Judge’s Ruling stops payments to Taxpayers in Ozark Mountain Solid Waste District

Thursday, June 16, 2022 at 6:31 AM

A judge's ruling has stopped payments to taxpayers in a northern Arkansas solid waste district.

The saga of the Ozark Mountain Solid Waste District and the closing of the NABORS waste hauling operation and landfill in Baxter County continues with a new ruling by Judge Tim Fox in Pulaski County Circuit Court. Judge Fox has ruled the $18 fee collected by the solid waste district is not an illegal exaction and the district will have to come up with a plan within 120 days to pay the money collected to the bondholders, essentially ending the payouts to taxpayers in Baxter, Marion, Searcy, Boone, Newton and Carroll counties.

Matt Bishop is an attorney in Fayetteville. He along with his wife, Wendy Howerton, also an attorney, filed a series of class-action lawsuits in the Ozark Mountain Solid Waste District’s six counties beginning in May 2018 to help taxpayers get some of their money back that was paid to the solid waste district as an annual assessment fee which the lawyers claim could not be imposed since the district was not providing a service.

Bishop tells KTLO that he plans to continue the fight to try and get money back to the taxpayers in those counties.

An interview with Matt Bishop can be heard on the KTLO Website.

(Story by Brad Haworth, KTLO)