English
French
Spanish
VietnameseGriffin: ‘I am filing a new lawsuit to revoke the charter of Allport because Arkansas law requires me to do so’
LITTLE ROCK – Attorney General Tim Griffin released the following statement after his office filed a lawsuit today to revoke the charter of the town of Allport’s municipal corporation:
“In her 2021 filing, my predecessor erroneously sought to create a remedy not allowed by the statute as an alternative to revocation. Last week I successfully sought and was granted a dismissal of that action. Today, I am filing a new lawsuit to revoke the charter of Allport because Arkansas law requires me to do so. The statute says the Attorney General shall–not may–file pleadings to revoke the charter. Thus, it leaves me no discretion.”
Background
After following the statutory process in the Arkansas Municipal Accounting Law, the Legislative Joint Auditing Committee twice, within three years, notified Allport of its failure to substantially comply with the Municipal Accounting Law. On September 24, 2020, the Committee notified the Attorney General that the statutory process had been completed twice and that Allport had not come into substantial compliance. Upon notification, “[t]he Attorney General shall file pleadings . . . to revoke the charter of the municipal corporation” that was twice notified in a three-year period of its failure to substantially comply with the Municipal Accounting Law.
The previous 2021 filing did not seek to revoke Allport’s charter. Instead, it requested that Allport be given additional time to substantially comply with the Municipal Accounting Law and that a special master be appointed to determine whether Allport had substantially complied. None of this is contemplated by the law.
Click below to read the complaint and three exhibits.
About Attorney General Tim Griffin
Tim Griffin was elected Attorney General of Arkansas on November 8, 2022. He was elected Lieutenant Governor of Arkansas on November 4, 2014, and was re-elected for his second four-year term on November 6, 2018. From 2011-2015, Griffin served as the 24th Representative of Arkansas’s Second Congressional District. For the 113th Congress, he was a member of the House Committee on Ways and Means while also serving as a Deputy Whip for the Majority. In the 112th Congress, he served as a member of the House Armed Services Committee, the House Committee on Foreign Affairs and the House Committee on the Judiciary.
Griffin is a graduate of Magnolia High School, Hendrix College in Conway and Tulane Law School in New Orleans. He also attended graduate school at Oxford University. Griffin has served as an officer in the U.S. Army Reserve, Judge Advocate General’s (JAG) Corps, for over 25 years and currently holds the rank of colonel. In 2005, Griffin was mobilized to active duty as an Army prosecutor at Fort Campbell, Kentucky, and served with the 101st Airborne Division (Air Assault in Mosul, Iraq). He is currently serving as the Staff Judge Advocate (SJA) for the 81st Readiness Division at Fort Jackson, South Carolina. Prior to his current post, Griffin served as the Commander of the 134th Legal Operations Detachment (LOD) at Fort Bragg, North Carolina and a senior legislative advisor to the Under Secretary of Defense for Personnel and Readiness at the Pentagon. Colonel Griffin holds a master’s degree in strategic studies from the U.S. Army War College, Carlisle Barracks, Pennsylvania. He also served as U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Arkansas and Special Assistant to the President and Deputy Director of Political Affairs for President George W. Bush. Griffin lives in Little Rock with his wife, Elizabeth, a Camden native, and their three children.
###
