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CITY IN VIOLATION OF STATE CONSTITUTION

By AmyJo Brown/OF THE COMMERCIAL STAFF

The city of Pine Bluff has given more than $323,500 of taxpayer dollars since at least 2003 to a handful of
nonprofit organizations in violation of the state’s Constitution — and they’re poised to continue the practice
in 2008, according to a review by The Commercial of the city’s proposed budget for next year and past city
budgets.

Over the course of the last two weeks, City Council committees agreed to recommend that the full council
contribute $86,837 out of the city’s 2008 general fund, the main fund where sales and property taxes are
collected, to seven nonprofits whose missions are mostly focused on economic development and services
for children and seniors.

The decisions were made despite little review of the nonprofits’ services or financial status. The executive
director of one nonprofit in the city’s budget, Brenda Goode of the Children’s Advocacy Center, said she
had no idea the city wanted to give her organization money and given the city’s tight financial condition, it
didn’t need the dollars.

Another nonprofit director, Linda Bateman, whose organization SCAN Volunteer Inc. was listed in the city’s
budget this year — as in years past — as providing protective services to children said they stopped
providing those direct services in 2003. Instead, they have been using the money to pay for counseling for
parents.

Bill Brumett, alderman for the 3rd Ward and chairman of the council’s Ways and Means Committee, said it
was not his intent to violate state law if such grants are illegal. But he also said he did not consider the
city’s annual grants of taxpayer money to the nonprofits “donations.”

“Each of the organizations serves a purpose in our community and helps us grow and achieve more as a
city,” Brumett, the second most senior member of the council, said in an e-mail. “In my years on the
council, it has never been brought to my attention that this is a serious area of concern.”

Article 12, Section 5 of the Arkansas Constitution prohibits cities — and other governmental jurisdictions
— from appropriating money or loaning its credit to any corporation, association, institution or individual
without a contract for services.

“If certain political subdivisions are, in fact making such contributions, I believe they are doing so in
derogation of (the constitution) and the contributions might be challenged as illegal exactions,” former
Attorney General Mike Beebe, now the state’s governor, wrote in an attorney general’s opinion in 2005 in
response to a question about whether the city of Cabot could donate $500 per month to a shelter for
domestic abuse victims.

Pine Bluff’s city attorney, Carol Billings, in response to a request by The Commercial, said she searched for
contracts the city might have with the nonprofits listed in the draft 2008 city budget and said she found
only one — with the Area Agency on Aging, which provides meals to seniors throughout the city. It was
last signed in 1999.

“I feel a little bit uneasy,” Billings said. “If they’re going to approve those, they need to run them through

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us.”

Billings said any grant by the city to a nonprofit, even under a contract, should be reviewed on a case by
case basis to determine whether it is for a proper municipal purpose and whether it will be spent to the
benefit of city residents.

“The fact that someone wants some money from the city is not sufficient,” she said. “I don’t know where
the breakdown was.”

The $86,837 in the proposed city budget for next year is less than 1 percent of the city’s projected 2008
revenue and is divided among seven nonprofits, most of which have received roughly the same amount
since 2003.

It includes: $36,000 for the Pine Bluff Downtown Development Inc., $17,112 for the Area Agency on
Aging, $10,000 for the Pine Bluff-Jefferson County Historical Museum, $5,225 for the Southeast Economic
Development District Inc., $5,000 for the Children’s Advocacy Center and $3,500 for SCAN Volunteer
Service Inc.

In addition, the Public Safety Council Committee, chaired by 1st Ward Alderman Irene Holcomb, agreed
last week to add $10,000 in the budget for the nonprofit TOPPS Inc. to use as a match for a 90/10 federal
grant. The city’s Parks and Recreation Commission recently leased the restored Big Recreation Building in
Townsend Park to TOPPS to use for programming for at-risk teenagers.

None of the nonprofits listed in the budget have current or proposed contracts with the city, their
directors said.

Many said they didn’t think they had ever had one.

“We don’t have a contract,” said Sue Trulock, director of the Pine Bluff and Jefferson County Historical
Museum, which collects and displays artifacts from across Jefferson County. “We just make a request and
they either grant it or not.”

Joy Blankenship, executive director of Pine Bluff Downtown Development Inc., said her group’s purpose is
to keep the city’s downtown clean and to maintain its landscaping. She said she was not aware of any
contract her organization had with the city for its services.

“It’s hard to pinpoint everything we do,” she said.

Goode, with the Children’s Advocacy Center, which provides a place for state, county and city police
agencies to interview children who are victims of child abuse, said the center received money from the city
last year because it had lost a grant vital to its operations. She said she could not remember if the city
signed a contract for the services then. But she said this year, the center is fine financially and did not
request help from the city.

“We don’t ask the city for money we don’t need,” she said.

Bateman, at SCAN Volunteer Service, said her group did request funding in late November, after the city’s
finance manager told aldermen on the council’s Public Health and Welfare Committee that he was confused
about the request and believed the organization may have dissolved.

Later, however, without discussion, the council’s Ways and Means Committee approved SCAN’s request in
a sweeping approval of all budget changes, which included the request letter from SCAN.

Bateman said the services SCAN provided the city changed in 2003 from doing child abuse investigations
to counseling abusive parents after it lost its contract for protective services for children from the state
Department of Health and Human Services because of state budget cuts.

Holcomb, who is the senior member of the council, said she was not aware that providing the money to the
nonprofits was illegal.

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“We’ve been doing it for years,” she said. “I’m not saying that makes it right ... if that is illegal, we’re not
knowledgeable of that. It’s not our intent to do illegal things.”

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