Forecasters alter warning criteria
Changes simplify when, where state weather alerts are issued
The National Weather Service has made some changes to the criteria Arkansas forecasts need to meet in order for the weather service to issue a winter storm warning.
A winter storm warning is issued when Arkansans need to prepare for winter weather that could have a widespread impact on travel or lead to power outages, said Colby Pope, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service office in North Little Rock.
“The National Weather
Service reevaluated its winter storm warning criteria for snow across the entire United States in an effort to simplify and standardize the process of coordinating winter storm watches and warnings with neighboring geographic forecast areas,” the news release said.
For a winter storm warning, a forecast must either call for a quarter of an inch of ice or half an inch of sleet, Pope said Monday morning. Those standards have not changed.
“We felt like the hazard and potential threats caused by sleet and ice were correctly covered in the original criteria,” Pope said.
The amount of snowfall forecast in different parts of the state in order to meet the warning’s criteria has been changed, however.
For most counties in Northwest Arkansas, forecasts need to include a possibility for 4 or more inches of snow, the weather service said in a news release earlier this month. Central and eastern portions of the state, including Little Rock, would need a forecast of at least 3 inches of snow. The most southern counties in Arkansas need a forecast of 2 inches of snow.
“Most of the state used to be under the 4-inches criteria,” Pope said. “But we’ve been looking at it for a while and I think it will give Arkansans a better chance to prepare.”
About half of Arkansas’ criteria for a winter storm warning was lowered from 4 inches to 3 inches, the release said.
Weather history as well as
to back down. They’re going to keep coming after it so it’s time to take it out of their hands.”
Bell said the proposed amendment — which he said will be followed by the proposed initiated act — is intended to remove the Legislature’s ability to weaken the Freedom of Information Act without direct permission from the people of Arkansas.
“It’s just making sure that politicians can’t change the people’s right to transparency without first referring it to the people,” he said. “That’s what Article V of the Arkansas Constitution is all about.”
Bell said historically, there have been amendments to the Freedom of Information Act that were needed and his group isn’t trying to prevent the ability of the Legislature to make changes, “if there is a legitimate need to do so.”
“I’m certain that as technology changes and things change in general, there are things that will come up where, for whatever reason, something needs to be secured and not made public,” he said. “We want to make sure there’s a mechanism to do that but ultimately it’s the people who should have the final say.”
David Couch, a Little Rock attorney and committee member, agreed that efforts to chip away at the ability of the people of Arkansas to review public information have been intensifying, to the point, he said, that this year’s efforts amounted to a “full frontal assault,” by state government on transparency.
“They’ve been slowly chipping away at it for years,” Couch said. “But when the General Assembly met this year in the special session, it was like a full frontal assault on Freedom of Information and government transparency.”
Act 7 of the General Assembly that was passed during the special session was initially proposed by Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders as an overhaul of the state’s open records law but was scaled back considerably following pushback from a broad range of people from all across the ideological spectrum. Sanders called the session after a Little Rock attorney and blogger, Matt Campbell, submitted FOI requests related to travel in the governor’s office and a $19,000 lectern that has created a firestorm of controversy.
The first attempt during the session to amend Arkansas’ Freedom of Information Act included a “deliberative process” exemption that would have shielded records “that comprise part of the process by which governmental decisions and policies are formulated” from disclosure.
It also included a provision to exempt documents prepared by an attorney from disclosure, something the Republican governor said was needed so the state wouldn’t be forced to release its legal strategy before discovery.
In addition, the bill would have made it harder for people to recover legal fees for lawsuits filed under the Freedom of Information Act, something that critics said would hurt those who couldn’t afford attorneys otherwise.
Critics said the bill, as written, would exempt virtually all government records from disclosure.
A second bill aimed at amending the Freedom of Information Act would have shielded “records reflecting communications between the Governor or his or her staff and the secretary of a cabinet-level department.”
Sanders said the changes to Arkansas’ Freedom of Information Act were needed to make government more efficient, claiming activists were using the law to slow down her agenda.
However, fellow Republicans raised arguments against the governor’s proposed changes, arguing the sunshine law was a useful and essential tool for government accountability. The Republican committees of Saline and Pulaski counties released statements against a previous bill to change the Freedom of Information Act.
As passed, Act 7 exempts from the open-records law documents related to the governor’s Arkansas State Police security detail and “records that reflect the planning or provision of security services provided” to constitutional officers, Supreme Court justices and Court of Appeals judges.
On Monday, Couch said he has talked to many people all over Arkansas about the proposals and said support for protecting the Freedom of Information Act has been nearly universal.
“Honestly,” he said, “I don’t think I’ve met anyone who has said they think this is a bad idea … It’ll be really interesting to see what happens once the campaign actually starts.”
The group laid out its criteria for the constitutional amendment in a press release last month.
■ Enshrine the Arkansas Freedom of Information Act, as it existed on September 1, 2023 (before the September 2023 special session), into the state constitution;
■ Ensure that any further changes to the Arkansas Freedom of Information Act that reduce government transparency may only be approved by a vote of the people of Arkansas, while providing that laws that increase government transparency may be passed by the General Assembly;
■ Change as little as possible in the existing Arkansas Freedom of Information Act, with the primary exception being to provide a definition for “public meeting,” which has been a hole in the Arkansas Freedom of Information Act for some time;
■ Safeguard the ability of any citizen of Arkansas to enforce the Arkansas Freedom of Information Act by protecting their ability to recover attorney’s fees in the event that a Freedom of Information Act request is wrongfully denied;
■ Create a penalty for bad actors who knowingly violate the Arkansas Freedom of Information Act;
■ Account appropriately for the security of public officials and their minor children, balanced with the public’s right to know how our tax dollars are spent; and
■ Keep the amendment language as simple as possible, while taking into account the vast number of laws existing in the Arkansas Code affecting government transparency.
Couch said during the regular session and the special session, all of the calls he received were from people who feared efforts to gut the state’s open records law would be successful. But, he said, those plans were stymied by broad opposition from across the political spectrum, a plan was needed to try and prevent a replay later.
“We took that energy we were going to get from a referendum and decided we just needed to stop this from happening ever again,” he said. “That’s how the idea for a constitutional amendment was born.”