Support for Arkansas Week provided by the Arkansas Democrat Gazette, The Arkansas Times, and KUARFM 89.

Hello, I'm Christina Munoz and welcome to Arkansas Week.

A special session of the Arkansas legislature called by Governor Sarah Huckabee Sanders, wrapped up on Thursday.

Much of the debate since the beginning of the special session on Monday was focused on a proposal to add new restrictions to the state's Freedom of Information Act, or FOIA, which is considered to be one of the most transparent in the country.

But a strong pushback, even from within her own party, prompted Sanders to to scale back the proposal and limit it to her personal security detail.

Other items included on the governor's call coasted to easy passage, including cutting top income tax rates and banning COVID-19 vaccine mandates for government employees.

Joining me today to talk about the passage of this legislation are Senator Missy Irvin, a Republican from Mountain View, and Senator Clark Tucker, a Democrat from Little Rock.

So it took three attempts with the FOIA exemptions being narrowed drastically before legislation advance to a vote.

Some of the most heated testimony and debate came in the Senate State Agencies and Governmental Affairs Committee on Tuesday, ranging from threats facing the governor to the suggestion the bill was being rushed through.

Here are some highlights from that hearing and we routinely have have security threats towards our governor right now.

Again you're she's coming from a job where she was afforded Secret Service protection because of the threat level that she has.

She's a she's a polarizing figure.

Like I said this bills were a special session in my experiences should have been filed a month ago where we can bet it and have time.

This is just too quick.

And I think if you look at the aspect of what we've had in previous years that I even know of the idea that a governor, governor staff can e-mail the secretary include a legislator and then all of a sudden and it may be that legislators a lawyer, no offense.

I mean I, I, I, you know this just just opens up everything.

I mean just look at our past few years here about what's happened.

This is just a dangerous precedent on this that has nothing to do with the governor's security.

Security.

Well, I I wouldn't.

I would agree with that that I don't think this this bills about the governor's security.

I think we all agree that the governor's security is paramount and important.

But I particularly think that we should be able to see the governor's expenses if she's flying on a government paid airplane.

I want to know exactly how much she may be be charging the taxpayers.

I want to know if she's flying around with a political consultant.

I want to know who's who's with her.

After it became apparent on Monday that there was great hesitation from many Republicans to support the FOIA bill, Governor Sanders met privately with the Senate Republican caucus for about 30 minutes.

And Senator Irvin, I want to start with you first.

Thank you for being with us today.

And can you share what she discussed about how to create a path to move forward?

Well, I think what you saw this week was democracy in action and our government inaction.

And you know, if you'd had it behind the scenes view, that's what we do every single day.

And when you have, you know, 135 lawmakers, every single vote matters.

Every one of us are representing our constituents to the very best of our ability.

We're listening to people back home through text messages, phone calls, emails.

And I think, you know it was just a clear what where are we comfortable with in the language of legislation and moving forward in the path to move forward.

And so, you know, I think, I think it's absolutely, the majority of our Kansans do agree that keeping security operational details private are incredibly important, not just for the safety of the governor and his or her family members, but for those law enforcement officers that are tasked with carrying out that plan.

You know, we really need to understand that they're the ones that are putting their lives in on the line of duty.

And their lives may be protected and their plans to be able to do their job needs to be protected from the, from, from the, from the Freedom of Information Act.

That should be exempted.

But let me tell you, we've done this already.

We exempted school plans, building plans and school safety response plans to active shooters that is exempt from the FOIA laws.

There's and that was an attempt to really make sure that somebody couldn't send through a FOIA request these plans and these response plans that are operational for your law enforcement officers.

And we did that obviously to keep children safe in our public school system, the teachers, the administrators that there is, it is absolutely the same thing, I believe, than what we're talking about here and making sure that the governor and her children are kept safe.

Thank you.

And Senator Tucker, your response?

Well, I echo what Senator Urban said, that it was democracy in action.

I really wish the FOIA item had been treated much differently from the beginning.

There were some pieces in there that in my opinion would have really gutted government transparency in Arkansas.

And and those pieces is were the ones that got so much push back from myself and from members of the public.

And we were joking around in State Agencies Committee this week that maybe the Arkansas Razorbacks and government transparency are the only two issues that bring all Arkansas together, no matter what their political background is.

But there were three other pieces besides the governor's security in the bill.

Originally it was a deliberative process exemption that got replaced between the 1st and 2nd versions with communications between the Governor and Cabinet level secretaries.

The second piece had to do with attorney-client communications being exempted and then the final piece which affected not only the provisions in the bill but every aspect of the FOIA and for that reason maybe was the most concern to me.

It would have made it virtually impossible in, in my judgment for a successful plaintiff prosecuting a FOIA violation to recover their attorney's fees.

And most Arkansas can't afford to hire a lawyer out of their own pocket.

And so that attorney's fees provision, it's an access to justice issue.

It's very important.

So with that change, I really think in my opinion those would have been extremely damaging to to our FOIA, which as you said, Christina is among the strongest in the country.

Arkansas is a national leader on government transparency and I want to do everything I can to keep it that way.

And so I was, I was very pleased when at the end those other pieces besides the governor's security detail were all removed.

And at the press conference, Governor Sanders said that that was the key concern from the beginning with Senator Urban.

Do you think Governor Sanders felt that she had support for the initial FOIA bill with broad new limitations or was this an intentional overreach to allow her to negotiate and still get the details on her travel and security included?

No, I don't think it's an intentional overreach.

I think it's really a response to the many lawsuits that are being filed on the laws that we are passing and that and and there is an attorney-client privilege that exists out there that I think it was those concepts to be able to to say we we have got to be able to to defend the laws in the state of Arkansas and we've got to be able to do that and function.

It's about functionality.

And so I I think honestly I believe that you know we are trying to address concerns of what we're dealing with absolutely and and figure out the pathway forward for that which is why, you know, you do have a FOIA work group because things have changed since 1967.

You know this was passed before I was born.

I can tell you I communicate using text message probably more than even phone calls at this point.

So you know, modernization occurs, laws do have to be updated, but it has to be scaled incrementally and you obviously nobody wants to go to a point where you know you're dismantling anything government transparency and that's not what we're intending.

Absolutely.

It was really just to focus really on the security detail and the functionality of what we're dealing with and the modernization of what we're dealing with as far as our communications are concerned.

But I have a great deal of respect for Colonel Hager and our law enforcement officers think it's absolutely imperative that we get to that point, which we did.

It was very successful session with tax cuts as well.

I mean we cut taxes dramatically for all our Kansans and continue down that path to be competitive with other states across across our region and to provide immediate tax relief for the people that are suffering under the high gas prices the high and inflation prices unfortunately that are that are being caused by a lot of the economic policies by our President Biden.

So to me I think it was immediate relief for people and individuals $150.00.

Tax credit 300 if you're married and making sure that we get that immediate relief out to people and so and and then save money.

In the meantime $710 million are parked in an in a reserve account.

It's great that you can cut taxes save money and completely function government all at the same time.

And under Governor Sanders leadership and our leadership in the legislature, we've been able to maneuver and do that and in spite of poor economic situations out there for our Kansas.

And we're going to share a little bit more on those tax cuts in just a minute.

But first, Senator Tucker, you're an attorney yourself.

So the debate over the governor's travel plans and security detail was really stepped up after attorney Matt Campbell with the Blue Hog Report filed A lawsuit seeking the travel records of where the governor was traveling to and who she was traveling with.

Does this amended foil law now effectively kill his lawsuit or could that still be considered by a judge?

Well, the the hearing for that lawsuit was supposed to be at 9:00 AM this morning and Matt Campbell posted on Twitter last night that he came down with COVID and he had to non sue his case and he could, in my judgment he could refile the lawsuit.

There was a retroactivity piece in the final version of the bill.

I do have a concern, a constitutional concern about that.

I don't don't know what Mr. Campbell's going to do, but I wouldn't be surprised if he filed another lawsuit specifically about the documents that he was seeking, but also about the retroactivity of the bill that was passed and whether that's a civil rights violation.

We'll we'll see what he does or not.

But I think there's a good faith argument to be made by him that he's still entitled to the records that he was seeking and that the retroactivity piece of the law was unconstitutional.

And from what you know about the actual bill that has been now signed into law, what about other leaders that we can usually foi information about what they spend on travel if they're traveling with her, Do you know how that will play out if journalists and citizen journalists can get information on those documents?

The bill didn't just mention the governor, it mentioned constitutional officers and members of the General Assembly as well.

To my knowledge, there's really no security plans for for us members of the General Assembly.

We talked about this in committee the other day as well, about the extent that I'm aware of is maybe a Capitol Police officer escorting a member to their car on a particularly raucous day from the Capitol.

But we have no security from that point forward.

So as a practical matter, I don't really think there's much, if anything, I am curious as with any law that we pass, you don't know for certain exactly how it's going to be implemented and applied.

So I'll be very anxious to see how this is applied and if it's abused by anybody, what you know, anybody in this administration, a future administration, It's not personal.

You know, as we said all week, you know, this is the Freedom of Information law for our entire state for all time.

So it's not really personal to any current officer or elected official.

But if it is abused then you know I personally will take an interest in making sure that it's it's more narrowly tailored because we want to balance, we want government transparency for for everything and and I think it you know that's that's what we got this week.

There's some things where you have to have a balance you know the security of our, you know that the the leader of the elected leader of our state is certainly one of those.

So we want to strike that balance in the right spot.

If this bill did not strike it in the right spot, I'd like to figure out the best way to move forward.

Sure.

And as we've already said, debate over the FOIA law overshadowed the tax cuts, with top individual earners and corporations seeing the biggest benefit on those tax cuts.

So here are the details of what was approved.

Effective on January 1st.

Top individual income tax rate from 4.7% to 4.4%.

Top corporate income tax rate from 5.1% to 4.8% for individuals making under about $90,000 a year.

There will be a tax credit credit retroactive to January 1st of this year.

That's $150.00 for individuals earning up to $89,600 and $300.00 for married couples up to $179,200.00.

So real quick as we wrap up, what do each of you think about those tax cuts fueled largely by the state ending the last fiscal with a budget surplus?

And I'm going to go to Senator Tucker first on this one.

One problem I had with it is that the tax relief that's permanent is for Arkansas's top income earners and the tax relief in the form of a credit for working class Arkansasans was one time only.

And if we're serious about tax reform and and reducing the the tax burden on all our Kansas and then it should have all been permanent in my opinion.

And of course I don't want to pay more taxes, nobody does.

But I think there's some very critical aspects of our state that are being underfunded right now.

Early childhood education, childcare, police safety and in our justice system, I think you can go through the list and identify tax cuts should are appropriate when we have more money than we need, but only when our state is meeting its duty to our citizens.

And that's where we, I think, have a little bit of a disagreement, which is, you know, totally healthy and fair.

I want to reduce our taxes as much as possible, but only when we're fulfilling our duty to our people.

And I don't think we're there yet.

And Senator Urban over to you, final thoughts.

Yeah, I mean I would just say you know we always have the ability to to audit just back on the foyer issue, we always have that ability to go through like a legislative audit that is always available to the legislature.

So I just I just that is also in the bill as well.

So I just wanted to touch on that point.

But I would say with the tax cuts, you know we have led on this issue, we have had a task force on tax reform.

We have proven that our economy is, you know as as we are cutting these individual income taxes and corporate income taxes that is creating more jobs for people, more opportunity for them to be successful in their workplace and really to be able to provide this immediate relief for people in the light of the inflation and the economy of of what we're facing right now is tremendous and we have done well.

We funded education K through 12 education, the most we've ever in the entire history of the state of Arkansas.

What we did under our leadership last session through the Arkansas Lawrence Act was absolutely the most funding ever in in historical funding and raising teacher salaries.

We have tremendous amount of funding and resource towards our children and education and in the space of healthcare as well with providing so many options and programs to DHS through DHS and through Medicaid.

And so we are fully funded.

I think it shows in our surplus that allows us the ability to cut these taxes and to be competitive with these states surrounding us.

We know from all think tanks, through the task force, from all different political perspectives that this is what will grow your economy as a state is cutting income taxes.

And we have been on that path.

Sorry to interrupt.

We'll have to leave it there.

But thank you so much for joining us.

Senator Irvin, Senator Tucker, we appreciate your time.

Thank you for watching.

We'll be right back after this and welcome back.

Most of the drama from this week's special session involved opposition to expanding exemptions to the state's Freedom of Information Act, or FOIA.

Joining me to delve into this is UCA journalism professor Rob Moritz, who is chairman of the FOIA task force created by the legislature in 2017.

You, a Little Rock Bowen School of Law professor Robert Steinbuck, who teaches about FOIA and is also a member of the task force and Americans for Prosperity State Director Ryan Norris.

We do appreciate all of you being here today, and we want to start with you, Rob.

Now you your group opted Monday to oppose what Governor Sanders was proposing.

What alarmed you?

We're talking about how shocking this was when it first came out.

But specifically, what kind of got you when you read that first version?

Well, I think that what what concerned the task force was, it was just overly broad.

They were concerned about a number of things.

Exempting deliberative process, exempting the attorney-client privilege, making it retroactive back to January of 22.

And you're taking away the the, the right for person filing a lawsuit and winning a FOIA case.

They would not be paid if it was against the state agency.

So we met Monday morning and after hearing four or five opponents or opponents of the proposal, the the, the task force voted to or said it was in the best interest of the people of Arkansas not to support the proposal but also in a second vote it well we've strongly opposed it.

The two votes strongly opposed it on the first vote.

And then the second one, we said it was the best interest of the people of Arkansas not to support it, but also that the timing of it being during a special session was inappropriate.

OK, I understand what you're saying.

So Robert, you spoke against the legislation originally and we kind of talked about briefly why after it was fixed amended the other versions you did support it.

So tell me about why.

Sure, there were four parts just like Rob said and I always said the first part, dealing with the security for the governor was fair.

Now I'm not going to say that I liked every line, but that's how legislation is made.

But I said if it was only the 1st part, there would have never been any significant dispute.

And in the end, that's what the bill was about.

Absolutely.

So Ryan, you're also joining us via Skype and you lead the Arkansas chapter of a staunchly conservative group.

But you too opposed the initial FOIA version.

Tell us why?

Well, it is our principle that we live by, that transparency is for government, and privacy is for citizens.

And for us to maintain our principles and to live by those, I had to take a stance on these bills and again we agree that it were they were overly broad and that citizens need the ability to see how their regulatory processes or their legislative processes, what is, what is going into the inputs there that create that those products.

And so that's why we and the activist in Arkansas rallied around with everyone else about this bill and cautioning that we should not make this overly broad any.

Any issues regarding security need to be narrowly tailored.

And Ryan, I'm going to start with you and a question that I also asked the senators we spoke to earlier.

Do you think Governor Sanders felt she had support for that initial FOIA bill with broad new limitations or was it an intentional overreach to allow for negotiations and still get the details on her travel and security through?

I don't have insight into the into the Governor's thinking on this.

There's lots of speculations as to what it may be, but I do think that including citizens and citizen groups in the forefront of any legislation before we start filing things is probably a good way to go.

Our Kansans are very involved in their political processes and we just want a chance to have our voices heard and possibly short circuit some of the angst that that this bill drew.

Absolutely.

And Rob and Robert, going back to just the importance of FOIA, we keep hearing it's one of the most transparent, one of the best in the country.

Rob, what does that mean for the for the casual viewer that isn't involved in journalism or politics, Why is this transparency so important?

Because it gives you an opportunity to understand and see how the government is made or how the the laws are made, see what's going on, see what processes are being taken.

And it's for is just not about doc public documents.

It's also about public meetings as well.

And the FOIA law also allows for or keeps government agencies and and boards and commissions from meeting behind closed doors and meeting private.

And it it's it's very important because it it allows for full transparency.

If I could go back up to the question that you asked Ryan.

I think the governor overestimated how much support she had, maybe not with lawmakers, but I and she also overestimated the opposition.

And I think if you go back to the the legislative session earlier this this year, there was a bill that was supported by the governor that was proposed and it also did included a broad range of FOI exemptions.

And we the task force also of decided not to endorse that proposal as well.

And once it got to a committee, it was also filed very late in the session.

So again there was not a whole lot of time for the public or lawmakers to fully understand the impact that that bill was going to have.

And when the village presented in a committee supporters across the board, both political parties all over came opponents sorry came forward and voiced their concerns about the bill and end up being rejected in at the in the committee.

So I think that there was overreach by the governor thinking three day special session, you know, announce the bill on Friday, bring it to committee on Monday, let's get out here by Wednesday.

I think that she underestimated the public's support of the FOI.

We definitely saw that play out.

And Robert, what do you, how do you respond to the argument that this is an old law, 1967 technology was so different.

How do you respond to those arguments?

It's wrong.

So the law was initially enacted in 1967.

Every legislative session thereafter, it has been updated.

Last legislative session, half a year ago, this governor signed 10 new updates.

The governor's father in 1999 established a Commission to deal with electronic records and e-mail.

The big claim that's being made.

Daddy did it.

Daddy took care of it 20 years ago, and we enacted almost all of the proposals from that Commission.

So it's simply incorrect, very well stated.

So Ryan, the Governor Sanders was very clear in her press conference.

This is only the beginning that this will continue.

There are other measures that she clearly wants to take.

How do you and your group kind of move forward with that?

Is that something that you start working on now?

Do you start discussions?

Do you know what might be coming down the Pike after seeing kind of how this all played out?

Well, it's going to always be our position that government transparency is essential for effective governance and that the Freedom of Information allows the citizens to understand those decision making processes of their public officials.

These are going to be laws that they're going to have to live by our regulations, they're going to have to live by.

They want to know what's in them.

So we will always have a strong stand about any tinkering around the edges with the Freedom of Information.

That's going to always be our perspective because again, we're absolutist in free speech.

We're absolutist in government transparency and that's our principal position and we will live by that.

Really a lot of things that both sides actually agree on.

In this case.

Now I will say on X, formerly Twitter, even the Arkansas Press Association took some heat for actually supporting this simply because it is a pullback.

How do you respond to that balance for journalistic organizations?

Well, I think that, you know, there's the old saying generally A compromise.

Generally neither side is really, really supportive of it, but that's a compromise.

I think a lot of journalists, group journalism groups, as well as some lawmakers who normally are staunch defenders of the FOI decided to support it because early on they said, well, if this dealt just with governor security, we might support it.

Also the APA does have a lot of other dealings with legislature and they're wanting to work with the legislature.

There are other purists obviously who said no nothing but that's you know you've got a lot of advocacy groups.

One thing I will say about the task force is, is that when we we were all appointed, we were appointed by various groups.

We're not in that really an advocacy group of the FOI.

We were appointed to consider proposals and then make recommendations to commit the committee.

And that's what the task force did.

Robert, real quick, do you think you have compromised any journalism ethics with approving the final amendment version?

I don't think so.

But I do think that this is not a left or right issue.

It's a right or wrong issue.

All right, Very well said, Ryan, Robert, Rob, thank you very much for your time today and all of your insight.

We very much appreciate it.

And we thank you for watching Arkansas Week.

Support for Arkansas Week provided by the Arkansas Democrat Gazette, The Arkansas Times and KUARFM 89.