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Committee adopts broad FOIA rewrite to define 'public meeting,' polling and remote rules
Summary
The committee approved a bill that revises Arkansas' public-meeting rules: it defines "deliberation" and "polling," clarifies remote attendance and recording rules, authorizes executive sessions for court-ordered ADR and cybersecurity response, and allows courts to invalidate actions taken in violation of the law.
Senator Tucker presented a comprehensive rewrite of the state's public-meeting law intended to clarify when officials must meet in public and what kinds of off‑meeting communications are permitted.
The bill amends multiple FOIA provisions, including definitions and the public-meeting section, to provide working definitions for terms that have been litigated for decades. "We wanted to bring clarity to that process," Tucker said during an extended floor presentation, describing new definitions for "deliberation," "informal meeting," "polling" and other terms that determine whether out‑of‑meeting exchanges are permissible.
Key provisions include a definition of deliberation that covers exchanges of information or opinions about decisions that a governing body…
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