Nevada County Picayune and Gurdon Times Newspaper Archive

TOP NEWS of 2000 - Overdue Utilities

Late and unpaid electric bills wound up being a top story for the year 2000 in Prescott.

In April, the Picayune began investigating overdue utility accounts with the City of Prescott. The paper also formally requested access to the names of those individuals and businesses who were delinquent.

This request led to the Arkansas Attorney General's Office, and an opinion from Attorney General Mark Pryor, requiring the city, after nearly six months, to release the information.

From the outset, the defunct Nevada County Hospital was the largest delinquent account. In April the debt stood at $147,000, and was more than $150,000 as the year drew to an end.

Prescott has about 1,800 customers it provides with electricity. In April there were 209 overdue accounts for both residential and industrial users.

By the end of November, this figure climbed drastically as 313 customers were behind in their payments.

The amount owed at this time was more than $303,000, with the hospital owing the lion's share at $153,460.75.

During the past 10 years, according to city records, Prescott had written off 909 accounts totaling $322,630.

This was an average of 90 accounts each year, with $32,263 not being collected by the city.

A 1984 city ordinance showed the city wasn't following its own law, as the ordinance required accounts to be terminated if more than 60 days late.

At the end of May, more people paid on their accounts, but, even more were past due.

Prescott Mayor Howard Taylor said some people waited until they got their income tax refunds before catching up on their bills.

However, he never said why more accounts weren't terminated by the city under the requirements of the ordinance.

The number of accounts overdue, and amount owed on them fluctuated during the summer, sometimes up, sometimes down.

By early September, though, Pryor had rendered his opinion on the matter of the city's releasing the names of those owing.

Picayune publisher Ricky Ragsdale had sought the opinion, going through State Rep. Percy Malone, with this question asked: "Are the names of the customers of the city-owned utility company by the City of Prescott protected from being released, or are the names on the records of a nature they can be released to any taxpayer?"

Pryor responded, saying the names would be assumed to be part of public record and would have to be released under terms of the Arkansas Freedom of Information Act.

The other question asked was: "Assuming the names are public record, then does any publication of the names (of either past due or current utility customers) protect the city and those publishing the names from lawsuits from those customers?"

The response was such information doesn't constitute the type of intimate financial information that would justify nondisclosure on constitutional grounds, and as the names come from public record, there would be no basis for a lawsuit.

The Picayune wasn't the first paper in the state to seek such information, either. In 1997, a reporter in Fort Smith sought similar information from a municipally-owned water system.

Fort Smith's city council asked the same questions Prescott's asked  if disclosure would constitute an invasion of privacy.

Then Attorney General Winston Bryant, responded in much the same way Pryor did, thereby granting the release of the records.