Sen. Alan Clark, R-Lonsdale, will regain his seniority in the Arkansas Senate shortly after the general election in November 2024.
A majority of senators agreed in a voice vote Wednesday that Clark, who was demoted last year to the lowest level of seniority for the 94th General Assembly, will be allowed to participate in the Senate’s organizational meeting after the 2024 elections and before the 95th General Assembly begins in 2025.
Sen. Jimmy Hickey, R-Texarkana, brought the motion to the floor. Sen. Jonathan Dismang, R-Searcy, asked the Senate to consider Hickey’s motion immediately and without debate.
A handful of members voted against the motion.
Clark’s demotion went hand in hand with being suspended from the Senate from late September 2022 to the end of the year. The Senate voted 26-4 to administer these consequences after Clark filed a “spurious, frivolous and retaliatory” ethics complaint against Sen. Stephanie Flowers, D-Pine Bluff, earlier in 2022.
The Senate Ethics Committee, composed of five Republicans and three Democrats, recommended Clark’s punishment to the Senate on Sept. 9 after about 16 hours of testimony during three closed-door meetings.
Hickey said Wednesday that Clark will regain the same level of seniority he did before his demotion and suspension. The Senate’s vote clarified that Clark’s punishment would not continue after the 94th General Assembly, Hickey said.
He brought the same motion to the Senate on March 29. It failed on a roll-call vote with 16 “yes” votes, two short of a majority. Nine senators voted against the motion and 10 did not vote.
Flowers spoke vehemently against the motion last week, calling Clark “a doggone scoundrel” and adding that he never apologized to her for his complaint. She was absent from the Senate on Wednesday.
In 2021, Flowers erroneously received nearly $3,000 in per diem and travel payments for attending legislative sessions via Zoom due to the COVID-19 pandemic. She reimbursed the Senate in August 2022 after determining the payments had been made in error.
Clark filed a complaint against Flowers the same month for the improper payments, but the Ethics Committee found that the complaint “did not have merit” and the payments were a “clerical error.”
Earlier in 2022, the Senate disciplined Clark over a separate per-diem issue, losing his committee leadership posts as well as his eligibility for per diem and mileage reimbursement for the rest of the year. He publicly voiced frustration with his colleagues’ decision in interviews and on social media. The Ethics Committee interpreted his statements as “intent to retaliate against the Senate,” according to its report after investigating Clark’s complaint.
The committee found Clark had drafted additional ethics complaints against 30 or more other senators, almost the entire 35-member chamber, making his complaint against Flowers “frivolous.”
After voting to accept the sanctions against Clark, the Senate also voted to change its rules to require future ethics complaints to be brought by a minimum of three senators.
