Harding bond-issue lawsuit yields federal spinoff (go back »)

Spun Bond Two White County residents have moved part of an ongoing state-court lawsuit

alleging improprieties between the city of Searcy and Harding University to federal court

in Little Rock.The lawsuit that is now before U. S. District Judge Susan Webber Wright

focuses on the city’s issuance of “tens of millions of low-interest, taxexempt capital

improvement and refunding revenue bonds for the purpose of loaning the money raised from

the sale of those bonds to Harding.” The lawsuit claims that the loans stemming from the

bond issue have financed various capital improvements at the university, conferring a

direct economic benefit upon Harding.Because the university is a religion-based

institution, the arrangement that has been going on since 1991 is unconstitutional,

violating the plaintiffs ’ rights to separation of church and state under the

Establishment Clause of the First Amendment, the suit alleges.Another lawsuit, from which

the federal claims were excerpted, is ongoing in Searcy County Circuit Court and

encompasses many other issues, plaintiff’s attorney Marty Bowen of Little Rock said.Searcy

’s city attorney, Buck Gibson, refused to comment on either matter Thursday.“If it’s

pending litigation, I’m just not going to comment on it,” he said.The university’s

director of public relations, David Crouch, said Friday that he also didn’t want to

discuss details of ongoing litigation. But he said that the university “has acted

appropriately and within Arkansas and federal statutes governing the sale of these bonds,

and we’re confident that when the university’s position is presented in court, the

lawsuit will be deemed to have no merit.” The plaintiffs are Dennis Gillam, who lives on a

farm in White County, and Billy Pruitt of Searcy. Gillam is a former Craighead County judge

who in 2006 ran for county judge in White County and lost to Michael Lincoln during a

runoff.Bowen said the lawsuits came about after Gillam, shortly after losing the election,

spotted a small notice in a local newspaper saying that the county was going to reissue

revenue bonds for a joint project between White County Medical Center and Harding

University.Bowen, Gillam’s longtime friend, said Gillam soon hired him to find out why the

county would finance a project between the hospital and the university, a private school,

and a lawsuit grew out of that investigation. The suit, f iled about 18 months ago in

Craighead County, has now spun off a federal component, Bowen said. He said he decided to

separate some of the issues into a federal case and drop them from the state case, because

they involve matters of U. S. constitutional law. The federal suit also names as defendants

Searcy Mayor Belinda LaForce and the Public Educational and Residential Housing Facilities

Board.The suit describes the university as “a pervasively sectarian institution that

imposes religious restrictions on student admissions and faculty and staff appointments,

enforces obedience to its religious dogma, requires Bible study and attendance at chapel as

an integral part of its religious mission, and places religious limitations on how and what

the faculty teach.” Crouch took issue with some of that wording, pointing out that while

all faculty members must belong to the Church of Christ, the student body consists of “a

large number of other faiths.” Bowen said he doesn’t “have a problem with religion,”

but, “I’m a fan of the Constitution. The city has no business loaning money to Harding

University so Harding can continue its Christian mission.”