by John Brummett (jbrummett@arkansasonline.com)

Editor’s note: The State of the State series provides reports twice a year on Arkansas’ key economic sectors. The series publishes stories to begin a year and stories in July/August to provide a broad mid-year update on the state’s economy. Link here for the State of the State page and previous stories.

The group is “ridiculously diverse,” as former flame-throwing Republican state Rep. Nate Bell, now an iconoclastic independent activist revealing a thoughtful side, puts it.

He’s the person who kind of started it – the drafting committee, that is, for a citizens’ initiative for a constitutional amendment to guarantee freedom of information. The group seeks to enshrine the late Gov. Winthrop Rockefeller’s proud Freedom of Information statute of the late 1960s in the state Constitution. It seeks to protect the people’s right to know from the ruling politicians’ interest in running the government with the convenience of secrecy.

State of the State 2024: Amid Republican dominance, citizens turn to petitions