02/05/2025
OPINION | EDITORIAL: Oh, no, mom is really upset now!
It would appear that Jefferson County is approaching a resolution to its budget problems.
A Tuesday meeting of the Quorum Court was scheduled and there is some hope that the main players will slow their anger long enough to pass something, anything, that will put life back to normal for county workers. But as of this writing, that meeting was hours away.
Mainly though, it's been other adults in the room that have had to attempt to fix Jefferson County's problems. The embarrassment for such fills any unused emotional space in the room.
It's as if the county judge and quorum court members are sitting in the back seat of the family station wagon on a long drive – two-plus years – and an angry parent is having to threaten them with "coming back there" and breaking up their scuffles, as in, "don't make me do that."
And yet, all manner of people have had to climb into the backseat with these yahoos. We refer to them in that derogatory sense because they were elected to govern and really, any average person could be doing as good a job as they have done, in the sense that they haven't done a good job, with the average person likely bettering what we see coming out of the courthouse.
The fact that mom had to get upset, and by mom, we mean Gov. Sarah Sanders, is maybe the most embarrassing turn of events. There for a while, were comments attributed to her that she had talked to County Judge Gerald Robinson in an attempt to get this budget impasse settled.
Wouldn't you have liked to have been a fly on that wall? "Hey, Gerald, what's going on down there? You're going to get this budget thing back on track, right? Right?"
And then when it wasn't put back on track – and it takes a responsive and cooperative quorum court to make that happen so some but not nearly all of this mess can be laid at his feet – there was mom standing there fuming, referencing the fact that she had had more than one conversation with the county judge about the mess.
"I've asked him to figure out a solution," she said Monday, the day when she had to lean in on what had been Jefferson County's private little dysfunction. "Unfortunately, they haven't come to one, which is why we're all standing up here today."
Ouch. Translated, that's, well, actually no translation is necessary. That's one upset governor, as in we are in the middle of the state legislative session and we have to stop what we're doing and fix your little tempest in a teapot. Nowhere was such a detour scheduled for the session.
As one person said on Monday at a church-sponsored giveaway to help unpaid workers, they found it hard to swallow that there wasn't already a law in place, like the one being considered now, that would keep the wheels on a county's government if a budget couldn't be passed for a new year.
"I just can't believe we are the only county that has had this kind of problem across all the years that counties have been operating," the person mused.
That is, apparently, just how special Jefferson County is, that the state legislature has to step in and straighten this out. Two thoughts on that: It's fortunate that this is happening during a scheduled legislative session; otherwise, the governor would have had to call a special session. Can you imagine?!
The other is that this legislation move won't fix the real problem. It might reinstate the budget that was used last year and get these hundreds of county workers paid again. But nothing is going to change the fact that the folks in the back seat hate each other and can't get beyond that condition to govern. Only the voters can fix that.
Publishing the news in Pine Bluff and Southeast Arkansas. 
