What you need to know about how a political insider wants to keep you in the dark.
Rep. Bob Ballinger is trying hard to get voters to associate him with the words “Government Transparency” and the “Freedom of Information Act (FOIA).” How? By just posting pictures with those words and writing that those are good things. Like a magician he is trying to distract the audience from what he is actually doing.
Will his tactic work? Only if people are unaware of how Ballinger fought AGAINST government transparency in 2017.
- Ballinger refused to support a SB175 by Senator Bryan King to require Medicaid providers to disclose their business dealings with public officials. With billions of Medicaid dollars at stake, don’t you think we should know which public officials have cozy business relationships with the Medicaid providers? With public corruption cases constantly in the Arkansas news, why did Ballinger help keep us in the dark?
- Ballinger tried to exempt more records from public disclosure. He supported SB373 to limit access to public records by declaring the records exempt if a state entity hands the records over to private attorneys. In over fifty years of the FOIA there has been no problem with state entities being unfairly treated by revealing records involved in litigation. If the bill had become law there would be LESS transparency in government.
And while Ballinger was trying to close public records, his law firm was representing Ecclesia College who did not want to reveal how it had used state General Revenue Funds given to the college by Ballinger and others.
For more information on Ballinger’s refusal to support Senator King’s anti-corruption bill read: “King’s Anti-Corruption Bill Stopped by House Committee”
For more information on Ballinger’s effort to limit your access to public records while his law firm was representing a client trying to fight FOIA disclosure read: “Rep Ballinger’s conflicts make him the wrong messenger for FOIA exemption”
Look at Ballinger’s ad on the left. Is it missing some words? Maybe it should have said, “Fighting Against Government Transparency.”
