the chairman of the Criminal Justice Coordinating Committee, Bud West, still ring in our ears eight years later. On election night in October 2011, West told us, because of persistent overcrowding in the old jail, "we've been turning out so many that I felt like, and obviously our voters did too, that we're just the laughingstock of the criminal crowd, because they can be arrested and turned loose in just a few minutes."
The Sentinel-Record wonders what the "criminal crowd" thinks when a $42 million, state-of-the-art jail funded by tax dollars is closed due to overpopulation four years after it opens? "Laughingstock" would be a safe bet.
Editorial on 07/17/2019