Our View

Our View

Doing what is right vs. doing what is easy

Unfortunately, the taxpaying citizens of Crittenden County have been coping with the bankruptcy and closure of their local hospital since August 2014, forced to depend on primary and emergency hospital care from one of the several Memphis hospitals while all along being taxed for a hospital they don’t even have.

Adding insult to injury, Crittenden County Quorum Court Justice Vickie Robertson had the audacity of saying during a recent meeting that she wants to continue the old tax on a hospital that no longer exists even though admitting, “We’ve got a tax already in place. We’re taxing people twice.”

Oh, but this justice’s opinion of the situation went on by her saying, “Let’s just make law then. I think we should make the ceremonial effort on the Quorum Court to say that the Quorum Court voted to rescind it. And if we did something that somebody felt was wrong, they would have to file a lawsuit saying no. I don’t see anybody challenging us about removing a tax.”

This double tax issue all came about when county Judge Woody Wheeless, who is credited with getting Baptist Hospital to build a brand new hospital here and getting the state Department of Corrections to take over the old and abandoned Crittenden Regional Hospital in West Memphis, made it clear he wants to stop the old tax on the citizens of the county that is generating $217,000 a year.

During this very same meeting, Judge Wheeless said, “I think it is the right thing for us to try and find a way to eliminate the old tax.”

Unfortunately, it is too late to get the issue on the upcoming Presidential election ballot so that voters could have an opportunity to repeal the old hospital tax.

Taxpayers have been paying four-tenths of a mill ever since the 1940s and there is a legal question as to whether or not that tax can be applied to the new hospital which will be run by Baptist Hospital.

Remember, the county held four elections – one to enact a tax specifically to support the existing Crittenden Regional hospital in July 2014 – which was later repealed in a second election in Dec. 2014 after CRH went bankrupt.

Voters then went to the polls again in July of 2015 and passed an entirely new tax, this one for Ameris Health Systems to operate a hospital in the old CRH building. When Ameris backed out of the deal, in a fourth and final referendum, voters passed a measure in March 2016 to redirect that tax to operate and build a new hospital.

With all that the citizens of Crittenden County have gone through over this mess Justice Robertson should be ashamed of herself as a public figure to try and scam the people with this deceptive suggestion.

We would certainly hope that the rest of these justices do all they can to do what is right for the people they serve and seriously find a way to eliminate this double taxation.

For anyone to now suggest taking this money and applying it to something else when it was originally established for a hospital that now is non-existent is disgusting and Justice Robertson owes all the people of Crittenden County an apology for trying to deceive them.