Arkansas Outdoors
When Ford Overton became chairman of the Arkansas Game and Fish Commission in July 2018, he broke from tradition, directing the heads of each of the commission’s divisions to present a list of goals that they wanted to achieve in the coming year.
When Ford Overton became chairman of the Arkansas Game and Fish Commission in July 2018, he broke from tradition.
A commissioner serves as chairman in his seventh and final year of his term. Traditionally, the commission’s incoming chairman articulates a final list of goals for the commission to tackle.
Overton did it differently. He directed the heads of each of the commission’s divisions to present a list of goals that they wanted to achieve in the coming year.
The directive reflected Overton’s perception of a commissioner’s role. The agency’s employees run the business. Overton said the commission’s role is to provide the tools and support for the staff to excel.
His orders essentially were, “You told us what you think is important. Now, make it happen.”
When Gov. Mike Beebe appointed him in July 2012, Overton sat with me alone for more than an hour and gave me probably the most candid, most free-form interview I’ve done in more than 30 years as a reporter. There was no guile and no gamesmanship.
Federal judge Bill Wilson described Overton that day as being so honest that he “would play craps with him over the phone.” Overton never lied to, nor misled this reporter.
When difficult issues arose, he demanded accountability, politely at first, and not so politely if results were unsatisfactory.
Case in point was his eruption in May over his frustration with the Arkansas Natural Resources Commission’s indolence in fulfilling its obligations to complete the Bayou Meto Water Management Project.
Overton’s outburst was unscripted and raw. Fellow commissioners winced, but after all these years of inaction and stonewalling, Overton’s words and delivery were appropriate. Only then did influential people seem to understand that the AGFC’s frustration had reached critical mass. Days later, influential people met to draft an action plan designed to actually accomplish something.
Later, Overton met personally with officials from Entergy to discuss possibilities for providing electricity to the pumping station at Reydell, which currently isn’t even connected to power.
The next day, Overton briefed me for 90 minutes on all the nuances about power supply and demand, how an electric company obtains additional surge power for non-regular, high-capacity spikes and the ramifications for customers like the Game and Fish Commission. He took the time because he believes it is important for the only reporter in the state that covers the Game and Fish Commission to understand that element of the challenge matrix.
Early in his term, Overton personally ushered bobwhite quail restoration to the front of the commission’s agenda, but again, he did it unconventionally. Instead of orating a manifesto, Overton invited influential and august Arkansans to address the commission about the cultural importance of Arkansas’ quail hunting heritage. They included Wilson, Rex Nelson, retired Arkansas Supreme Court associate justice Jack Holt Jr., and others. They did all the talking.
In this way Overton deftly made quail restoration about people, and he made it a legacy issue for the commission.
The commission responded with a quail management campaign that will succeed because of the unique way Overton showed that it matters.
Also in Overton’s last year, the commission held several procedural meetings in different cities. It also held special Town Hall meetings in Little Rock and Springdale in which commissioners fielded questions directly from the audience. The road appearances were, Overton said, intended to increase access to an agency that touches so many lives, and to demonstrate transparency.
Let’s not forget that Overton arrived at a critical time when the commission had seriously strained its credibility with the governor, with the legislature, with the media and with its constituents. Overton was the third of Beebe’s “Big Four” appointments, which included former commissioners Fred Brown of Corning, Steve Cook of Malvern and Ken Reeves of Harrison. They formed a bloc that had a common vision, common goals and solidarity. They fixed a lot of things that went wrong in the preceding years.
Reeves will complete that continuum over the next year, and commissioner Andrew Parker will close out the agency’s Mike Beebe era.
It’s been a significant and successful era, and Overton was a big part of it. We’ll not see another like him.