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AAC Conference Highlights
AG’s office answers FOIA questions; experts discuss climate change
August 17, 18 and 19 and will be at the Peabody Hotel and Statehouse Convention Center in Little Rock. Tis year our conference will feature a number of great speakers during our general session including Governor Mike Beebe and Skip Rutherford. In addition we will be hosting our annual fish fry as well as our dinner dance on Tursday night featuring Te Rockets (you might say Te Rockets have achieved “Honorary County Rock and Roll Entertainment” status at this point as they have been featured at our conference the last three years running). Finally, and most exciting to me, we will have eight workshops rang-
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ing from county budgeting to climate change. Each staff member here at your AAC is assigned the responsibility for finding a topic of interest to county and district officials and developing that topic into one or two workshops. I would like to finish my article by giving you a little teaser for the two workshops I will be administering at this year’s conference.
First, at 11 a.m. in Caraway Rooms I & II we will have the Attorney
General’s assistant head of the Opinions Division, Ryan Owlesly, here to visit with county and district officials regarding the Arkansas Freedom of Information Act. Owlesly will be covering those issues that go to the heart of most counties’ FOIA requests. More specifically, he will be cover- ing such issues as: who may make a lawful request for records under the FOIA (this is not as clearcut as one might suppose), what constitutes a public record or a public meeting, executive sessions, when they are prop- er and when they are not, personnel records, when they can be released and when they must be withheld, law enforcement records, when they can be turned over to the press and when they must be withheld, and, finally, bulk commercial access to records and the potential ramifications of Act 870 of 2011 regarding bulk commercial access to public records. Of course there will be some time at the end for questions from the audi- ence. I hope you will make plans to attend.
From the Arkansas Freedom of Information Act we transition to cli- mate change as the topic for my second workshop. Te climate change workshop is scheduled for 2:30 Tursday afternoon and will also be in Caraway Rooms I & II – and do we have a treat for our conference attendees! Tis particular workshop is designed to inform you of the challenges of climate change at the local, national and global scale. To this end, we have put together a great team to provide this information to those in attendance. We will kick off the climate change workshop with Ed Buckner,
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would like to use this column as a shameless plug for our annual August conference in general and the two workshops I’m work- ing on in particular. I’m sure most of you know that your Asso- ciation of Arkansas Counties’ annual conference is scheduled for
meteorologist for KTHV Television in Little Rock. Ed will bring his wealth of meteorology experience to the table and will provide you with the underlying science of climate change; what are the processes of climate change?; and what can we expect in the near-term and the long-term as regards weather events? Ed will be joined by David Max- well, Director of the Arkansas Department of Emergency Management. David will speak to the audience about their projections for weather related emergencies here in Arkansas and what county and district of- ficials should be doing to plan for such emergencies. Finally, to tie it all together, David will be followed by Dr. Tomas
Jeff Sikes AAC Legislative Director
Armstrong and Dr. Fabien Laurier of the United States Global Research Program. Te USGCRP coordinates and integrates federal research on changes in the global environment and their implications for society. It began as a presidential initiative in 1989 and was mandated by Congress in the Global Change Research Act of 1990 (P.L. 101-606), which called for “a comprehensive and integrated U.S. research program which will assist the nation and the world to understand, assess, predict, and respond to ... global change.” Dr. Armstrong is the Director of the USGCRP and Dr. Laurier is
Deputy Director. Tese two gentlemen will finish up the workshop by speaking, in broad terms, about the implications of climate change to us as citizens of the state of Arkansas, the U.S. and, indeed, the world. Dr. Armstrong and Dr. Laurier will brief attendees on what the U.S. govern- ment is doing, or not doing, to prepare our country for the challenges of global climate change. Tese two gentlemen are on the cutting edge, information-wise, of the science and potential impacts of climate change and we are very excited they are available to round out our climate change workshop. Dr. Tomas Armstrong joined the White House’s Office of Science and Technology Policy as the Director of National Coordination for the U.S. Global Change Research Program in March 2011. He previously served as the Department of the Interior’s (DOI) Senior Advisor for Cli- mate Change and was a key figure in the implementation of Secretary Salazar’s Executive Order on climate change (S.O. 3289), as well as in the development of the Department’s climate change-related policies, organizational elements and budget strategies. Dr. Armstrong also served as the Vice-Chair for Adaptation Science on the CENRS Subcommittee on Global Change and was the Principal for DOI to the United States Global Change Research Program. Some of his other responsibilities have included serving as the Senior Advisor for Global Change Program at the U.S. Geological Survey, the DOI lead for the World Climate
Continued Page 11 >>> COUNTY LINES, SUMMER 2011
Legislative Corner
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