A controversial figure in the dispute between the Fayette County Commission and the Sheriff’s Department is headed for big sky country.

During last week’s budget hearings, Finance Director Mark Pullium announced that he was headed to the University of Montana to work as the university’s comptroller.

“With as much as I love the outdoors, this is just something I couldn’t pass up,” he said.

Commission Chairman Greg Dunn congratulated Pullium on his new position and said Assistant Finance Director Mary Holland would guide the department in the interim. Pullium was also the division director for central support services.

He was at the center of an incident Jan. 4 when he, along with at least two other county employees were detained by the sheriff’s department after the county employees took possession of three unmarked vehicles that the sheriff’s department previously had traded in to Don Jackson Lincoln Mercury in Union City.

Pullium said that both Sheriff Johnson and Lt. Col. Bruce Jordan of the Sheriff’s Department told him he was “going to spend the night in jail” after 10 to 15 sheriff’s department personnel showed up at the county’s public works facility with their vehicles’ emergency lights activated.

Pullium said he was taken in the back seat of a patrol car to the sheriff’s department, where he was taken to a conference room. There, after a talk with Sheriff Johnson, the sheriff agreed to release him, and a sheriff’s deputy took Pullium back to the county government’s Stonewall complex. But before he was released, Johnson said he would seek a federal indictment against Pullium, the finance director said.

Pullium’s last day on the job is May 12.