Lynch at Large

A federal jury has awarded more than $250,000 to 29 current and former Saline County sheriff’s deputies and a clerical worker who were wrongly denied overtime pay, in violation of federal law, over the past six years.

Revealing a pattern of apparent self-dealing and public corruption, two former West Helena aldermen, the former Helena-West Helena School Board president, a former School Board member and a local painter were among eight people indicted last week by a Phillips County grand jury, according to arrest-warrant information released Wednesday by the Phillips County circuit clerk.

Paul Barton of the Democrat-Gazette’s Washington Bureau reports that one of the Capitol’s so-called super lobbyists, William Oldaker, remains in charge of Sen. Blanche Lincoln’s special fundraising committee, despite the senator’s promise months ago to replace him with an Arkansan. Lincoln said through a spokesman Wednesday that she just hadn’t gotten around to it.

The Federal Highway Administration has approved the 103-mile route for a significant portion of Interstate 69 through south Arkansas, the state Highway and Transportation Department announced Wednesday. Estimated cost is $784 million.

Pulaski County election officials worked all day Wednesday and into the evening tallying votes after programming errors that surfaced on election night left votes from almost two dozen precincts uncounted, election officials said.

Tuesday’s voter turnout, about 20 percent, was the second-lowest for an Arkansas primary election since at least 1972, as predictions by some that local elections would make up for the lack of contested gubernatorial primaries didn’t pan out.

Arkansas fourth and eighth graders scored near the country’s average on the National Assessment of Educational Progress exams in science last year, but did no better statistically than in 2000.

The Southwest Times Record reports that the vote cast by the Fort Smith School Board to uphold a student suspension Monday night wasn’t legal, according to a statute cited by a spokesman for the state Attorney General’s Office and a media law professor. The board voted 4-3 in a closed session to uphold the 10-day suspension of a boy who cursed at a coach during football practice at Northside High School. The law requires the vote be done in public

A mistrial was declared Tuesday in the case of an Alma man accused of shaking his son violently until the child sustained serious brain damage. The declaration came after a bailiff gave deliberating jurors a pair of handcuffs not admitted into evidence in the trial of Anthony Lee Hanson, who is charged with first-degree domestic battery in Crawford County Circuit Court. It is alleged that Hanson was wearing handcuffs when he showed a state investigator how he shook the child.