The Arkansas House voted down a bill that would have resulted in public criminal history checks on elected officials and candidates for public office, Arkansas Business reported. The information is still public but remains difficult to obtain and compile.
House lawmakers rejected Friday a bill by Rep. Dan Greenberg that would have made the criminal records of elected officials and candidates for public office more accessible to the public.
The bill, which advanced from the Judiciary Committee after three hearings, was voted down 33-56, with 11 members not voting. The bill would have allowed the release of an official's guilty and no-contest pleas, as well as any pending felony or misdemeanor charges filed in the past three years. The bill, which was opposed by Attorney General Dustin McDaniel, did not include traffic violations.
"There's nothing that would be revealed by this bill the public cannot access already," Greenberg, R-Little Rock, said. "The practical problem, as you may know, is for a person to collect this information at present, it would require someone to go to all 75 counties."
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1 comment:
This seems silly to me. I think it's absolutely necessary to run a background check on public officials. The fact that it was voted down by those public officials is pretty scary.
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