County pays $97,000 APERMA assessment

The Garland County Quorum Court appropriated $97,149 from the general fund earlier this week to pay an assessment levied by the county’s former risk management provider.

Arkansas Public Entities Risk Management Association levied the additional charge to counties it covered prior to going out of business, County Judge Darryl Mahoney said. The Association of Arkansas Counties picked up the county’s risk management coverage in January.

“I went to a meeting with APERMA in September, and they told us they had been operating below cost, and that they were in trouble financially,” Mahoney said. “APERMA actually closed their doors and went out of business. If you had a claim that had already been turned in they will continue to take care of that.

“Any time you do business with a pool like that where they cover part of it, and they buy insurance to cover the rest, you run the risk of having a debt.

They had a really bad year, so the cost was more than they had taken in. They assessed the counties that were left with them.”

The county said APERMA contracted attorney Burt Newell to dispose of the six pending lawsuits APERMA represented the county in prior to going out of business. They include the civil claim the Stanley family filed in 2017 against members of the Garland County Sheriff’s Department.

U.S. District Senior Judge Robert T. Dawson dismissed the claims in March, ruling that the reasonable suspicion of abuse county and state officials had when they removed the Stanley children from their home in January 2015 protected them from civil liability.

The petition the family filed with the 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals has yet to be adjudicated.

Other pending litigation involves claims filed by Garland County Detention Center inmates and litigants who have alleged they were wrongfully

arrested or defamed by erroneous information on their booking paperwork.

Mahoney said the $100,000 the quorum court appropriated from the water system fund to the general fund will offset APERMA’s assessment. The former was established in 2015 to pay for the lawsuit the county had considered bringing against the city of Hot Springs for its utility connection and extension restrictions in unincorporated Garland County.

Litigation was never brought, but the quorum court reappropriated the $100,000 in six consecutive budget cycles.