Press Releases

Question: Does Rule 36 of the Rules of the State Medical Board conflict in any way with current state law as it pertains to abortion and related procedures?

Brief Response: Yes. Rule 36’s definitions of “medical emergency” and “gestational age” partially conflict with the Arkansas Code.

Request for review and certification of the popular name and ballot title of a proposed constitutional amendment with the popular name, “An Amendment Concerning Constitutional Amendments, Initiated Acts and Referendum.”

Brief Response: In Opinion No. 2025-021, I listed two issues that prevented me from certifying your ballot title as submitted or from substituting and certifying an alternative: (1) the proposed measure’s misleading representation of the Attorney General’s role in the ballot title review process and (2) the measure’s use of “Article,” rather than “Article 5, § 1,” which increased the restrictions on the General Assembly’s Article 19, § 22 powers but did not convey the scope of these restrictions in the ballot title or popular name. You have now resolved both of these issues. Since that opinion, however, the General Assembly passed Act 602 of 2025, which prohibits me from certifying ballot titles that are above an eighth-grade reading level under the Flesch-Kincade Grade Level formula. Yet the ballot title you have submitted ranks at grade level 12.2. Thus, your ballot title requires significant revisions before it complies with the Act. Any ballot title I could substitute would amount to a wholesale rewrite, but it is the sponsor’s duty to craft a ballot title that complies with Act 602. As a result, my statutory duty is to reject your popular name and ballot title because it does not comply with the requirements of Act 602 and instruct you to redesign the proposed ballot title in a manner that does not violate the requirements of the Act.

Question: Under A.C.A. § 14-143-121(b)(1) of the Regional Intermodal Facilities Act, “[t]he property of each authority [created under the Act] shall be exempt from all local and municipal taxes.” What types of “local and municipal taxes” are included within this exemption? Specifically, are property taxes included?

Brief Response: Per A.C.A. § 14-143-121(b)(1), an authority’s properties are “exempt from all local and municipal taxes[,]” including property taxes. And A.C.A. § 14-143-121(a) contains an even broader tax exemption. Under that provision, an authority is, with certain exceptions, “exempt from the payment of any taxes or fees” to the State or its political subdivisions. Finally, an authority’s property may also be exempt from property taxes under Article 16, § 5(b) of the Arkansas Constitution.