Guilford County Commissioner Steve Arnold avoids jail time by complying with a judge’s orders in a civil lawsuit.

Whether or not Arnold will keep his seat remains to be seen. I haven’t seen a lot of howling for his resignation, although he took some heat at last week’s county commissioners meeting (credit the Rhino’s Scott Yost with the assist at the end):

One speaker didn’t have any sympathy for Arnold – she said she lives near a future asphalt plant that Arnold, among other commissioners, paved the way for by voting to rezone land after a public hearing before the Board of Commissioners last month.

“The saddest lesson learned,” she said, “is that you don’t care.”

During that discussion the opponents of the asphalt plant showed a video, and the speaker at the Sept. 20 meeting pointed out that, during that presentation, Arnold and Yow were “laughing and joking while a child talked about his breathing problems.”

In those types of zoning cases, opponents almost always present the most nightmarish scenarios possible and, while Yow and Arnold’s visible amusement may or may not have been warranted, it must be said that they were not laughing at the fact that the child in the video had breathing problems, but instead at the fact that – even, for those types of public hearings – a film of a near tearful coughing youth talking about his breathing problems is somewhat hyperbolic. That scene caught several people in the meeting room off guard – not just Arnold and Yow.

I’m sure Arnold would definitely stick around long enough just to piss off Citizens for Haw River. But the hearing for Patriot’s Landing has been pushed back until December. By that time, perhaps his business problems and the publicity surrounding them will have somehow faded away. That sort of thing happens, even to conservatives.