Support for Arkansas Week provided by the Arkansas Democrat Gazette, The Arkansas Times at Little Rock Public Radio.

And welcome to Arkansas Week.

I'm Don Scott.

We appreciate you being here with us, Proposed ballot initiatives being rejected, Arkansas's Freedom of Information Act and opioid settlement funds going toward creation of a first of its kind center studying addiction, all topics that Arkansas Attorney General Tim Griffin is here to discuss today and perhaps other issues.

We do appreciate you being here with us as we wrap the year up.

We just want to do a recap today with you.

Thank you for having me.

I just left the dental chair, so bear with my speech.

We will get through this for sure.

Hope you're OK. Well, let's start with the state's Freedom of Information Act.

It was brought to the forefront during a special session called by Governor Sarah Sanders back in September, and opposition to the widespread changes were opposed from even lawmakers within her own party.

What did pass, it primarily had to do with her travels and security.

And if you want to go into detail there, but I know you created an FOIA review working group back in June.

Explain the goal of that and what you set out to accomplish.

So one of the things that I wanted to do, I want to do and am doing is in a number of areas look at the laws and make sure that they're modernized, clear, succinct and it's not just a FOIA on gun laws.

And I've, I've announced the our efforts there.

We have good gun laws in terms of the substance, but often legislators have to ask for clarity, clarification through opinions and a lot of of our citizens read it and it's just overly complicated.

So FOIA gun laws, other places I've said, look, if our laws are perfect and we look at it and decide they're perfect, that's great.

But I had heard from a lot of people who wanted to address different issues or have them looked at and I said, well great, what's wrong with a discussion?

What's wrong with a civil discussion?

So what brought this on?

The FOIA issue, What brought it to my attention was the issue of ransomware and one of our school districts having to deal with ransomware cyber cyber attack.

And in fact, I think I've learned of this people just discussing it generally.

But Senator Clark Tucker, a Democrat from Little Rock had written and asked for an opinion on this because it appears that there are some things that have to be made public that would put you at a disadvantage in negotiating.

So I said, look, I'm not an expert on ransomware or this this particular area area.

Let's get the press associations executive director who is a big advocate for FOIA couldn't be any bigger.

Let's get John Toll, the premier attorney for the Press Association who is a big advocate for FOIA.

Let's get Clark Tucker.

Let's get David Ray Brianna Brianna Davis, Sitter Davis and Representative Ray and some.

Let's get these folks together with my staff and just let them discuss it.

And that's what they're doing.

I don't micromanage them.

I don't tell them what to discuss, what not to discuss.

I expect them to have some ideas later on in the year and some of those individuals are behind the constitutional amendment.

John Tall, Senator Tucker and and the executive director of the press.

Well, that was my next question because there is a separate group form that's working on a proposal to put before voters to enshrine these FY requirements in the state constitution.

It was submitted to your office earlier this week.

Obviously, there's a number of issues there.

One member suggested a conflict of interest having you specifically or Attorney General with oversight of FOIA when your office may represent entities in court subject to FOIA disputes.

Well, if if that was a conflict, then the Attorney General's office couldn't be involved in hardly anything because we are the state's attorney.

This is, it's interesting that that someone said, I don't know who that was, but this, this has been the process for about 80 years.

Sure, about 80 years.

It there was a brief moment in time when we looked at another option and that didn't work out so well.

This is exactly where the process ought to be.

And I think I've demonstrated in my 11 months now that I follow the law.

I think what happens is people propose things, it gets rejected and they get aggravated, but they they have to understand that the the process is fair, but it's robust.

Yeah.

Why?

Because you're changing the law for 3.3 million people without going through the legislature, without going through the governor, you're just you're just doing it as a private group or whatever.

So yes, there has to be rigor and I have shown that I'll the topic is is not really is not of particular relevance here.

We have to follow the rules and let me just say this and I've I've made this abundantly clear numerous times.

The process in my office is 1 where I don't even see the acceptance or rejection the opinion, which is how it manifests itself.

I don't even see that until it's completely done and offered to me for final approval.

It the professionals who've been working on this, many have worked for several attorneys general over the years, Democrat and Republican.

They do this work.

And you know how many I've changed since when they've come to me for final approval?

Zero.

We've had about 100 opinions this year, some of which relate to these proposals, and I've changed the conclusion on 00.

I've made stylistic changes about five times out of 100.

But we have incredible attorneys.

So look, if you get rejected, of course you're frustrated.

And many, many people are quietly frustrated.

Others are frustrated in the press.

But that doesn't change the law.

And we can't change our standard so that we don't hurt someone's feelings.

They've got to regroup and submit a second time or third time or whatever it takes.

We approve ballot measures and and others we reject.

So I would just say keep trying and we'll keep applying the legal standard.

Well, moving on to proposed ballot initiatives, your office has rejected titles or language of items several entities would like voters to consider, including requiring the use of paper ballots, tightening requirements for absentee ballots, and repealing the state's abortion ban.

So, you know, it's not unusual for proposals to be rejected, sent back to groups just like you said.

It's just part of the process.

Usually they're rejected almost always, regardless of who the AG is on the first time, almost always rejected from, at least in my experience.

So they're not going to get it just right the first time.

It's a back and forth, it's in public and that's why you see this.

But, but but that's not uncommon.

How do they avoid rejections?

What do you do?

What do you look for?

Well, I would say first of all it depends.

Some are rejected where people are just not only ignoring the legal standard, but they're ignoring what we told them after the first and second time they were rejected.

So you have those, but I talked to some of my professionals there about this.

I said, you know, if we had to pick one thing and I think that it's failure to define terms that are used in there.

When you lawyers are taught that something that is vague is subject to no reasonable interpretation, something that is ambiguous is subject to two or more reasonable interpretations.

And so we get some of these proposals that are either vague or ambiguous, and we are not quite sure what they mean.

And the public's not going to be sure.

So we can't even reach our analysis, which is, is it misleading?

We are charged under the law with determining, is it misleading?

Now, there are other standards that the Supreme Court will apply, length, complexity, those sorts of things.

But our mission is to say is it misleading or not?

We can't even get to that analysis if we don't understand what they're talking about.

So I think precision in a word choice and defining what words mean is primarily what you see, that that is the core.

There are a lot of different things, and they're all different, but that's the core.

Well, there's consideration by some state lawmakers to repeal rules that prohibit legislators from accepting campaign contributions 30 days before and 30 days after a regular legislative session.

Excuse me, In response to Representative David Ray, you said in an advisory opinion that such rules are unconstitutional.

They are.

They're they're you know, I don't have the luxury of of choosing which constitutional US constitutional provisions I want to apply or not apply in this country.

We don't take an oath or fealty to a king or or a queen.

We take a we take an oath and and allegiance to the Constitution and federal courts have been abundantly clear that blanket blackout periods such as we have here that stop, that stop citizens from speaking through political contributions are unconstitutional under the First Amendment.

I don't think that's even a close call.

In fact, it's not a close call in fact.

And we waste a lot of money in the state historically because what happens is we pass things that it many lawyers could have told you were unconstitutional, we pass them anyway and then we have to spend money defending them and then lose.

So let me just tell you in 1996 there was an initiated act, one that had a number of provisions to try to rein in stop, prohibit certain campaign finance activities.

At least half of that has already been stricken by the federal courts.

Many of those provisions years ago, the blackout provision that was in in our law was stricken unconstitutional.

So what happened is the legislature said, well, if the law's unconstitutional, we'll just make it a rule, not a law.

That way it won't be unconstitutional.

Here's the problem with that.

That's looking at it from the perspective of whether the legislator can raise money.

That's not the perspective of the Supreme Court.

The Supreme, the United States Supreme Court looks at this issue and says are we stopping Don, Tim, Jeff, Bill, Susie from speaking through a contribution?

That's the perspective, not from the recipient, from the giver.

And so when you look at that, the Supreme Court has said you can't just have a blackout.

That says no one can speak.

No citizen can speak through contributions during this.. You can't do that.

It's unconstitutional.

But there's concern that the influence of big money is coming in.

Yes, that's where this is coming from.

Yeah, well, as is usually the case, the intentions are often good.

But you need data to back it up.

What the Supreme Court has said is there is no evidence that people are act any differently during a session.

Look, we've had a lot of legislators go to prison.

Let's be honest, House members, Senate members, both parties, Republicans, Democrats, many of them are sitting in prison right now.

Most of what they're in prison for, in fact, I don't know if any of what they're in prison for has to do with taking money during a session.

There may be one, there may be one.

I'd have to look specifically, but the the point is there's no evidence that people act any differently.

This is, this is what the federal courts have said.

There's no in the case where our law was stricken, they said to the state of Arkansas, I think that was 9798 that that federal case.

They said look state of Arkansas, you have shown no data.

You can't just say it just doesn't seem right.

No, you've got to demonstrate data.

Why?

Because you've got to it.

You've got to narrowly tailor the legislation under Supreme Court precedent.

Why?

Because this is the First Amendment.

This is this is the highest level of scrutiny that the Supreme Court gives.

It's called strict scrutiny and it is given to our most precious rights and speech gets the highest level of scrutiny.

So when we're legislating anywhere around the speech world, you can't just Willy nilly go well.

I just feel like, I just feel like we need to ban these.

You've got to have some data because the court's going to ask, did you narrowly tailor, and that's the standard, did you narrowly tailor your remedy in this particular case?

And the courts have said blackout periods are the opposite of narrowly tailored because they're blankets.

They're like nobody at any level.

Let me give you example.

Let's say that that retired veteran Joe wants to give $5 to a candidate during the legislative session.

He cannot do that.

Is, is there any evidence that $5 contributions are the problem in any way with corruption?

Well, the court would say no, there's not.

And in fact, if you ask legislators to demonstrate that there is, they would not have any data to show you that $5 contributions are a problem, not narrowly tailored.

It's it's unconstitutional.

It's not a Tim Griffin thing.

It's not a right thing.

It's not a left thing.

It's a law thing.

Got it.

You hosted a stop over to Summit in November.

We don't have a lot of time left, but I do want to ask about this $50 million state opioid settlement that you got that you're putting toward Arkansas Children's Hospital, which is studying addiction.

What led to this decision?

How important is this first state in our last few minutes?

This is critically important.

I wish we spent the most of time on this.

Actually.

This is really important.

So I'm getting a lot of money over the over the coming years out of the opioid settlement, right.

And the municipal league, the county association and my office are each getting 140 million.

Lot of that obviously has been committed already.

There's a lot of ephemeral uses, meaning we're giving money to things that are going to be gone in a few years.

Narcan very much needed expire in three years, giving money to an addiction clinic, 2-3 years.

That money's gone, right?

So we're doing some of that.

But what I in my office wanted to find was something that would be working on this long after I'm gone.

Gone from the Earth 50 years from now, 100 years from now.

And so I started surveying the landscape to find that, and we did not get a request from Children's.

I called Marcy, the CEO and I said, look, I want to do something infrastructure permanent, long term.

And so I said it wouldn't.

I said how are we situated on pediatric opioid research and pediatric opioid care.

And she said we're not anywhere near what we should be in the state.

And I said, well, who does this research And she said, well, there's there's a lot of it that's not done.

And I said, well, what if we created this massive center to put us on the map that will benefit adults and children, That will, that will attract more money, right.

If you're able to apply the federal government, say we are the center of this, you'll get that extra money.

So she said, I love it.

She came up with a proposal.

It was about $68 million.

I said I can give the 50 that we had.

We had already talked about sort of where I was thinking I think and and I said let's not make it the Arkansas center, let's make this the best in the world no matter where we have to get these scientists, Arkansas, Harvard, Duke, Stanford, wherever we have to get them the best.

So we all agreed let's call it the National Center for Opioid Research.

I'm so excited about that because that is that's going to be lasting and it's going to put Arkansas on the map.

And we knew that Children's Hospital is known for excellence and we knew that they would be able to execute this in a way that is true to what we all want.

Well, the physician and other professionals were on our broadcast earlier this year, just not long ago talking about this.

It's fascinating.

Much more to come from that and much more to watch in 2024.

Attorney General Tim Griffin, we so appreciate you coming on.

Thank you so much for sharing all of your thoughts today.

The numbness is disappearing.

Now let's just keep talking.

All right.

We'll be right back with more in just a moment.

Welcome back.

The holiday season can be a tough and stressful time for some people.

Your mental health is important.

And that's why we wanted to share one of our previous Good Roots segments about a community of people affected by suicide.

The rate among farmers has risen 40% in about two decades, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

That is 6 times the national average.

Here's a look at one farmer who is trying to change that.

I can't say.

That I'm still over the death of my friend.

He's always on my mind and stuff, always.

Farming is not very forgiving.

I've had a few really, really bad seasons.

The pump over here on the ground and normally pumps it out of here into the picker.

It just stop pumping.

I wish I knew why, but I don't.

Let's try it out to this one.

Usually pump grease to that tank and then we grease the picker from that tank to the heads.

But now that the pump quit, we got to figure out how to manually get this grease in that tank.

Unfortunately, the first days are always the worst.

The pickers, the combines, they've been sitting up all year and you know, you only use these things once a year.

There's usually always something, you know, we have to work on them a little bit and get them tuned up and ready to go.

I tell people all the time, farming is not something that you just wake up in the morning and say, I want to be a farmer.

It kind of has to be in your blood.

My name is Darren Davis.

I'm owner of Lakeview Farm.

Lakeview, being where we live, that's where the name derives from.

You're in Lakeview, Arkansas, and I'm also the mayor of this town.

I've been mayor for eight years going into my third term.

Yeah.

One of my friends say, well, it's pretty out here, but it ain't worth a penny out here in the field.

You got to get it to the gym.

You have to be, man.

You have to have a strong mind and you really have to love farming.

I don't think an ordinary person would have any idea of the amount of work and the amount of time more so than anything that you put in.

This profession is very much time consuming and it and it's like everything else is not for everyone.

Yeah, we're in farming.

Weather is probably the most challenging thing.

That's something obviously we don't have any control over prices and things.

Is is is a challenge.

Sometimes grain prices are way up this year, so as grain prices go, so does expenses.

I've never seen grain prices increase and expenses stay the same.

The chemical fertilized fuel always rise with it.

I I talk to a lot of farmers and they are able to talk to me.

We talk about a lot of ways of of recovering from debt and people you can go to and programs you can go to and don't live above your means.

I guess would be the short way of saying it.

Farming is it's not very forgiving not a lot of family time, missed kids, ball games and activities in school.

There was always kind of mom that had to do that.

We were always out working because you got to make on demand decisions, what to do here, what to do there.

So it's hard to be gone and do that when you come in from a long day of work, 8-9 o'clock from six that morning to 9 that evening.

And now you all worked up and you got to try to find something to eat, you got to shower, you got to do everything.

So you just kind of have to wind down.

So it's normally after midnight before I go to bed every night and and normally we are 536 at the latest, so we don't do very much in the winter months, December, January, February.

So that's when I try to get rested and and get ready for the next season.

I don't know of any farmer that hadn't had at least one disastrous year.

Dear friend of mine and and he committed suicide a few years back and it was one of the hardest things I've had to deal with because he was a friend of mine and and I I wear his hat all the time.

So it got a little more than he wanted to deal with and we and I thought he was OK with it.

Thought we had got it situated and settled and then I got the horrible phone call about 5:30 AM.

I can't say that I'm still over the death of my friend, but he's always on my mind and stuff always and and I hear stuff that he's saying and it kind of makes me laugh because he was a funny person.

So this business will cause some tragedy and and everything.

And I, and I know people say, well, why do you do it?

You just do it because you love it.

That's the only way I can explain it.

When you start a new year, you're like, thank God made it through this one let's start another one.

Now you you probably would think, who wants a job like that.

But most of my friends, we've been doing it for a long time and most of my friends come from farming backgrounds.

Any one of us could be gone at any given year.

So it's just the nature of the beast is part of the business.

I've heard a lot of people think about suicide, saying, hey, it did cross my mind.

I've had to help people.

I've had to let people use tractors because they didn't have won or lost theirs or whatever the case may have been.

Hey, borrow mind.

Do what you got to do and bring it back when you get through.

And whatever you can to help them and to help them get through a challenging time.

I'm willing.

I'm willing to do this.

This program is funded through a Farm and Ranch Stress Assistance Network grant provided by the United States Department of Agriculture and administered by the Arkansas Department of Agriculture.

That is it for this week's edition of Arkansas Week.

Thanks for being with us.

I'm Dawn Scott.

We'll see you next time support for Arkansas Week provided by the Arkansas Democrat Gazette, the Arkansas Times and Little Rock Public Radio.