By JOHN HOFHEIMER
Leader senior staff writer
Republicans swept all four contested countywide offices in Lonoke County in November, but so far, at least, it doesn’t appear there will be any wholesale layoffs.
New County Judge Doug Erwin, who defeated incumbent Charlie Troutman to become essentially the county’s chief operating officer and head of the road department, said he didn’t anticipate big changes.
In fact, he said he’d not make any changes “until we get into the office and evaluate who’s who and what’s what. We’re going to try to work with what we’ve got. Everybody needs their job, and I want to give everybody a chance to prove themselves.
“If they work, they’ve got a job. If not, they can work somewhere else.”
He has started interviewing for road administrator and comptroller, the job currently held by Darrell Tullos. Tullos has been Troutman’s right-hand man throughout his term as county judge, but he said he had decided to retire.
“There’s a lot of rumors floating around,” Tullos said. “I met with Doug for two and a half hours. He asked if my mind was made up.
“Everybody here is on pins and needles. Their livelihood and insurance depend on the job,” he said.
“Charlie has accomplished much and I’m proud to have been part of it,” Tullos added.
He said he’s got about a year’s worth of honey-dos stored up. “I’ll take it one day at a time.”
Tullos also wants to expand his ministry, manifested in his Hallelujah Harmony Quartet.
Jimmy Depriest, head of the county’s solid-waste collection and office of emergency management, seems to have been doing a good job, Erwin said.
Prosecutor Chuck Graham said he doesn’t expect to change “a whole lot of anything.”
“I was there eight years and it’s a good office. Denise (Brown) will be leaving since she was elected circuit clerk,” he said.
Graham worked as former Lonoke Prosecutor Lona McCastlain as chief deputy.
Interim Prosecutor Will Feland has been very helpful, according to Graham. Graham’s law partner, Ben Hooper, will finish up Graham’s legal work, but there won’t be any conflict because he was handling mostly civil cases.
“My focus is going to be protecting our kids. We’ve got to continue doing that. Second, we’ll focus on property crimes and drugs, and I want to see expansion of the drug court, which I helped start about six years ago.”
Brown’s duties in the prosecutor’s office have put her in frequent contact with the people in the circuit clerk’s office. “I’ve worked with those ladies for about 10 years,” she said. “I’m not going to cut off my nose to spite my face,” she said.
She does plan changes to bring the office more into the digital age. “I will have a website up and they can email us. I want to bring us into 2011.”
She said she’d like to bring other technology into the office, but that she’ll move slowly to see what might work.
Brown is taking vacation between now and taking office Jan. 1, but part of the time, she’ll visit other circuit clerk’s offices to see what they are doing, including Pulaski County Circuit Clerk Pat O’Brien, who has a website where people can look up court cases from their own computers.
“I’m am excited to get started,” Brown said.
Jack McNally, the nursing-home employee who beat Assessor Jerry Adams, couldn’t be reached for comment, but Adams said McNally came by the office one day, left a card and said if any of the employees had questions, they could call him.
“I have no idea (what McNally’s intentions are about current employees). I’ve not talked to him,” said Adams.
Asked if he thought his participation of what’s come to be called “double dipping” cost him his job, he said, “You can see the (Republican) tidal wave from the top all the way down to the constable north of town,” noting that Jimmy Taylor, a Democrat, had held that position for 20 years, but this year Republican Stanley Doug Sutterfield beat him with 59 percent of the votes.
