LITTLE ROCK — The smoke finally has cleared in Fayetteville’s drawn-out saga of how Marilyn Heifner broke the Freedom of Information law and the law won.
And the result of that drama, at least from the Advertising and Promotion Commission she has directed, is that she gets to keep her job and salary. But she actually lost the $4,000 raise approved before she admitted to being dishonest in answering a commission-related question from a Northwest Arkansas Times reporter. Just like that. Four whole thousand dollars gone, leaving her with only $80,000 to scrape by. The agony.
Oh, there also was the matter of a small fine and some probation where she promised never, ever to again violate the Freedom of Information Act in the coming year. The entire embarrassing matter will be expunged if she lives up to her end of the deal.
I’ll not bother rehashing the already well-publicized facts of this strange case. I’m not here to join the chorus of boos and chastisements against Heifner. I feel she’s paid dearly in the court of public opinion for her momentary decision not to answer a reporter’s question when he initially asked it. I wish the lady well. No doubt in my mind that she’s had a few sleepdisturbed nights in the past months caused by her own doing.
I also hope she and every other public servant who is subject to the state’s Freedom of Information law realizes the newspaper isn’t reluctant to act when it discovers the law is violated. That alone has got to be enough to give some pause before they willfully ignore that law and wind up not only all over the front pages but in front of a judge.
Yet I’m somewhat taken aback by the commission’s 4-2 vote to retain Heifner as the commission’s executive director at such a handsome public salary. That much compensation in any city job in this day and age is enough to invariably create envy, resentments, even anger, in a lot of folks without jobs.
Of course, it is the commissioners who do the hiring and firing and set the salary level for the executive director. It’s always a nice position to be in when to be able to spend other folks’ money and not have to concern oneself all that much with the bottom line.
I need to say that I wasn’t surprised in the commission’s vote to see the two local politicians (and indefinite commission members)—Mayor Lioneld Jordan and Alderman Justin Tennant—cast the two votes against retaining Heifner. The four commissioners appointed by the City Council, all from the private sector, voted to retain Heifner.
A more cynical type might say the mayor and the alderman cast nay votes so this case wouldn’t come back to haunt them later. Those appointed businessfolk don’t have to face elections, you know. Of course, I’m more skeptical than cynical. And surely we all realize that the mayor and the alderman couldn’t possibly have known in advance that the measure to retain Heifner already had four yes votes, thus freeing them to vote no.
‘Living spirit’
It’s that resurrection time of the year again. Daffodils and trees are blooming. Folks are filling their lawns and planters with colorful flowers and the annual Trent Trumbo Memorial Easter Feed is just one week from today.
So many across Northwest Arkansas already know this event, hosted for nearly two decades by the M&N Augustine Foundation, is no small deal when you realize what it accomplishes.
Using hundreds of volunteers ranging in social status from judges to the homeless and thousands of pounds of contributed food, it’s not that much a stretch to compare the special day with feeding 5,000 people with five loaves of bread and a couple of fish.
Last year, Dr. Merlin Augustine says the day saw 6,483 people fed across the city between 11 a.m. until 6:30 that evening. “Like the foundation named for my late mother and father, the Easter Feed represents the living spirit of them,” he told me.
As with last year’s Easter Feed, this one is between 11 a.m. and 2 p.m. April 7 at Central United Methodist Church.
Last year, Rep. Steve Womack (one of many volunteer “dignitaries” manning the buffet serving line) thankfully taught me the proper way to arrange and dispense 100 or so slices of white bread.
The retired lieutenant colonel actually reminded me for a moment of my father (also a retired lieutenant colonel) when Womack drilled me on the perfectly neat lines I should form with the loaves.
I haven’t looked at a slice of bread the same way since that experience, or after enjoying the direction of Fayetteville lawyer Jim Rose II, who served as a drill sergeant (of sorts) to continually assign and reassign volunteers to their serving posts. Yeah, the barrister was once in the military, too.
So if you haven’t been to bask in the warm and fuzzy affections of Dr. Augustine and his wife Beverly, then eat freely of all the turkey, ham, dressing, cranberries, mashed potatoes, pie, cake and sliced white bread you can consume, I highly recommend it. Additional volunteers will even deliver meals to shut-ins and those who can’t get to the church. I’m betting this 2012 feed will top 7,000 meals served.
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Mike Masterson is opinion editor of the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette’s Northwest edition.
Editorial, Pages 18 on 03/31/2012