Judge Denies Former Mayor’s Request to Lower Re-imbursement to City
April 17th, 2017 by
In a March 6 hearing, former Monticello Mayor Zack Tucker accepted a misdemeanor guilty plea to the charge of abuse of office. The charge of tampering with public record was dismissed.
The sentence included 90 days (suspended), and that took your reimbursed to city $22,500.
At this point in the hearing, Tucker’s attorney asked Judge Bynum Gibson to consider reducing the restitution to the city by approximately $8,500, the amount that Tucker had contributed to the “not-for-profit” festival.
MLive received documentation, Friday, that Judge Gibson had denied Tucker’s request to reduce the reimbursement to the city.
The court describes thedocumentation included with the request quote in sufficient to justify the offset of $8,327,28.”
Although the court’s document did not state the reasoning, courtroom witnesses felt that since the city did not specifically benefit from the former mayor’s expenditures, that amount should not be withheld from the amount of reimbursement of unauthorized taxpayer funds that were spent on the Arkansas Forestry Festival.
