COLUMN ONE : No New Taxes? Go to Jail : When eastern Kentucky officials didn’t balance their budget, they went to prison. But there’s more involved than government finance. This, after all, is Appalachian politics.

It was not quite as public a promise as President Bush’s renowned “Read my lips--No new taxes,” but Arch Turner’s pledge surely was as perilous to break. When first elected a fiscal court magistrate here in eastern Kentucky’s Breathitt County eight years ago, Turner assured his mother he’d never vote for a tax.

The trouble was, unlike the federal government, Breathitt County is obliged by state law to produce a balanced budget every year. Deficits aren’t allowed.

So the state’s mandate and Turner’s promise to his mother never were terribly compatible. But the combination grew particularly troublesome last June, when Breathitt County realized it was going to spend $2.4 million while taking in only $1.9 million during the fiscal year starting on July 1.

You need more local revenue--it’s the law, the state told Breathitt County’s five-member fiscal court.

We’re not voting for any new taxes, replied Turner and two of his fellow fiscal court magistrates, Hubert Hollon and Hershel Manns.

Which is one reason the three Breathitt County magistrates--who are roughly equivalent to county supervisors--found themselves being led off to the Owsley County jail at the end of July. They couldn’t go to Breathitt County’s own jail because by then it had been shut down for the good part of a month, along with most of the county government.

Many here regard the three tax-fighters as folk heroes. Turner is an elementary school principal, Hollon a farmer and retired food store employee, Manns a coal miner. During their four days of imprisonment, hundreds of supporters traveled to the Owsley County jail, many in a 25-car motorcade adorned with yellow ribbons. Some brought prayers and encouragement. Others brought cigarettes, chewing tobacco, watermelons, eggs, sausage and catered T-bone steak dinners.

Arriving at the jailhouse, they usually found the magistrates not behind bars but sitting on the jail’s front porch, visiting with friends. In fact, Turner could be seen on more than one occasion lying on his back in a porch swing.

“Any inmate who’s in here and gets that kind of support from Breathitt County, I would do it for,” explained Owsley County Jailer Craig Bowman. “But there’s very few inmates who get that kind of support.”

Not everyone in Breathitt County regards the three recalcitrant magistrates so highly, of course. For some, the real question is whether they acted out of craven politics or sheer dimwittedness.

“I think the majority of educated people here think this is a laughing matter,” observed Judge-Executive Cecil Clair, the county’s highest-elected officer and a member of the fiscal court that rules on taxes.

“We have three magistrates who are idiots,” added Helen Combs, the other fiscal court magistrate. “They have made a mockery of government.”

The temptation is to compare the situation in Breathitt County to struggles over budgets and taxes in Sacramento, which is what the Lexington Herald-Leader did the other day--”California and Breathitt County are a lot alike. They’re both broke.” But the temptation should be resisted. Breathitt County’s politics are far more complicated.

This, after all, is true Appalachian mountain territory, a rugged patchwork of hollows and peaks in the heart of the Cumberland plateau coal fields. Although marijuana patches are more common now than moonshine and feuds, certain traditions continue. The budget-and-tax controversy has been only one of several to occupy people around here this summer.

There was, for example, the $310,000 settlement Breathitt County reached last June in a lawsuit filed by 31 county employees who claimed they’d been fired for political reasons--namely, failing to support the newly elected judge-executive during his campaign.

Then there was the dispute over Jackson Mayor Lester Smith’s plan to issue licenses for liquor stores and nightclubs, taking the county seat wet in what is an otherwise bone-dry county. By the time Citizens for a Dry Jackson had finished throwing flyers on driveways warning “Mayor Smith will murder your children,” the mayor had decided to resign.

A month later citizens voted by a 2-1 margin to keep Jackson dry, but there were those who thought the balloting somewhat tarnished by the news that a former election commissioner had been charged with offering a voter $20 to cast a dry ballot.

Some residents wince at the image such events give Breathitt County.

“The line is drawn at Winchester, just this side of Lexington,” explained Combs, the one magistrate who did not vote her way into jail. “From the west side of that line, eastern Kentucky is looked down on, painted as a bunch of inbred idiots. This bothers me. We are not all idiots.”

Others, though, delight in their county’s ways and see its contentious politics as a stimulating way of life. In more than one living room, the stories of the employees’ lawsuit and the wet-dry election are recounted with cackling and hooting and suggestions that this magistrate’s “elevator does not go all the way to the top” or that magistrate “don’t hardly know apple butter.”

Such comments are particularly abundant when conversations turn to the matter of Breathitt County’s current budget mess.

From where the present judge-executive, Clair, sits, the trouble goes back to the $400,000 or so in unpaid bills and the $1.5 million in long-term bond debt he inherited when he took office in January of 1990. Clair is particularly irked that the debt appears to include the hidden cost of the last campaign of his opponent and predecessor, Nim Henson--everything from Christmastime turkeys to election-time road blacktopping.

“They were trying to show people they were giving them services, but they weren’t paying for them,” Clair said. “Shortly after I took office, I sat here behind this desk and started receiving lots of invoices.”

On the other hand, Clair’s critics--among them the three anti-tax fiscal court magistrates--attribute the problem to Clair’s own poor management and unhinged spending habits.

He’d cost the county a $315,000 settlement by firing those 31 employees, hadn’t he? Then he’d gone and hired his own friends and relatives at inflated salaries. What about the big black Blazer he bought himself, the one with a car phone and stripes and tinted windows?

“Nim Henson was judge-executive 16 straight years and never had a budget problem,” pointed out Magistrate Hollon.

“I could balance the budget, too, if I stuffed all the bills in a closet like he did,” responded Clair.

The real argument, of course, is over who gets to spread the goodies around and to whom.

“When a new judge comes in, county employees know they might as well stay home,” explained Delores Chandler, editor of the weekly Breathitt County Voice. “That’s always been the way it is. You run into a lot of kinship because there just is a lot of it here. People try to help their family. It’s a matter of who gets to do it.”

“Well, Nim Henson did hire his friends, too,” allowed Yvonne Maggard, a supporter of the three jailed magistrates. “But all were poor folks who needed help. This new judge hires the rich and famous.”

In the end, what really brought the county to crisis was not the spending habits of the politicians, but the faltering economy. After the region’s biggest coal company closed its doors in late 1990, the county’s annual coal severance tax revenue suddenly plummeted from $700,000 to $350,000. That’s when the state began to demand a new tax in Breathitt County.

“They chose to ignore us,” said M.E. (Buddy) Combs, the state finance officer charged with overseeing Breathitt County. “Put us in the same drawer with the old bills, I guess.”

In early June, the state--after failing to draft a balanced budget for the county even after cutting every item not mandated by law--began threatening a lawsuit if county officials didn’t generate new revenue and a balanced budget by July 1.

“I’m not going to dance around with pretty words like ‘enhanced revenue’ ” said exasperated state finance officer Dan Yeast. “What they need is tax money.”

Imposing a tax “is not fair to the working people,” responded Magistrate Hollon. Why not “deeper cuts” instead?

“Before I’ll vote for a tax, I’ll go to jail,” vowed Magistrate Manns, somewhat prophetically.

When the July 1 deadline arrived with the three anti-tax magistrates still refusing to approve a 1% occupational tax proposed by their colleagues, Judge Executive Clair was obliged to shut down the county government, including the jail, the courthouse and the sheriff’s department.

A few found this situation troubling. Local resident Charles Bowman spent two days at the courthouse telling passersby he sure hoped the courts reopened by the time he was due there on July 10. “I’ve been almost two years getting my divorce,” he explained, “and I want it.”

But most were unfazed, believing the county looked no different without a budget and services. “I haven’t seen no services in the past two years and a half anyway,” explained Kelly Noble, chairman of the Breathitt County Board of Education.

The state attorney general’s office quickly filed its promised lawsuit, although--with the courthouse closed--it had to do so at the home of an employee of the circuit court clerk. Two days later, Breathitt County Circuit Judge James King ordered the fiscal court magistrates to meet “without interruption” until they submitted a balanced budget.

This they did, at least for a few hours, during which the anti-tax magistrates three times proposed budgets that were balanced not by a tax, but by selling or mortgaging county land. In one budget, they proposed both to sell and mortgage the same 21-acre parcel. In another, they proposed mortgaging the land--and then defaulting on the loan.

“I tried to explain that the bank is still going to come back for its balance if they default,” recalled state finance officer Combs. “I also tried to explain that they can put loan money on the revenue side of their budget, but they’d also have to put the loan obligation on the liability side. They seemed to understand a little better near the end, but they never grasped the principle.”

So the attorney general’s office eventually asked Judge King to find the anti-tax magistrates in contempt of court. This King did on July 14, imposing daily fines of $200 after indicating he was “tired of magistrates saying they would not vote for a new tax because they promised their mamas.”

Later that day, Magistrate Hollon gave up and said he’d vote for the new tax. With that, county officials jubilantly adopted a balanced bare-bones budget and announced that all county services would reopen the next day.

The celebration was short-lived, however. A week later, Hollon reversed field again, refusing to vote for the tax at the ordinance’s first reading on July 22. Once more the county shut down.

“I knew I’d made a mistake,” Hollon explained. “I’d voted against my convictions when I voted for the tax. I couldn’t live with it.”

Next the anti-tax magistrates offered to give up their salaries and sell Judge Clair’s big black Blazer, but it was all to no avail.

“I’m going to go have a nice lunch,” Judge King advised them on Friday, July 31. “And when I get back, if you don’t have a balanced budget, I’d be calling home and getting my bags packed.”

As the judge enjoyed his meal, Magistrate Hollon tried to resign, saying: “It’s come to the point where I can’t vote my feelings.” But Judge King, upon returning from lunch, declared that “resigned or not, he’s still going to jail.” The judge’s only regret was that “the other two members of the fiscal court (Clair and Combs) aren’t going, too.”

There is some dispute now over the extent of support for the jailed magistrates. Turner likes to use the figure 2,000 when talking about the number of people who came to visit, but most others put the figure much lower.

“When I heard they had a hundred in that motorcade to the prison, I thought, that’s 33 each, that’s just their families,” said county Treasurer Faye Miller. “I got 33 in my family who’d be over there if I were in jail.”

There is also some dispute about the nature of the jail experience.

“It was pretty rough . . . It was not fun to be in jail,” claimed Turner.

His supporter Maggard, though, allowed as how the magistrates, once they’d visited with friends on the porch and consumed their steak and eggs, weren’t even in the jailhouse all that much. “I heard they went into town one day and got lost,” she said. “Arch called me at 4:30 a.m. one morning and said he was out mowing the lawn.”

What time the magistrates did spend in their jail cell they spent together, for the jailer put them all in one room with the hope that they might work something out on the budget. This arrangement moved Magistrate Combs to complain that the jailer was violating the state sunshine law, which prohibits the majority of a government body from meeting together in private. But Magistrate Hollon didn’t see it that way. The only result of us all sharing a cell, he said, “is now I know Arch Turner snores.”

The Breathitt County budget saga finally ended on Aug. 3, when the jailed magistrates’ lawyer called county officials to say his clients were ready to vote for the tax. The next morning some 150 citizens gave the magistrates a standing ovation when they filed into a fiscal court meeting.

“They’ve known all along this budget had to be balanced with a tax. . . . They’ve just used people for political gain, to build up their image,” snapped Magistrate Combs as she listened to the cheers and eyed Turner’s cap, which happened to offer the legend “Re-Elect Arch Turner.”

“That’s silly,” replied Turner. “We didn’t fight for political reasons. We fought for the wishes of the people. . . . We’re just an extension of the people.”

Which is why, as Turner tells it, he finally voted for the tax.

“My mom came to the jail and said: ‘I don’t want you in here. All your friends want you to get out. So it’s OK, you can vote for the tax.’ ”

Recalling that moment, Turner pushed his cap to the back of his head and grinned. “That’s the only reason I did it,” he said.