In the most recent round of jockeying for the advantage play in the ongoing battle between Cullman County and the water utility board the newly-sworn commission orphaned from its oversight shortly after taking office last month, the Supreme Court of Alabama this week denied a request that would have granted the board a temporary reprieve from the county’s re-assertion of its control of the department, along with its suspension of the board’s favored department manager.

The high court issued a brief ruling Monday denying a November request by the South Cumberland Cooperative District (SCCD) and its co-defendants to prevent the new county commission lineup from enforcing a series of resolutions passed at its first meeting.

The actions challenged by the SCCD and its attorneys included the commission’s temporary suspension — without pay — of department manager David Bussman; the signing of a renewed water purchase agreement obligating the county to acquire water at wholesale cost from the City of Cullman; and an assertion by the county to full and exclusive access and control of the water department, including its employees, facilities and revenues.

The latter of those measures had been buttressed with an order from Circuit Judge Don Hardeman immediately following the Nov. 10 commission meeting at which the resolution was passed. That order became a crucial document in the county’s assertion of its right to access the department’s offices on Beech Avenue last month, when attorneys representing the SCCD, along with a couple of SCCD board members, met with county representatives at the department’s gate in an effort to prevent the county from gaining access to the facility.

The Supreme Court ruling does not halt the SCCD’s appeal of a May 28 injunction Hardeman issued ordering the board to temporarily relinquish the department to the county — its original owner at the time the SCCD and its oversight board, the Governmental Utility Services Corporation of Cullman County (GUSC) — were formed in April. That injunction had also ordered the boards to cease taking further corporate action and forestall their claims to ownership of the department until a lawsuit filed against them in early May had run its course.

For the complete story see the Friday, December 24, 2010 edition of The Cullman Times.

* Benjamin Bullard can be reached by e-mail at bbullard@cullmantimes.com or by telephone at 734-2131 ext. 270.