It's hard to know exactly where incompetence was born, but its current address is 134 N. Main St., Cave Springs.
That's otherwise known as Cave Springs City Hall.
What’s the point?
A shortage of competence, not criminality, is to blame for Cave Springs’ failure to authorize a property tax millage for 2017.
That assessment sounds harsh, but what else can it be called when city leaders do not complete a basic annual responsibility -- setting the city's property tax millage rate and communicating that to the Quorum Court so the money could be collected? And in the midst of the error, the handling of public documents is so bad it leads to a state police investigation.
The millage reauthorization is no minor failure. The city's property tax millage typically brings about $350,000 a year to help pay for municipal services. The legality of Cave Springs receiving that 2017 tax revenue is now in serious question.
As of Friday, the Benton County tax collector continued to receive tax payments based on a millage rate the City Council in Cave Springs did not legally authorize. But the county treasurer's office has stopped disbursing the money to Cave Springs on advice of the county attorney. We're not attorneys, but we suspect all it would take to invalidate the 2017 millage is a taxpayer lawsuit claiming illegal exaction. Would it surprise anyone that there might be a Cave Springs resident prepared to do that?
Omission of official action to set the 2017 property tax rate was a bumbling error born, at least in part, in the dysfunctional relationships that exist among some city leaders. And, if the tax can't legally be collected, the loss of revenue will no doubt harm city services. In a town the size of Cave Springs, $350,000 is a big pot of money.
Last week, Benton County Prosecutor Nathan Smith announced he would not pursue criminal charges surrounding Cave Springs' situation. Smith called in investigators from the Arkansas State Police amid allegations from "numerous citizens" of criminal wrongdoing by elected officials and city employees. The investigation centered on what Mayor Travis Lee has called a "fraudulent resolution" turned in to the Benton County clerk to set the 2017 property tax millage rate.
Cities, school districts and counties formally set millage rates for the following year each fall. The rates become official when the county's Quorum Court adopts them by ordinance. The Quorum Court included Cave Springs' submitted resolution in last year's adoption, but recent developments demonstrated the City Council never actually voted on the millage as required by law.
So there's no question the city of Cave Springs submitted an improper, unauthorized resolution setting the millage. The question for state police and Smith was whether anyone committed a crime in the scramble last fall to correct the city's oversight.
Smith last week said no.
"Ultimately, the submission of the incorrect millage resolution certainly may imperil the city's efforts to collect taxes, but it does not appear to be a criminal act," Smith said in a letter explaining his findings. "There is no reason to believe that anyone in Cave Springs criminally forged or doctored the millage resolution," Smith said.
Most of the time, we suspect, a town's mayor would be relieved when a prosecutor determined no evidence of crime occurred. In the case of Cave Springs, Mayor Lee wasn't satisfied.
"It hasn't helped Cave Springs at all," Lee said Tuesday of Smith's announcement. "The problems will continue. They need to find out who did it. It could cost the city up to $350,000."
State police interviewed Lee, his one-time assistant Nicole Ferguson and the town's recorder-treasurer, Kimberly Hutcheson, in a search for answers about how an unauthorized resolution made its way to the county clerk's office. The resolution was a copy of one adopted in 2015, but since the City Council never adopted a 2016 version, there was no legal authority for any millage resolution to be sent to the county.
The prosecutor surmised any reasonable effort to commit fraud would have involved changing the entire resolution to disguise its origin as the 2015 document.
In short, the prosecutor found no crime. But the entire episode, in our view, arises from the failure of city leaders in Cave Springs to work together for the benefit of the citizens they represent. Passing an annual millage resolution is a basic function of the town's government. That Cave Springs didn't pass one strongly suggests incompetence.
Lee's disappointment in Smith's findings is misplaced. Once the prosecutor determined there was no evidence to support a criminal charge, his job was done. It is not the prosecutor's job to become entangled in the political fights that seem never to end in Cave Springs.
Both Lee and the City Council failed to check off the boxes of routine municipal government duties. The error that could prove costly to the city government arose from from a failure of city officials to attend important but basic chores. The last-minute scramble to provide a resolution to the county was just a symptom of the larger illness.
It's potentially going to be an expensive lesson.
Incompetence moves in wherever it is invited and wherever apathy allows it to hang out, but the good news is it can be evicted by the conscientious dedication of elected leaders and city employees to the work citizens expect of them. When city leaders devote a lot of time and energy to personal conflicts and vendettas, incompetence starts to settle in for a long stay.
Cave Springs residents have plenty of good neighbors. They don't need to live with incompetence.
Commentary on 05/21/2017