CONWAY -- Saline County Prosecuting Attorney Ken Casady will be the one to decide whether one or more employees in Faulkner County Clerk Margaret Darter's office will be charged over the handling of financial records.
Bob McMahon, Arkansas' state prosecutor coordinator, recommended Casady for the position in a letter sent earlier this month to Judge Troy Braswell of Faulkner County Circuit Court.
Although the official order assigning Casady to the case had not been filed as of Tuesday, Casady said he has already received the case file of the investigation, which the Arkansas State Police conducted.
"We are in the process of reviewing the file," Casady said Tuesday.
Casady said he couldn't estimate how long the review would take because he just recently had obtained the file.
In June, Cody Hiland, the Faulkner County prosecutor, asked the state police to determine whether anyone in the clerk's office had tampered with public officials' past-due statements of financial interest to make it appear that the forms had been filed on time.
The state police turned over its investigation findings to Hiland in early September, and he soon requested the appointment of a special prosecutor. Hiland said at the time that he wanted to "avoid any appearance of impropriety and conflict" since he had publicly supported Darter during her election campaign last year.
Darter could not be reached for comment Tuesday afternoon when county offices were closed for the Faulkner County Fair parade. She has previously declined comment.
Hiland told the state police in June that information he had received would indicate that the statements of financial interest "from multiple elected county officials were filed subsequent to the legal deadline ... but were improperly file stamped to reflect a timely filing and compliance with the law."
The documents provide information about the sources of income and holdings that public officials and their spouses had during the previous year.
In a Feb. 27 email obtained earlier this year by the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, Darter told the county's justices of the peace that they should file their statements immediately and that she would "hand file them for January 31st."
Failure to file a statement on time can be a misdemeanor in some cases but few, if any, officials are ever charged with a crime for missing the deadline.
Changing the public record, however, can lead to a tampering charge -- a Class D felony under Arkansas Code Annotated 5-24-121. Upon a conviction, it is punishable by up to six years in prison and a fine of up to $10,000.
State Desk on 09/23/2015