Wilson mulling Amendment 14 suit

Here's Doug Smith's article from today's Arkansas Times. Barnes and Beebe are discussing this very issue on AETN as I type this. Mike Wilson, the former state representative from Jacksonville, was also the Plaintiff in Wilson v. Weiss. The Arkansas Supreme Court in that 2006 case struck down one of five challenges Wilson made to legislative appropriations from the state's General Improvement Fund as "special and local" and therefore violative of Amendment 14.

I take the "subterfuge" quote referenced in the article as an allusion to the House method of funding local fire departments through increased Act 833 funds and routing other funding (specifically senior citizen centers and domestic violence shelters) through various state agencies. If that's a violation of Amendment 14, so is the current funding system of district court staff and various other state spending mechanisms. It appears to me that the only other way to fund these projects is to perpetually increase turnbacks to local governments for capital projects using GIF (without direction on how it should be spent, of course -- see recent Pul.Co. news).