Arkansas AG finally approves casino ballot

Leslie Rutledge (pictured), Arkansas Attorney General (AG), who’s notorious for turning down more than 60 initiatives for building casinos in this state, finally gave in — it had been declared a week, that she approved four ballot measures, one of them for building a casino in Russellville.  The team who set the ballot forward, Driving Arkansas Forward, claims that 65% of the casino tax revenue will be invested in improving transportation infrastructure. Now the team looks forward to gathering the necessary 84,859 signatures in order to have the proposal on people vote on November 6^th. The signatures should be gathered by July 6^th, so saying that time is of the essence of Driving Arkansas Forward is an understatement.

This April, AG denied another ballot movement which was her fourth rejection this year and following this, the pro-casino team who put the motion forward filed a suit against Ruttledge claiming that she applied, “unnecessarily burdensome standards in her reviews. AG asserts that the State Court provided a deficiency of clarifications about the ballots she rejected before.

Ruttledge remarks: “I have issued opinions about ballot suggestions based on standards set forth in statutes as well as case law of the Arkansas Supreme Court. On the other hand, the Arkansas Supreme Court has once more muddied the waters on such standards by offering no penetration in its own decision requiring me to reevaluate or substitute language of a ballot title I had previously rejected.

“To be clear, today’s certifications do not prevent a citizen from legally challenging a ballot proposal after the necessary variety of signatures are submitted to the Arkansas Secretary of State. Because of this, it is a real possibility that any one or all the certified proposals won’t appear on the ballot in November,” she included.

Individuals who approve the casino building in the state say that citizens are still betting anyway, giving away their money in the neighboring states of Missouri, Oklahoma, Mississippi, which is why Arkansas is losing countless dollars.

Arkansas is one of eleven US states that doesn’t even have a commercial or tribal casino in its own land. We’ll see if there’ll be only ten states left after November 6^th.