Dear Friends, Please bear with me; this is a very long letter. One of the big surprises from Election Night 2014 was the passage of Issue 3 by Arkansas voters with a 5% margin. On November 5th, this letter was sent by House Speaker Davy Carter to all members of the General Assembly apprising them of the new ethics laws EFFECTIVE IMMEDIATELY: Yesterday, HJR 1009 of 2013 (submitted on the ballot as Issue 3) was adopted by Arkansas voters. Please be aware that this new amendment becomes effective today (November 5, 2014). Thus, this new amendment to the Arkansas Constitution contains several ethics provisions which immediately impact certain elected officials, including members of the General Assembly. I wanted to make you aware of certain new prohibitions under the amendment. These are summaries of the respective provisions - if you would like additional information, please review the specific language of HJR 1009 or contact Graham Sloan with the Arkansas Ethics Commission at 1 800 422-7773. (1) Campaign Contributions • Under HJR 1009, a candidate for public office or a person acting on the candidates behalf is prohibited from accepted a campaign contribution from other than: o An individual: o A defined political party; o A county political party committee; o A legislative caucus committee; or o An approved political action committee. • Entities other than those listed above are likewise prohibited from making a campaign contribution. • A violation of this section is a Class A misdemeanor. (2) Gifts from Lobbyists Under HJR 1009, members of the General Assembly shall not knowingly or willingly solicit or accept a gift from a lobbyist, a person acting on behalf of a lobbyist, or a person employing or contracting with a lobbyist. o Person includes a business, individual, union, association, firm, committee, club, or other organization or group of persons. The term gift is defined more narrowly than current ethics laws — the term means any payment, entertainment, advance, services, or anything of value unless consideration of equal or greater value is given. Exceptions: o Informational material such as books, reports, pamphlets, calendars, or periodicals informing a person elected or appointed to an office of his or her official duties; o Gifts that are not used and which, within thirty (30) days after receipt, are returned to the donor; o Gifts from the spouse, child, parent, grandparent, grandchild, brother, sister, parent-in-law, brother-in-law, sister-in-law, nephew, niece, aunt, uncle, or first cousin of a person elected or appointed to a constitutional office, unless the family member is acting on behalf of a person otherwise prohibited from making the gift; o Anything of value that is readily available to the general public at no cost; o Food or drink available at a planned activity to which a specific governmental body (committee or legislative body) is invited; o Payments by regional or national organizations for travel to regional or national conferences at which the State of Arkansas is requested to be represented by a person or persons elected or appointed to a constitutional office; o Campaign contributions; and o Any devise or inheritance. • A violation of this section is a Class B misdemeanor. (3) Lobbyist Registration Under HJR 1009, all persons elected or reelected to the General Assembly on or after November 4, 2014 may not register as a lobbyist until two (2) years after the expiration of the term of office to which he or she was elected. A violation of this section is a Class D felony. If you have any questions, please call Gabe Holmstrom at 501-682-7771. Davy Carter Speaker The Arkansas Legislative Assembly woke up on November 5th to a completely new political landscape (that of being beholden to voters instead of special interests) due to many of your efforts which shall now be recognized: Without the “naïve do-gooders” from Occupy Little Rock and Regnat Populus laboring in the hot sun across the state to collect signatures for the initial effort in 2012 and threatening to do so again in 2014, the legislature NEVER would have felt compelled to introduce these ethics reforms themselves. I’ll never forget the sage advice given to me by Neil Sealy of Arkansas Community Organization in 2012 when it was evident that we didn’t have the signatures for our initial ethics ballot initiative. “Never give up. You never know what these citizen-led efforts will lead to in the end. Something else may happen that you never planned on.” And he was right. Now Arkansas has some of the toughest ethic laws in the country (effective NOW!) largely due to the efforts of a bunch of people too naïve to realize you can’t do anything in the political realm without money. The ballot title as crafted by the legislature was very misleading in regard to term limits (not ESTABLISHING term limits as stated, but modifying term limits giving legislators a net 2 year extension of possible terms). This misleading title caused a great deal of understandable outrage from Term Limits advocates who launched a massive campaign against the measure. Although term limits issues may continue to be fought out in the next election cycle with future measures, we are confident that the gains in ethics laws are here to stay. There are a few folks besides our hard-working Reg Pop canvassers, notaries and organizers who deserve special recognition: Dr. Jay Barth gave us the idea for the 3 original measures (lengthening cooling off period, banning all gifts from lobbyist to legislators and banning direct corporate contributions to campaigns), and John T. Adams led the effort with the help of Bettina Brownstein to craft the original measure that became the basis of the three ethics components that were included in Issue 3. Next, a major tip of the hat to Brent Bumpers whose efforts propelled our initiative from a fringe movement into the main stream of political conversation in Arkansas. After reading early coverage of Regnat Populus’ efforts by Max Brantley and John Brummett, Brent was inspired to convene “Better Ethics Now” to promote and fund our efforts. Brent’s organization brought together a bi partisan “Who’s Who” of Arkansas political luminaries who selflessly gave their time, treasure, and expertise to further this cause. Out of our relationship with Better Ethics Now, we somehow ended up with our legal guru and co-chair, David Couch. (I’m still unclear if David was off-loaded by Better Ethics and adopted by Regnat, or if David adopted Regnat himself. Regardless of how we found each other, we became the luckiest Ballot Question Committee in the world). Another round of thanks go out to Neil Sealy (Arkansas Community Organization) and Steve Copley (Arkansas Interfaith Alliance). They provided a wealth of practical experience in running the ground game of petitioning and organization. In addition, their gentlemanly demeanor brought a greatly- needed calming effect to a most hectic and abbreviated petitioning effort. As we began our 2013 campaign, we were approached by two members of the General Assembly, Rep. Warwick Sabin and Sen. Jon Woods. These two gentlemen proposed a compromise measure that would contain our original three ethics proposals along with an adjustment to term limits and the establishment of a Citizens’ Commission to set salaries for the legislators. We were generously assisted by attorney Scott Trotter, whose expertise and keen legal understanding closed unforeseen loopholes and brought about a much stronger measure in general. Warwick and Jon endured withering criticism from the Left, the Right, and every point in between for a misleading ballot title in regards to the term limits. They were abandoned by many of their colleagues in the General Assembly and virtually the whole Republican Party. They were excoriated in the press everywhere from the Arkansas Times to the Arkansas Democrat Gazette. This controversy obviously complicated any funding for campaigning for Issue 3. However, in the end, the measure passed and Jon and Warwick deserve the lion’s share of the credit. THANK YOU BOTH FOR YOUR UNDAUNTED PERSERVERENCE. While debate on Issue 3 raged, Regnat Populus continued its collaboration with our national partners, Public Citizen, Common Cause, Free Speech for People, and People for the American Way, to forward efforts to combat corporate personhood and unlimited campaign spending. In addition, we worked for several months to encourage Sen. Mark Pryor to support HJR19- a proposed constitutional amendment to undo the damage caused by the Citizens United ruling in 2010, which he ultimately decided to cosponsor. In one other development in late 2013, Regnat Populus along with the ACLU and the Arkansas Public Law Center successfully sued the State of Arkansas over Act 1413, a law which sought to limit the citizens’ right to use the referendum and initiative process as a means of direct democracy. Going forward, Regnat Populus has exciting new developments to announce! We realize that there are many advocacy groups that understand that working to strengthen the voice of citizens in the political process will be the most effective means to further their own individual causes. Uniting our efforts will give us much more political clout than any one group working alone. To that end, we have been joined by energetic fellow democracy activist Kevin Bell of Alma, to create The Arkansas Democracy Coalition. The mission of this organization will be to draw together as many grass roots, state-wide, and national groups as possible to work towards regaining control over campaign finance spending, eliminating the mistaken idea of corporate personhood and undoing the damage to our electoral system this mistaken idea has wrought. Our mission statement is as follows: Arkansas Democracy Coalition Statement of Intent We as citizens must acknowledge several truths in order to fully participate in the democratic process –a process guaranteed to us by not only the Constitution of the United States and the Constitutions of the individual States, but also bestowed upon us by virtue of our humanity- an inseparable component of our dignity as human persons. One. We are no longer the benefactors of our political process. Two. The political process has been usurped by the courts who have proven themselves to be myrmidons to their plutocratic masters, giving unbalanced influence to moneyed interests over the interests of American citizens through wrongly decided holdings such as Buckley v. Valeo, SpeechNow v. FEC, Citizens United v. FEC, and McCutcheon v. FEC. Three. Elected representatives are no longer responsive to the needs of their constituents; rather they are beholden to the “donor class” of oligarchs and plutocrats and must cater to these interests to retain their seats. Regardless of the respective personal causes each of us hold dear and indeed, the needs of the electorate; no appreciable progress can be made without first regaining control over the politicians and the electoral process. Four. The only way to wrest control of our political process from special interests is to assume these changes must come from the people themselves. That is, we may safely assume that there will be no effort made by any majority of politicians to regulate the integrity of the electoral process. As such, we must force a change upon them. Five. Without any degree of solidarity amongst different citizen-led groups that advocate for various causes, no political change that reflects the will of the people can occur. As a result, the different individual groups’ primary goals remain un-achievable. However, with solidarity amongst these groups in uniting their voices to focus on the cause of restoring the democratic process, these various voices are amplified and thus have a greater likelihood of being heeded by those in power. However, in order to focus resources on the overarching problem (loss of representative democracy), we must acknowledge that those in the Coalition may not necessarily agree with other groups’ points of view on various issues that these groups may represent-they need only agree that there is a common need to regain that which has been taken from them- a democracy that acts on the behalf of and is responsive to the people themselves. The Arkansas Democracy Coalition seeks to combine the forces of many diverse groups-both national and within Arkansas- who have a common interest in strengthening the voice of American citizens in their own governance and repossessing control of the democratic process from special interests that currently dominate the American political landscape. The Arkansas Democracy Coalition does not seek to shift the balance of power to the left or the right, but to ensure that the voices of all citizens are meaningfully represented in the political process. Then the force of arguments, ideas and rational thought can once again resume their rightful preeminence in our electoral system. The Arkansas Democracy Coalition seeks these reforms using any and all means at our disposal, including the Initiative and Referenda process, direct political action, legal action, and keeping the need for democratic reforms at both the state and national level at the forefront of the political conversation through advocacy and education. Won’t you join us? Arkansas Community Organization and Arkansas Interfaith Alliance have signed on as charter members of the Arkansas Democracy Coalition. If you would like to join this coalition either as an individual or a group, please sign up here: ardc.us/ To this end, the Arkansas Democracy Coalition is happy to sponsor its first event- welcoming Jeff Clements, co-founder of Free Speech for People- a national non-partisan campaign to overturn the Citizens United v. FEC case, challenge excessive corporate power, and to strengthen American democracy and republican self-government. He will be promoting the latest edition of his book Corporations are NOT People at the Clinton Center on Thursday, November 19th at 6 pm. This will be a great opportunity for beleaguered Arkansans who have endured almost a year of soul-killing TV campaign propaganda, mostly unleashed by dark money groups, to detoxify our minds and learn about reclaiming democracy!! *Reserve your seats by emailing [email protected] or calling 501-683-5239. For more information, check out our Facebook event page https://facebook/events/717510544999357/ With warm regards, Paul Spencer Co-chair, Regnat Populus
Posted on: Wed, 12 Nov 2014 01:16:49 +0000
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