KUAR | By Michael Hibblen
The Arkansas Senate Ethics Committee will meet again next Thursday to consider a complaint made by one senator against another. It comes despite the intention of the committee chairman to resolve the issue during a marathon meeting on Thursday which was mostly conducted behind closed doors.
The complaint was apparently filed by Sen. Alan Clark, R-Lonsdale, against Sen. Stephanie Flowers, D-Pine Bluff. Clark had been sanctioned by the committee earlier this summer for seeking per diem and travel expenses for a meeting he did not attend. He has since suggested there are problems with the legislature’s ethics rules and that other lawmakers have committed similar violations.
State documents obtained by the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette show Flowers reimbursed the state last month nearly $3,000 for travel expenses she had received for meetings attended via Zoom. Sen. Trent Garner, R-El Dorado, also received the payments, which Senate President Jimmy Hickey said he considered “a clerical error.”
