# Arkansas Quorum Court Ordinance Procedure Arkansas county legislative procedure is governed by the County Government Code (A.C.A. Title 14, Chapter 14, Subchapter 9), enacted as Act 742 of 1977 to implement Amendment 55. The thresholds below decide what a 15-member quorum court — such as Pulaski County's — needs to pass, expedite, or make immediately effective an ordinance, and they are the procedural backbone of the [[2026-05 Pulaski County Quorum Court Vote on Data Center Moratorium|2026-05-26 moratorium vote]]. ## Thresholds (15-member court) | Action | Statute | Vote of the whole court | |---|---|---| | Quorum | § 14-14-904 | majority = 8 | | Pass an ordinance / amendment | § 14-14-905(c) | majority of the whole = **8** | | Dispense with the three-readings rule (pass in one meeting) | § 14-14-905(c) | two-thirds = **10** | | Emergency ordinance (no readings; immediate effect) | § 14-14-908 | two-thirds = **10** | | Refer an ordinance to the electors | § 14-14-905(f) | three-fifths = 9 | | Override a county-judge veto | § 14-14-912 | three-fifths of total = 9 | ## How it appears in the corpus - The 2026-05-26 data-center moratorium was drawn as a twelve-month **emergency** ordinance, so it needed **two-thirds (10 of 15)** under § 14-14-908; it received 9 and failed (see [[2026-05 Pulaski County Quorum Court Vote on Data Center Moratorium]]). The missing tenth vote was for *emergency / immediacy*, not for passage: a non-emergency ordinance passes on a majority of the whole (8). - **Tier-1 anchors (2026-05-29 production).** Pulaski County's own organizational ordinance, [[Quorum Court Organizational Ordinance 25-I-01]] Article 11(c), codifies the rule verbatim: *"The passage of an emergency measure shall require two-thirds (2/3) majority of the membership."* Clerk [[Terri Hollingsworth]]'s 2026-05-28 correction statement independently states the threshold — *"Emergency ordinances require at least 10 'yes' votes to be adopted, and that threshold was not met upon review"* ([[Pulaski County Clerk Statement on the Corrected Moratorium Vote]]). Together these move the "needed 10, got 9" finding from Tier-3 reporting to Tier-1 county records. - Ordinances "of a general or permanent nature" must be **read on three different days** unless two-thirds (10) dispense (§ 14-14-905(c)); a non-emergency ordinance is **not effective until 30 calendar days after publication** (§ 14-14-905(e)). An emergency ordinance is effective immediately on county-judge approval (§ 14-14-908) but may be enacted only to meet public emergencies affecting life, health, safety, or property, and must declare and define the emergency. - The **county judge** presides and holds a **veto** (within 7 days; § 14-14-911); an override requires three-fifths of the total membership (9 of 15; § 14-14-912), at the next regular session, in a single vote. ## Notes Section text was confirmed against the 2024 edition of the Arkansas Code (§§ 14-14-904, 905, 908, 911, 912); the operative thresholds are long-standing under Act 742 of 1977. The wiki has not separately archived the statute text as a Tier-2 record; a follow-on web-archive of the relevant sections from arkleg.state.ar.us is warranted. A secondary compilation — the Association of Arkansas Counties / UA Cooperative Extension *Procedural Guide for Arkansas County Quorum Court Meetings* (MP172) — reproduces these provisions and is a candidate Tier-3 archive.