“A mess” is how Dale County Commission Chairman Mark Blankenship described a situation that has caused some municipalities to think that the county is in the voting machine rental business.
At the Dale County Commission work session March 22, Blankenship said that some of the municipalities within Dale County “had the understanding that the county had been handling (municipal use of voting machines) for them."
With municipal elections approaching, the county has been approached about use of county voting machines.
“We have had a mess trying to figure out what we have done with municipal elections over the past few years,” Blankenship told commissioners. “I have not been able to get anybody with county government to tell me how it worked.”
Blankenship said that “extensive research” into the matter revealed that a former county maintenance supervisor had formed a private company called Voting Machine Technology.
It was that company that municipalities had signed contracts with to provide voting machines.
“What was happening is that (the former county maintenance supervisor) was billing the municipalities, ranging from $500 to $200 per municipality based on the number of voting machines they had,” Blankenship said.
“(The former county employee) was taking vacation from the county as he was doing this work,” Blankenship said. “The aggravating part is that he was forcing county employees to take sick leave to work this project with him; we verified that on payroll records.
“We also noted that not only (the former county employee) but also the other county employees were using county vehicles at the same time they were working this contract company doing the voting machines for the municipalities,” Blankenship said.
The municipalities made the payment checks out to the former county maintenance supervisor, Blankenship said, referring to an invoice a municipality had received. “It even goes so far on this invoice (to show) that our county owned machines were being charged to those municipalities’ rental rates and he was keeping the money,” Blankenship said.
Blankenship stressed that the municipalities did nothing wrong when they rented the machines from the former county maintenance supervisor. “They simply thought they were doing the right thing.
“It’s very unethical, in my opinion, in the way it’s been handled,” Blankenship added. “As long as I’m here I’m not doing it this way again and I don’t think y’all want to do it this way again,” he said to the commissioners.
Blankenship said a letter would be sent to each of the municipalities explaining the situation. “We cannot continue doing it the way it’s been done in the past,” Blankenship told the commissioners. “I wanted to get it all out on the table so that you can explain the way it’s been done in the past when you get questions.”
During the work session, Blankenship did use the name of the former county maintenance supervisor but following the meeting, Dale County Attorney Henry Steagall asked the three media members present not to name the employee.
“I can’t control what the chairman says but please don't put (the former county maintenance supervisor’s) name in,” Steagall said. “There is a lot more to the story.
“Previous voting authorities knew about this, I mean it was not an illegal thing,” Steagall said. “The guy took leave. On his leave time he could do what he wants to do.
“You come back years later and look at it retroactively and say ‘Wow, that doesn’t look right,’” Steagall added. “You just have a whole new set of administrative people now and this is something that happened years ago.”
The next regular meeting of the Dale County Commission is Tuesday, April 12 at the Dale County Government Building in Ozark. The 10 a.m. work session is followed immediately by a voting session.
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