Please Support FOIA Transparency Bills in Senate Committee

March 9, 2023 Action Alerts, Agenda 21, Arkansas Government, Arkansas Legislators, Education, Featured, FOIA, Freedom of Information Act, General Information

Print This Article

Arkansas’ Freedom of Information Act is constantly under attack, but here are some good transparency bills we can get behind. Will you?
The bills are sponsored by Senator Alan Clark from Lonsdale, Arkansas.

We can always use more transparency.

They are coming up in Senate State Agencies on Tuesday, March 14, 2023 at 10:00 AM!

These are good FOIA bills we need to support. Our Arkansas’ Sunshine Law of 1967 is one of the best in the country, and it is mentioned in the bills below.

Click here for a current PDF copy of the Arkansas Freedom of Information Handbook 20th Edition 2022.

Here are the 3 bills:

SB380 For An Act To Be Entitled

SENATE BILL 380

Stricken language would be deleted from and underlined language would be added to present law.

AN ACT TO AMEND THE FREEDOM OF INFORMATION ACT OF 1967; TO REQUIRE RECORDS CUSTODIANS TO RESPOND IN WRITING IN CERTAIN CIRCUMSTANCES UNDER THE FREEDOM OF INFORMATION ACT OF 1967; AND FOR OTHER PURPOSES.

———————————-

SB381 For An Act To Be Entitled

SENATE BILL 381

Stricken language would be deleted from and underlined language would be added to present law.

AN ACT TO AMEND THE FREEDOM OF INFORMATION ACT OF 1967; TO REQUIRE CERTAIN REGULAR TRAINING OF PUBLIC GOVERNING BODIES; AND FOR OTHER PURPOSES.

————————————–

SB382 For An Act To Be Entitled

SENATE BILL 382

Stricken language would be deleted from and underlined language would be added to present law.

AN ACT TO AMEND THE FREEDOM OF INFORMATION ACT OF 1967; TO DEFINE “MEETING” UNDER THE FREEDOM OF INFORMATION ACT OF 1967; TO AMEND THE LAW RELATED TO PUBLIC MEETINGS UNDER THE FREEDOM OF INFORMATION ACT OF 1967; AND FOR OTHER PURPOSES.

—————————————

Immediate Action Needed: Contact the Senate State Agencies & Govt’l Affairs Committee and let them know you support SB380, SB381, and SB382.

Chair Senator Blake Johnson Blake.Johnson@senate.ar.gov 870-323-1766

Vice Chair Senator Clarke Tucker clarke.tucker@senate.ar.gov 501-246-4933

Members

Senator Steve Crowell steve.crowell@senate.ar.gov 870-557-3440

Senator Jim Dotson jim.dotson@senate.ar.gov 479-222-1234

Senator Stephanie Flowers Stephanie.Flowers@senate.ar.gov 501-682-7664

Senator Bart Hester bart.hester@senate.ar.gov 479-531-4176

Senator Bryan King bryan.king@senate.ar.gov 501-682-5452

Senator John Payton john.payton@senate.ar.gov 501-362-5815

The underhanded Association of Arkansas Counties (which follows the United Nations’ Agenda 2030) are busily working to defeat these good transparency bills. They obviously want to keep us in the dark!

All state organizations, government agencies and employees, state universities, and any information that is generated with our tax dollars should be transparent and easy to access under the Arkansas law.

However, we can see that our Constitutional Republic has been replaced by a bureaucratic oligarchy that is unelected and unaccountable, and they possess a lot of power and like to keep things secret! Agency heads have been known to govern corruptly.

Notice this quote from Harvard Law School article entitled “The Corporate Capture of the United States”:

“American corporations today are like the great European monarchies of yore: They have the power to control the rules under which they function and to direct the allocation of public resources. This is not a prediction of what’s to come; this is a simple statement of the present state of affairs. Corporations have effectively captured the United States: its judiciary, its political system, and its national wealth, without assuming any of the responsibilities of dominion. Evidence is everywhere.”

[emphasis ours]

Transparency is vital for us to stay in-the-know.

Please help strengthen and save our ability – and our legal right – to request FOIAs! The Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) is a law that provides the public the right to request access information from: