Book closes on saga of utility boards

The book is now closed on the saga of the failed utility boards that seemed — for a brief time, last spring — poised to take over all water operations administered by the Cullman County water department.

In a joint request by both parties in a lawsuit that had been appealed before the Supreme Court of Alabama last summer, the Court dismissed the appeal Tuesday.

The suit, filed by seven county residents — most of them involved in water-intensive agricultural businesses — against the county commission and the two boards, had dragged out over the course of a long election summer that ultimately led to voters’ ousting of the two associate county commissioners who supported the two boards’ creation.

Members of the two boards — the South Cumberland Cooperative District (SCCD) and the Governmental Utility Services Corporation of Cullman County (GUSC), along with former associate county commissioners Doug Williams and Wayne Willingham — were sued days after the boards were incorporated, with the defendants alleging the commissioners had conspired in secret to form the boards and had breached their fiduciary duty. The suit sought the total dissolution of the boards, which occurred in late March of this year.

The SCCD and GUSC, orphaned by a lack of support after the two associate commissioners were replaced in November with newly-elected ones opposed to the boards’ existence, agreed to dissolve after the new commission lineup removed itself as a party defendant on the appeal before the high Court. The new commission also had distanced itself from the two boards by receiving a circuit court injunction reaffirming Cullman County as owner of the water department, and by suspending and later firing former department manager David Bussman, who had worked with Williams and Willingham to create the boards.

In the formation of the five-member GUSC board, the county commission had been tasked with replacing board members as their terms expired. But the GUSC, which had already suffered two resignations before its one-year anniversary, would have been unable to form a quorum, had the current commission lineup left the next board appointment vacant.

The dissolution of the two entities made permanent the county’s ownership and control of the water department, a situation that a circuit court ruling had already established — at least until an appeal of the measure before the state Supreme Court had been resolved — when it issued an injunction last May ordering the GUSC and SCCD to relinquish control of the department to the county while the suit played out.

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