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Senate panel advances two bills defining ‘public meeting’ in Arkansas Freedom of Information Act

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5 months ago

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arkansasadvocate.com – Sonny Albarado, Mary Hennigan, Special to the Advocate – 2025-03-12 01:30:00

Senate panel advances two bills defining ‘public meeting’ in Arkansas Freedom of Information Act

by Sonny Albarado and Mary Hennigan, Special to the Advocate, Arkansas Advocate
March 12, 2025

An Arkansas Senate committee approved two bills hours apart Tuesday seeking to define a public meeting, an issue that has plagued local elected officials and government transparency advocates for decades.

Sen. Clarke Tucker, a Little Rock Democrat and sponsor of Senate Bill 227, told the State Agencies and Governmental Affairs Committee Tuesday morning his proposal would, “after 50 years, bring clarity to the law” by setting parameters for what members of city councils, quorum courts or school boards can discuss outside of a public meeting. 

The bill also would amend the Arkansas Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) to add cybersecurity breach as a reason to meet in executive session, introduce and regulate remote meeting attendance, and allow a court to nullify official actions taken as a result of violations of open meetings law.

Senate Bill 276, sponsored by Sen. Alan Clark, R-Lonsdale, defines a public meeting as any gathering of more than two members of a public body. Rep. Mary Bentley, R-Perryville, is co-sponsor of Clark’s bill, but also has her own version, House Bill 1667, which hasn’t been heard in committee yet.

Both bills brought before Tuesday’s committee would apparently accomplish the same goal — give members of local governments a clearer understanding of what they can discuss outside of a formal meeting — but opponents of Clark’s bill said it would encourage “daisy chain”-style discussion of public business by sequential groups of two officials.

The FOIA allows residents access to public records, including communication between state officials. Members of the press and curious citizens often rely on the law to get additional information about contentious subjects, or to do routine checks into financial documents. The tool was used to uncover the $19,029 lectern Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders bought in 2023, and provided answers to opponents of the state’s prison plan when officials remained tight-lipped.

The law also sets standards for public meetings, though vagueness in this category for the last half-century has led to frequent litigation. Tucker said his bill would establish a distinct line for what type of discussion is permissible outside of a public meeting.

Though not defined in current law, a meeting has generally been considered public when at least two members of a governing body meet. 

On Tuesday, Clark asked several questions of Tucker’s bill, introduced hypothetical situations and asked about the level of involvement of school board members.

Tucker maintained that under his bill, any number of members of a governing body could meet to chat, so long as they were not “deliberating” or discussing items they would take action on in the foreseeable future.

While members of a school board cheering on the high school football team together would pose no issue, Tucker said the situation changes once the substance of the conversation becomes actionable.

“If the substance is, ‘We’re deciding public business,’ it doesn’t matter if there’s 10 people there or two, that needs to happen at a public meeting,” Tucker said. “That’s the distinction.”

Vetted, but approved

Tucker’s bill received nearly unanimous support from the committee, of which he is the only Democratic member.

A result of two years of work, Tucker said he collaborated with a bipartisan group of public meetings advocates, attorneys, members of governing bodies and state-level task forces. He said he worked to make the bill “pro-transparency” and “pro-fairness” for members of the public and those serving on committees and councils.

Committee members applauded the effort Tucker put into the 10-page proposal, but they still questioned elements of the bill and how it might hold up if challenged in court.

Sen. Dan Sullivan, R-Jonesboro, asked specifically about the use of the words “foreseeably” and “reasonably” in Tucker’s proposal, referencing concerns that a federal court recently decided to declare portions of Act 372 of 2023, which Sullivan sponsored, unconstitutional.

Tucker said his proposal did not restrict free speech, a foundational difference with the Act 372 lawsuit. He said he felt confident in the language as strict scrutiny would not be applied should the bill be challenged in court; the verbiage is typical in courts.

In response to members’ questions, Tucker admitted that he didn’t think SB 227 was perfect, but said it “goes a long way toward helping clarify what the law is.”

Republican Sens. Scott Flippo of Bull Shoals, John Payton of Wilburn and Alan Clark of Lonsdale (left to right) listen to Sen. Clarke Tucker (D-Little Rock) explain his bill defining public meetings on Tuesday, March 11, 2025. (Photo by Sonny Albarado/Arkansas Advocate)

Jimmie Cavin, an FOIA advocate, spoke in support of Tucker’s bill Tuesday. He said he assisted with town hall meetings across the state during the last two years and encouraged members of governing bodies — like school board members — to get involved.

“It’s such a positive step in transparency, and the greatest thing is [that] it’s fair for everybody,” Cavin said. “It’s fair for Jimmie, and it’s fair for Linda Hargis, my school board member.”

Joey McCutchen, a Fort Smith attorney who has argued FOIA cases before the Arkansas Supreme Court, also testified in support of Tucker’s bill.

While McCutchen said he appreciated the definitions the bill introduces, he also said he appreciated the intent to ensure members of the public are also privy to officials’ decision-making process.

“The citizens are entitled to see the sausage making,” McCutchen said. “And if we don’t see the ‘Why?’ and we don’t see the sausage making, then we’re going to be critical of the very board members that I know you’re supporting, Sen. [Alan] Clark.”

‘Undo all the good’

Clark presented his bill after 4:30 p.m., when the committee reconvened following the day’s Senate session, and told fellow panelists his bill “better defines Sen. Tucker’s bill.”

Tucker noted that two school board or city council members could subvert the intent of the public meetings law by having one-to-one discussions until all members, or at least a majority, agreed on which way to vote on an issue.

“That’s possible,” Clark said, “but that’s not the spirit” of the bill.

Little Rock law professor and FOIA expert Robert Steinbuch testified that Clark’s bill needs language to address concerns about serial meetings.

“I don’t want to pick a number for you,” regarding how many officials should require a public meeting, he told lawmakers.

Andrew Bagley, Arkansas Press Association president and a newspaper publisher, was the only other member of the public to speak against Clark’s bill.

He began his remarks by noting that Tucker’s bill was “a very good piece of legislation that brought all the parties together at the table.”

“It was one of those moments where you almost felt like the lightning was about to flash and the thunder was about to roll because God was moving in our midst. Now we have a bill that would undo all the good we had this morning” because it would allow all the discussion to happen behind closed doors, Bagley said.

Clark asked Tucker if he would support SB 376 if it was amended to prohibit polling or serial discussions between successive pairs of officials. Tucker said he would work with Clark to craft such language but could not support the bill as written.

Clark promised he would work on such an amendment but asked that the bill be advanced Tuesday night. Tucker was the sole no in the following voice vote.

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Arkansas Advocate is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Arkansas Advocate maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Sonny Albarado for questions: info@arkansasadvocate.com.

The post Senate panel advances two bills defining ‘public meeting’ in Arkansas Freedom of Information Act appeared first on arkansasadvocate.com

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News from the South - Arkansas News Feed

Idaho is losing OB-GYNs. Doctors who remain are trying to shoulder the extra burdens.

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2 days ago

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August 13, 2025

By

arkansasadvocate.com – Kelcie Moseley-Morris – 2025-08-13 17:09:00


Following Idaho’s near-total abortion ban, 114 OB-GYNs have left or ceased practicing obstetrics between August 2022 and December 2024, a 43% reduction of the state’s 268 practitioners. Dr. Harmony Schroeder and others departed due to legal risks of up to five years in prison and civil penalties for abortion-related care. This exodus compounds Idaho’s longstanding physician shortage amid a growing population, increasing patient-to-provider ratios and maternity care strain. Clinics now face heavier workloads and limited patient intake. Despite recruitment efforts, Idaho’s restrictive laws deter new OB-GYNs. Local medical leaders urge recognition of the crisis’s impact on care quality and access.

by Kelcie Moseley-Morris, Arkansas Advocate
August 13, 2025

Before Dr. Harmony Schroeder left her OB-GYN practice in Idaho last year for Washington, she’d had many conversations with legislators and others about how to feel safe practicing in a state with a near-total abortion ban that includes criminal and civil liabilities for violating the law.

Schroeder wanted to stay. She’d practiced in Idaho for nearly 30 years, with a patient list of about 3,000 and a group of doctors she loved. She thought once elected officials understood that a ban would mean poorer medical care and more negative outcomes, things would improve.

Instead, they got even worse, as women were airlifted out of state during a period without protection for emergency abortion care under federal law.

Schroeder felt like she was either compromising care for women or compromising herself by risking jail time.

Providers convicted of breaking the law face up to five years in prison, revocation of their medical license and at least $20,000 in civil penalties.

“People said, ‘Oh, we would never really put you in jail,’” she said. “Sometimes it felt like the legislature was giving us a pinky swear.”

Schroeder is one of 114 OB-GYNs who left Idaho or stopped practicing obstetrics between August 2022 and December 2024, according to data from a peer-reviewed study published in JAMA Open Network, a division of the Journal of the American Medical Association. That number represents 43% of the 268 physicians practicing obstetrics statewide, a higher figure than previous reports indicated.

The study showed 20 new OB-GYNs moved to Idaho during that same period, for a net loss of 94 physicians.

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It’s not the only state with a ban experiencing shifts in numbers of obstetrics providers, but it is one of the most acute. Physicians in Texas, Tennessee, Oklahoma and other ban states have spoken to the media and researchers to say they are leaving the state or retiring from the practice because of bans, and while the numbers may not always be statistically significant, the departures are often in states that already have maternal health care shortages. 

The states with the highest percentage of maternity care deserts as of 2024 were North Dakota, South Dakota, Oklahoma, Missouri, Nebraska and Arkansas, according to March of Dimes. With the exceptions of North Dakota and Nebraska, every state in that list has a near-total abortion ban in place.

Out of the 55 OB-GYN physicians Idaho lost just in 2024, 23 moved out of the state, 12 retired, and 16 either shifted their practice to gynecology only or moved from a rural to urban practice site. The remaining moved elsewhere in state. All of those who moved away moved to a state that did not have abortion restrictions similar to Idaho’s.

As of 2018, four years before the U.S. Supreme Court’s Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization decision that ended federally protected access to abortion, Idaho needed 20 more OB-GYNs to meet demand, according to a report from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.

Schroeder likes her new practice in Washington, but she is still sad about the realities that forced her to leave.

“I wish it didn’t have to be this way,” she said. 

Study proves ‘what we feared was happening’

Susie Keller, CEO of the Idaho Medical Association, said the losses feel worse because Idaho already consistently ranked at the bottom of nationwide rankings for physician-to-patient ratios even while the population has exploded in recent years.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention ranked Idaho lowest in 2019 for overall patient-to-doctor ratios, and the conservative Cicero Institute ranked it 50th in 2024. According to a report from the Idaho Coalition for Safe Healthcare, the ratio of patients to obstetricians increased from 1 per 6,668 Idahoans to 1 for every 8,510 Idahoans between August 2022 and November 2023.

Keller said the medical association has tried hard to find solutions that would help retain physicians, including failed efforts over the past two years to add a health exception in the abortion law.

“Every time there’s been some sort of event that sustained this difficult environment or made it worse, we heard about folks leaving,” Keller said.

The study, which was led by Dr. J. Edward McEachern, is a clear demonstration of what Keller said the medical association already knew anecdotally. It’s also proof, she said, for the elected officials who have accused them of fabricating stories or data and exaggerating the situation. Idaho Attorney General Raúl Labrador said in June 2024 that Idaho doctors who left were doing so because they made “the vast majority of their money” from performing abortions, but he did not provide evidence for that claim. Republican Rep. Brent Crane, who is chairman of the committee where abortion-related legislation would be considered, said in April 2024 that hospital legal counsel was being disingenuous with providers about the vagueness of the law because they want to undermine and ultimately repeal it.

“This kind of dialed-in study really gives us a very clear picture of what we had feared was happening,” Keller said.

Among clinics, not everyone is in agreement about the problems. Scott Tucker, practice administrator for Women’s Health Associates in Boise, said the providers they have lost over the past three years were mostly due to other factors. Increases in clinic wait times are up across the valley because of population growth, he said, and there is a national shortage of OB-GYNs and primary care providers.

“(Idaho’s abortion ban) really hasn’t impacted us much, other than we get a lot of questions and a lot of requests for contraception counseling,” Tucker said.

He added that while it’s never easy to recruit new physicians, and the ban has created extra challenges, they’ve onboarded a new physician once every nine months for the past four years and have two candidates slated to start in 2026. Much of the interest comes from candidates in the Midwest and the East, he said, and “much of what they’re hearing is hyperbole.”

‘I don’t know if it’s fair to the public for them to never feel like this is a problem’

Dr. Becky Uranga practiced with Schroeder for 14 years at OGA, a physician-owned OB-GYN clinic in the Boise area. She watched Schroeder leave, along with another doctor at OGA who went into a different medical field and one who retired.

In June, another longtime OB-GYN announced his departure. Dr. Scott Armstrong, who had practiced in the area for 26 years, sent a letter to patients saying his last day at OGA will be on Oct. 17, when he will move back to the Midwest “to help care for my aging parents and embark on a new chapter in my life.”

Uranga said the practice will have eight practicing OB-GYNs by October — down from 12 a few years ago. And the closure of other labor and delivery units in the area, which is the most populous in the state, has increased workloads for clinics like OGA as well. Uranga’s practice provides the full spectrum of obstetrics and gynecological care for women of all ages, including surgeries and labor and delivery.

“All those people (from the closed clinics) then came to us,” Uranga said.

What used to be two or four deliveries on average in a 24-hour shift is now five to six.

“That’s a lot, and it’s a really special moment that you want to be all in, present and available for whatever could happen … and it doesn’t feel like that anymore,” she said.

When a physician leaves, especially ones that have been practicing for a long time, Uranga said it leaves a hole. Schroeder had 3,000 patients, and many of them were receiving care for menopause, which she specialized in. Uranga sought out extra training to become board certified in menopause care to fill that gap.

While they juggled the transition with fewer physicians, OGA temporarily limited new patients for certain services, including some Medicaid patients. Uranga also isn’t traveling to a rural area of Idaho anymore to provide surgeries, something she and Schroeder used to do together.

When she’s not doing clinic visits, patient calls, surgeries or deliveries, she’s helping with organizing and fundraising efforts for the reproductive rights ballot initiative that would restore abortion access in Idaho. And in between all that, she’s scheduling recruiting calls with potential physicians.

She recently had to tell a recruitment coordinator that they need to be transparent up front about Idaho’s abortion laws, because she wasted too much time talking to candidates who responded with a hard no after learning about the medical environment.

“My nurse will tell you that I am fitting people in before, during, and after (hours) all the time, which isn’t fair to my family, it’s not fair to my nurse, and I don’t know if it’s fair to the public for them to never feel like this is a problem,” Uranga said.

This story has been updated.

Arkansas Advocate is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Arkansas Advocate maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Sonny Albarado for questions: info@arkansasadvocate.com.

The post Idaho is losing OB-GYNs. Doctors who remain are trying to shoulder the extra burdens. appeared first on arkansasadvocate.com


Note: The following A.I. based commentary is not part of the original article, reproduced above, but is offered in the hopes that it will promote greater media literacy and critical thinking, by making any potential bias more visible to the reader –Staff Editor.

Political Bias Rating: Left-Leaning

This content highlights the negative consequences of strict abortion bans on healthcare providers and patient care in Idaho, emphasizing the challenges faced by OB-GYNs and the resulting healthcare shortages. It presents critical perspectives on the state’s abortion restrictions and includes voices advocating for reproductive rights, which aligns with a left-leaning viewpoint that supports abortion access and critiques restrictive policies.

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Look inside the newly-renovated Greer Lingle Middle School in Rogers

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2 days ago

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August 13, 2025

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www.youtube.com – 40/29 News – 2025-08-13 03:40:36

SUMMARY: Greer Lingle Middle School in Rogers reopens after being closed for over a year due to tornado damage causing $12.7 million in repairs. Renovations include new floors, ceilings, lights, and updated hallways. Contractors are finishing final touches inside and outside the building as 680 students prepare to return. Principal Eric Sokol praised the community’s resilience and noted the academic challenges faced during the temporary relocation to Rogers New Tech. Despite delays, students had a solid year. The renovated school features a new science classroom and library, aiming to create a safe, welcoming environment. Some projects, like the performing arts center, remain underway.

Students in the Rogers School District return to class on Wednesday

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U.S. Education Secretary visits Arkansas

Published

3 days ago

on

August 12, 2025

By

www.youtube.com – THV11 – 2025-08-12 07:56:48

SUMMARY: U.S. Education Secretary Linda McMahon visited Arkansas as part of her nationwide tour promoting the return of education control to states. Meeting with Governor Sarah Huckabee Sanders at Dunn Roberts Elementary School in Little Rock, McMahon emphasized dismantling the Department of Education to reduce federal bureaucracy and increase local decision-making. The Trump administration argues this shift will expand family choices and empower communities, while critics warn it may reduce oversight and harm vulnerable students. McMahon highlighted Louisiana’s educational improvements as a model. After Little Rock, she toured the Saline County Career and Technical campus in Benton. Full coverage will follow in evening news.

U.S. Secretary of Education Linda McMahon is visiting Arkansas as part of the “Returning Education to the States” 50-state tour.

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