Arkansas Board of Corrections Settles Sunshine Law Charges, Caving to Governor’s Power Grab
by Chuck Sharman
On March 30, 2026, the Arkansas Board of Corrections (BOC), which manages and oversees the state’s Department of Corrections (DOC), gave up its fight against two new laws that severely limit its power and authority over state prisons.
In a vote conducted after seating a new four-member majority appointed by Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders (R), the BOC agreed to a settlement offered by state Attorney General Tim Griffin (R), bringing an end to a suit he filed on Sanders’ behalf accusing current and former BOC members of violating state sunshine laws when they used a closed session to hire counsel to fight the new laws, SB 194 and SB 495. The BOC also voted to rescind that contract for representation, which had been given to attorney Abtin Mehdizadegan, a senior partner in the Little Rock firm of Hall Booth Smith PC.
It was during a closed session in December 2023 that BOC members discussed hiring the attorney to represent them in a suit that they eventually filed to challenge the two new laws. Pushed through the state legislature by Sanders in March 2023, those bills stripped the BOC of its authority over the DOC Secretary, as well as the directors of the DOC’s Division of Correction and Division of Community Supervision, giving all three powers to the governor. Exercising her new authority, Sanders hired Lindsay Wallace to serve as DOC Secretary in February 2024, a month after the BOC fired former Secretary Joe Profiri, whom Sanders recruited from the Arizona Department of Corrections, Rehabilitation and Re-entry.
Meanwhile, Griffin sued the Board in December 2023, accusing it of violating the state’s open-meetings law with the expanded executive session in which Mehdizadegan’s hiring was discussed, as well as violations of the state’s Freedom of Information Act when some of his requests for documentation were allegedly stonewalled. That same month, the BOC counter-sued Sanders in state Circuit Court for Pulaski County, setting up a battle in which the board appeared to win the first round: the state court granted the BOC a preliminary injunction on January 19, 2024, declaring both new laws violations of Amendment 33—a 1942 addition to the state constitution that gave the BOC all the authority that the laws transferred to Sanders. See: Ark. Bd. of Corr. v. Sanders, 2024 Ark. Cir. LEXIS 897.The governor lost an appeal to the injunction ruling at the state Supreme Court on June 5, 2025; her request for a rehearing was also denied on September 4, 2025. See: Sanders v. Ark. Bd. of Corr., 2025 Ark. 102; and 2025 Ark. LEXIS 98.
But as soon as Sanders secured a majority of her own appointees to the BOC in January 2026, the settlement that Griffin proposed was considered and eventually accepted. Under its terms, the BOC agreed to admit liability for the alleged sunshine law violations, as well as agreeing not to further challenge SB 194 and AB 495. That part of the agreement will not take effect, though, unless and until the state Supreme Court rules for the Governor in the other suit, the one that resulted in the injunction granted to the BOC. See: Griffin, in re Atty. Gen. of Ark. v. Ark. Bd. of Corr., Ark. Cir. (Cty. of Pulaski), Case No. 60CV-23-9637.
So what caused this power grab? A giant new prison, which Sanders wants to incarcerate 3,000 prisoners and expand the DOC’s capacity beyond the 18,750 or so people it already confines. Profiri was her chief cheerleader for the effort, creating friction with more cautious BOC members. When they eventually fired him, Sanders hired Profiri to fill her newly-created corrections advisor position.
Now the new prison may turn out to be the hill on which the governor’s reputation dies. She tried and failed five times to convince state lawmakers to appropriate $750 million for construction of the new lockup. She then tried to oust the obstructionist lawmakers, but all her alternative candidates went down in spectacular defeat in the March 2025 primary elections. The legislature has begun to reallocate $75 million originally earmarked for the new lockup. Also, in a Joint Budget Committee meeting on April 15, 2025, state Sen. Terry Rice (R-Waldron) submitted an amendment to excise Profiri’s salary from next year’s state spending, saying that the former corrections head had cost the state “a million dollars in the last four years” and “Arkansans don’t want to spend another million dollars for his lack of performance.”
Additional sources: Arkansas Advocate, Arkansas Times
As a digital subscriber to Prison Legal News, you can access full text and downloads for this and other premium content.
Already a subscriber? Login