Our View

Our View

What’s going on in the town of Sunset?

Anyone who travels U.S. Highway 77 just north of Marion are well aware of the tiny incorporated area, better known as Sunset, population of just barely 300 residents, mostly poor low-income families, living in substandard and dilapidated housing.

It has no functional fire protection and its law enforcement, if it still exists, has had a reputation setting up speed traps along Highway 77 ticketing motorists driving through its incorporated limits.

Now we learn the city has lost is state turnback funds state auditors claim is because of bad accounting practices.

What may be even worse is what newly elected recorder, or City Clerk Erica Parker claims to have uncovered since talking with state auditors and if what she claims to have occurred we should expect 2nd Judicial District Prosecuting Attorney Scott Ellington to initiate an immediate investigation into the actions of Sunset’s previous mayor and possible other former city officials.

In fact, with what we would have expected the state auditors to have uncovered, based on what Parker is claiming, this prosecuting attorney’s investigation should have already been started.

Just a few days into her newly elected position Parker claim the previous mayor and city council knew the city would no longer be awarded turnback funds until accounting issues were corrected.

What Parker says she discovered after going over last year’s financials is unconscionable. For instance, Parker says the previous mayor Eddie Craig III, is alleged to have withdrawn more than $23,000 saying that he go the permission of the council but there is no record of it. If so, auditors should have demanded to know what the money was used for.

Craig is also alleged to have received a $5,600 reimbursement with no receipt to explain what it was for, and $9,800 was given to a woman by the name of Lisa Turner for accounting work on audits that Sunset failed.

Parker says she learned that Turner’s daughter, Brittney Turner was paid $250 weekly for code enforcement despite the fact that Sunset City Hall facilities were shut down all year and no one has enforced a code in Sunset in decades.

Craig is also said to have sold city property without prior approval of the council and that he took out more than $80,000 in loans that the city is paying back without the approval of the council, so says Parker.

If what Parker says she is discovering can be verified the main question that should be asked would simply be how could all of this have gone on without some immediate action on the part of the state auditors. Furthermore, if Parker was able to discover such discrepancies then why didn’t the state auditors raise the red flag and demand a full blown criminal investigation?

Parker says she is taking her findings to Ellington and because of the severity of these findings, if they can be substantiated, we should expect to hear about a serious criminal investigation.