Testimony Opposes Legislature’s FOIA Changes; New Bills Filed

After a third attempt in less than five months to drastically alter the state’s Freedom of Information Act, the Republican-majority Arkansas Legislature has narrowed its current legislation to contain only security plan-related information.

Filed at around 7pm this evening and currently set to be heard on Wednesday morning during Governor Sarah Sanders’ 3-day Special Session are HB1012 and SB10 sponsored by Republicans Representative David Ray and Senator Bart Hester.

The “clean” bills stripped out objectionable language that included allowing a “copy your attorney” FOI exemption and changes to attorneys’ fees, and were revised after Sanders requested “a bill limited to security…”

After around five hours of testimony today almost exclusively opposing SB9, the Senate State Agencies Committee adjourned late this afternoon without voting.

Afterward, Hester said he had the votes to extract the bill from Committee (which would have sent SB9 straight to the Senate floor for a vote without obtaining a committee vote) but indicated he wanted to “work with the House.”

After filing the narrowed legislation Wednesday evening, Hester made it clear that Attorney General Tim Griffin’s FOI Task Force has been asked to consider the removed portions of the FOIA legislation as part of Griffin’s “modernization” project for the Arkansas FOIA.

Here’s what Little Rock Republican Lorri Justice and Republican Jennifer Lancaster of Saline County told the Senate State Agencies Committee today about SB9:

Leading Arkansas FOI attorney and a co-founder of the Arkansas Truth in Government Group, Joey McCutchen of Ft. Smith also opposed SB9:

As did Little Rock attorney Rob Steinbuch, also a FOI leader and a co-author of the Arkansas FOI treatise: