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Better Newspaper Advertising Contest now open for entries Guest Column: Resolve to be accessible, stay relevant
Arkansas Press Association
Publisher Weekly
By Jim Pumarlo
Vol.18 | No. 3 | Friday, January 20, 2023 | Serving Press and State Since 1873
Flowers reflects on Act 1028; hopes to strengthen law By Wesley Brown
After Arkansas lawmakers approved Act 1028 of 2019 requiring all public meetings to be recorded, state Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) proponents across the state cheered the new law as critical to public accountability and transparency. Under the 2019 legislation, sponsored by Rep. Vivian Flowers, D-Pine Bluff, public bodies must record all regularly scheduled and special meetings with exemptions for executive sessions, volunteer fire departments, second-class cities and incorporated towns. Act 1028 was one of few substantive improvements to the FOIA in recent years. The proposal, which has since been codified into law as A.C.A. Section 25-19106 (d)(1) of the Arkansas FOIA Act, also requires those sound recordings, video and analog broadcasts of public meetings to be maintained by public entities for at least a year. The recordings are to be made available to the public upon request. Flowers filed the bill that would become Act 1028 after a constituent raised concerns to her about inaccuracies in the meeting minutes of one local governmental entity. Minutes are extremely formal documents that may describe in just a few words what government leaders took two hours to debate, Flowers said at the time, and sometimes important comments get cut from minutes entirely. Recordings would contain the entirety of the meeting along with nuance and context that minutes lack. “Things are just so accessible now,” she said in 2019. “Friends, family and employees are expected to be available because they
Rep. Vivian Flowers (left), with Rep. Jamie Scott, speaks on the floor of the Arkansas House of Representatives. Flowers received APA’s Freedom of Information Award in 2020 for sponsoring this bill.
know you have a smart phone, but we’re not making our government nearly as accessible. “Hearing audio and seeing video makes the experience of getting to know people in leadership much more honest, much more personal and much more specific than reading one page of notes.” The bill gained bipartisan support, including, as Flowers noted, “both arch conservatives and arch liberals.” For her work to make government more accessible and to strengthen the Arkansas FOIA, Flowers received the Arkansas Press Association Freedom of Information Award in 2020. The recording mandate is of particular benefit to journalists, Flowers said.
Reporters who may not have been able to attend a meeting, or those who may be working on long-term special projects, are now equipped with a tool under FOIA to do better reporting. “I think this helps to create a stronger foundation for investigative reporters,” she said. “If you’re trying to go back and figure out what happened, or who said what in a public meeting, then this is really helpful.” Act 1028 fully took effect on July 1, 2020. Now, two and a half years later, several lawsuits have been filed across the state due to increasing violations of the updated FOIA law. “It is happening in small towns. It’s happening on school boards, and we have been seeing it now for several months,” Continued on Page 2