TEXARKANA — Thanks to the efforts of two of Miller County’s elected officials, the county’s general fund grew by more than $400,000 this month.
Miller County Circuit Clerk Mary Pankey said she has for years studied the thousands of dollars sitting idly in her office’s civil trust account. The money came from companies paying royalties to the owners of mineral rights for profits earned from mining or drilling when owners could not be located.
If a company could not locate the owner of a portion of mineral rights they wanted to lease, the business petitioned the court for permission. The court then appointed the Miller County Circuit Clerk as receiver and the process of mining or drilling proceeded. If a company harvested materials, the royalty payments were then made to the clerk’s office and placed in the office’s civil trust account where an owner could make a claim to the funds.
“Some of this money has been sitting here for 30 years,” Pankey said.
Pankey brought the issue to Stephanie Black, elected prosecuting attorney for the 8th Judicial District South, which serves Miller and Lafayette counties. Black did some legal research and quickly learned that Arkansas law provides a remedy. When funds have been unclaimed for three or more years, the county can have them declared abandoned.
Black said the law sets out the steps a county must take to ensure that owners, their spouses or their heirs can claim the funds if they believe they are entitled to them. Black and staff at her office compared the documents appointing the clerk’s office as receiver with property descriptions and other information to ensure accuracy. Pankey and Black said the research into the cases, some of which date back as far as 1979, took time, especially in cases that predate the Internet.
Public notices were published in the Texarkana Gazette during July that identified the properties associated with the 41 cases for whom the clerk’s office has been appointed as receiver. No claims to the funds were made, Pankey said.
Black’s office prepared 41 petitions to have the money declared abandoned and 41 orders authorizing the release of the money.
The 41 orders releasing the funds from the civil trust account and freeing them for deposit in the county’s general fund were signed Aug. 17 by Miller County Circuit Judge Kirk Johnson. Pankey handed County Treasurer Teresa Reed a check Tuesday for $408,256.09 for deposit into the county’s general fund.