Share This Article
The City of Briarcliff has been named the Mountain Home Observer’s 2025 Least Transparent Government following a year marked by unfulfilled public records requests, multiple state investigations, mass resignations and ongoing governance failures.
The small lakeside community of approximately 250 residents spent much of 2025 mired in controversy over its dual government structure, with the City of Briarcliff and the Briarcliff Water and Recreational Improvement District No. 1 at the center of disputes involving alleged financial irregularities, FOIA violations and questions about who legally controls the community’s tax dollars.
FOIA failures
The Observer submitted Freedom of Information Act requests to the city on July 9, 2025, seeking emails and financial documents. More than six months later, the city’s compliance remains questionable.
After initially being told the requests would be fulfilled on “the office’s timeframe,” the Observer was required to purchase a thumb drive for document transfer. That thumb drive went missing. City officials later claimed they had fulfilled the requests by sending a Google Drive link, but the link led to a blank page. Officials then said the documents had been deleted.
When the Observer questioned the missing documents at an October city council meeting, officials stated the burden was on the newspaper to prove it never received the records. Under Arkansas law, the burden falls on the government to demonstrate compliance.
The city eventually provided a replacement thumb drive with documents, but rather than the emails and financial records requested, the materials appeared designed to cast two former mayors in a negative light.
Meanwhile, Renee Schmidt-Klika, the former Treasurer-Recorder at the time, was able to have her own FOIA requests against city council members fulfilled while the Observer’s requests sat unfulfilled for seven months. When the Observer finally went to pick up the long-delayed documents recently, Schmidt-Klika, now back in office, claimed the city had no one to keep custody of the records during that period.
When the Observer first submitted its FOIA requests, Mayor Robert Markham asked, “Why do you need emails?” and “Are you suing us or something?”
State investigations
Multiple state agencies investigated Briarcliff throughout 2025.
The governor’s office confirmed in August that the Attorney General’s Office was conducting an investigation into the city. The case was referred to local prosecutor David Etheridge, who indicated he was awaiting completion of audit work before making any decisions.
The Legislative Joint Auditing Committee, through investigator Anthony West, conducted a parallel investigation. West met with former BID Chairwoman Debra Hughes for more than two hours in October, reviewing what Hughes described as nearly three feet of documentation compiled by community members.
West examined multiple issues including voided checks, payments to ERASSIST written by former Treasurer-Recorder Renee Schmidt-Klika, and government checks written to Schmidt-Klika’s husband Dave Klika from 2023 to 2024. At least one payment went directly to Dave Klika’s personal Home Depot account for work on the city pool.
The Legislative Joint Auditing Committee ultimately found that while mistakes were made, nothing rose to a criminal level.
The Arkansas Ethics Commission opened an investigation into Schmidt-Klika, with Ethics Commission Director Graham F. Sloan personally taking the case. Three other ethics complaints were dismissed for lack of jurisdiction but were forwarded to the Attorney General’s Public Integrity Unit.
Governance breakdown
The Briarcliff Improvement District, which collects more than 92% of residents’ property tax bills and owns critical infrastructure including roads and the water system, was found to have gone years without holding legally required elections for its commissioners. Commissioners had been appointed rather than elected, in violation of the district’s founding documents and Arkansas Code § 14-92-204, which requires annual elections by property owners.
The Observer’s March 2025 investigation then revealed BID commissioners had not taken required oaths of office as mandated by Arkansas Code § 14-92-207 and had not filed required Statement of Financial Interest forms with the Baxter County Clerk’s Office.
At the center of the governance issues was Schmidt-Klika, who simultaneously held the positions of City Treasurer, City Recorder, City Clerk, Interim Mayor and BID District Assessor. This concentration of power meant she effectively controlled all tax money flowing through both the city and the improvement district.
Secret salary discussions
Emails obtained by the Observer revealed Mayor Markham and city officials discussed Deputy Clerk Heather McNally’s salary outside of public meetings in violation of Arkansas’s open meetings law.
In an August 2025 email to Arkansas Municipal League representative Jackie Crabtree, McNally wrote that Markham “was asking about the process for holding discussions at city council regarding the raise for me” and that he was “leery given the current situation of making it a all a huge public thing and could it be done in private.”
McNally asked Crabtree if they could “break for executive session to discuss this portion” during a public meeting. Arkansas FOIA law only permits executive sessions for considering the employment, appointment, promotion, demotion, disciplining or resignation of specific employees. General salary discussions must occur in public meetings.
McNally’s email also revealed Markham had already been discussing the matter with council members outside of public meetings, writing that “he said he was leery given the current situation,” indicating prior private conversations about her compensation had occurred. Under Act 505, such polling or deliberation between officials about matters requiring official action is prohibited.
Blank check scandal
The Observer’s investigation also uncovered evidence that city officials had been pre-signing blank checks, a practice that violates basic financial controls.
Betty Webb, wife of former BID commissioner Tommy Webb, told the Observer she witnessed multiple pre-signed checks in the BID checkbook. She said when she went to pick up a check for the steel building deposit, it had already been signed by Ken Kompany, who was not present that day.
During the July 8, 2025 city council meeting, this issue sparked heated debate. When Webb confronted officials about finding the pre-signed check, Mayor Markham initially claimed Kompany had been present. Webb countered that only she, the mayor and Schmidt-Klika were in the office that day.
“He still signed a blank check,” Webb stated during the meeting.
After the meeting, Webb told the Observer that Markham’s claim that Kompany had been present was a lie.
When the Observer submitted FOIA requests on July 9, Deputy Clerk McNally presented a voided check dated from November 2024 that showed signatures without any payee or amount filled in. Officials gave conflicting accounts of whose signatures were on the check, with the story changing over time.
McNally explained it was from “a bill day” and that pre-signing was standard practice, confirming what officials had been trying to deny.
The practice appears to violate Arkansas Code § 14-59-105, which requires municipal checks to contain date of issue, check number, payee, amount and signatures of two authorized officers. Pre-signing checks without the payee and amount filled in does not meet these requirements.
BID had also been filing with the state as a “Municipal” improvement district rather than “Suburban” for years, despite being created under statutes governing suburban improvement districts.
“Cult of the Twatwaffles”
Schmidt-Klika’s October 2025 conduct illustrated the level of dysfunction in Briarcliff governance.
At the October 14 city council meeting, Schmidt-Klika, who had resigned in July and no longer held any elected office, set up a protest display outside featuring a mannequin and multiple signs. Two signs called for Councilmen Bolding and Webb to be “REMOVED FROM COUNCIL FOR FEMALE HARRASSMENT & DERELICTION OF DUTY.” Another labeled the mannequin “THE T & J HALLOWEEN HARASSMENT DOLL” with the tagline “She’s not real but the harassment is!!!!!” A fourth sign read: “COMMON SENSE IS CURRENTLY BEING HELD HOSTAGE BY THE CULT OF THE TWATWAFFLES.”
Inside the meeting, Schmidt-Klika introduced Resolution 560, a resolution she had drafted demanding the council censure Bolding. She read a cease and desist letter accusing Bolding and Webb of harassment and intimidation. She also read a separate letter to the Observer accusing the newspaper of “repeated inaccuracies and omissions” and stated she had submitted documentation “to the City attorney for review,” threatening legal action despite no longer holding any official position.
The council did not vote on the censure resolution. Both Bolding and Webb resigned during the meeting. Bolding stated before leaving, “For somebody in the audience to say, you know, well, we’re going to have to do some things illegal to get them legal. That is a crock.”
This was not the first time Schmidt-Klika had attempted to force a council member out. In March 2025, after Martin Nicholson resigned as mayor and she became interim mayor, Schmidt-Klika moved to have Bolding removed from council. She argued Bolding was “illegally” serving because his home had been destroyed in the May 2024 tornado and he was temporarily living in Mountain Home while waiting for an insurance dispute to be resolved.
“[Nicholson] illegally allowed a council member whose house was damaged in a tornado of May 2024 to remain on city council,” Schmidt-Klika stated at the March 11 council meeting, adding that Bolding “has expressed no intent to move back into the house and has stated publicly as every intention to move to another state.”
Arkansas law does not address situations where officials are displaced by acts of God, and Briarcliff has no apartments or hotels where Bolding could have resided. Schmidt-Klika and other council members stated they would vote to remove Bolding at the next meeting, potentially opening the city to a lawsuit from the duly elected councilman.
The October display and confrontation accomplished what the March removal attempt could not. With Bolding and Webb gone, the council then passed a resolution absolving “the City of Briarcliff and its Treasurer Renee Schmidt of any legislative audit liability effective from July 1st 2025.” Immediately after it passed, Schmidt-Klika announced she planned to ask council to reappoint her once “the audit clears” her.
Mass resignations
Mass resignations throughout 2025 left the city struggling to function. Schmidt-Klika resigned as City Treasurer, Recorder and Clerk in July. Hughes resigned as BID chairperson. Councilmen Bolding and Webb resigned in October.
New appointments raise questions
Baxter County Judge Kevin Litty recently appointed five new commissioners to BID: Joshua Williamson, Hattie Noe, Kendrick (first name unknown), Debbie Strong Knox and Dave Schmidt.
Strong Knox also serves as a city councilwoman for the City of Briarcliff. Arkansas law governing dual office holding raises questions about whether an individual can simultaneously serve on a city council and an improvement district board, as they are separate governmental entities. Previous Briarcliff officials acknowledged this conflict, with city council members Connie Street and Tommy Webb previously listed as unable to vote on BID matters due to their council positions.
Schmidt-Klika, whose July resignation letter stated she no longer had keys to the building and that any checks bearing her name after July 8 should be “looked at as fraudulent,” appears to have been given her position back. She was photographed leaving city offices with documents in September, stating she was fulfilling FOIA requests. Arkansas law does not explicitly prohibit reappointing someone who previously resigned, though the circumstances of her return amid ongoing state investigations remain unclear.
Many of the newly appointed officials are aligned with Schmidt-Klika, who has been at the center of the community’s governance disputes throughout 2025.
The city submitted only unaudited financial documents to the state since 2011, and BID has not submitted audit reports since 2016.
Questions have also been raised about who is submitting property assessments to the Baxter County Assessor’s Office.
Under Arkansas Code § 14-92-225, suburban improvement districts are required to appoint their own assessor to assess benefits to properties within the district. The law states that “the board of commissioners of a suburban improvement district… shall thereupon appoint an assessor” who “shall take an oath” and “proceed to assess the lands within the district.” The assessor holds office “at the pleasure of the board.”
However, in an October 2025 email to former BID Chairwoman Debra Hughes, Baxter County Assessor Jayme Nicholson Johnson said she has been working with the city, not BID, for property assessments.
“Every year I have sent a list to the City of Briarcliff of the BID property owners and have had them return to me the values they wish to put on it,” Nicholson Johnson wrote. “This has happened for 13 years under my administration.”
State law requires BID’s board of commissioners to appoint its own assessor. Instead, the city has been providing these values for over a decade, raising questions about whether the district that collects the majority of residents’ property taxes has ever operated in compliance with state law.
The confusion over the district’s identity extends beyond Briarcliff. While Nicholson Johnson noted in her email that she understands the difference between a “Business Improvement District” and a Suburban Improvement District, Briarcliff’s district has operated for years under procedures that don’t match its legal designation as a suburban improvement district.
