Sheriff, Judge Candidates Square Off In Forum
Last updated Thursday, May 11, 2006 10:07 PM CDT in News
By Joseph Askins
The Morning News
ROGERS -- The Republican candidates for Benton County sheriff and judge carried many of the arguments from Wednesday's televised debates into open forums at the Rogers-Lowell Area Chamber of Commerce on Thursday.
In the first candidate forum of the day, Sheriff Keith Ferguson and challenger Andy Lee continued their argument over the level of gang activity in Benton County's unincorporated areas.
Lee, a former Benton County sheriff, believes Ferguson has done little to curb gang violence during his two terms in office. He alluded to a recent road-rage shooting in Lowell, in which a Hispanic gang member is accused of participating in the murder of a Fayetteville man.
"Just look on the front page of the Rogers paper if you think we don't have a gang problem," Lee said.
Ferguson repeated his belief that most gang activity takes place in cities, where the Sheriff's Office has no jurisdiction.
His office has helped to mediate conflicts between "Asian gangs" and residents in western Benton County, and deputies will continue to "stay on top of it," Ferguson said.
The biggest problem facing Benton County over the next decade is the manufacture, use and sale of drugs, the sheriff said. The county has tripled the size of its narcotics division since Lee's departure and will continue to work with U.S. marshals and other law enforcement agencies to curb drug trafficking, he said.
Lee said he regrets including the Ten Commandments in a list of jail rules in 1998, a decision leading to a lawsuit against Benton County. But he believes the mistake also led to a more positive religious presence in the jail through the inclusion of Bible studies and baptisms.
In the chamber's second forum, Gary Black found himself defending his three terms as Benton County judge against an assault from upstart Justice of the Peace Bill Adams.
Black positioned himself as the more experienced candidate in the primary election, but his challenger said the county needs "a change from a government that is self-serving to a government that serves the people."
Adams doesn't understand the powers of the county judge, or else he wouldn't have promised to trim the county's 2008 budget by 5 percent, Black said.
The Quorum Court and its Finance Committee approve the county's annual budget. The county judge requests funds for his own office and the Road Department, but the judge has no control over other elected officials' finances or the size of the overall budget, he said.
"Mr. Adams as a (justice of the peace) has far more power to control the purse strings than he ever would as a county judge," Black said.
But Adams believes the county can cut costs if elected officials shuck their old "tax and spend" ways and adopt a "lean and mean" budget policy, Adams said. He repeated his plan to reward county employees who find new ways to trim expenses.
Two audience members asked Black to explain the arrest of county resident Chris Nelson following a land dispute last month. Deputies arrested Nelson on April 14 after he tried to prevent road workers from taking 50 feet of road right-of-way from his property on Landers Road near Rogers.
Black insisted he had a handshake agreement with Nelson regarding the amount of right of way the Road Department would take. But he also admitted his staff "didn't do some of our paperwork" to make the agreement official.
Adams interpreted the situation differently, suggesting Black was abusing eminent domain laws to steal property.
"He thinks he's the 'road king' and can just take people's land, but when they fight back, he throws them in jail," Adams said.
Adams did demonstrate his ignorance of one county service when he accused Black's administration of wasting money on an unnecessary geographical information system when programs like Google Earth can provide high-resolution aerial images of the county at no charge.
What the challenger did not realize was Google's images of Benton County came not from the company's archives but from the county itself. Black was quick to point out that people who use Google's free software wouldn't have access to such detailed information if Benton County had not created its own geographical information system first.
The candidates will face off in the May 23 preferential primary election. The Republican candidate for county judge will face Democratic Party candidate Joe Chappelle in the Nov. 7 general election.
No Democrats are running for Benton County sheriff.
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