# Pulaski County Quorum Court The Pulaski County Quorum Court is the legislative body of Pulaski County, Arkansas. Per its own official description, it *"serves as the legislative body and is the voice for more than 380,000 Pulaski County residents"* (primary public record, [Pulaski County official Quorum Court directory](../../web%20archive/2026-05-28/pulaskicounty.net/quorum-court.md)). Its 15 members are elected from single-member districts to two-year terms; the current term runs from **2025-01-01 through 2026-12-31**. Each member carries the title "Justice of the Peace" — a historical designation drawn from Arkansas's nineteenth-century county-court structure, not a judicial title in any operative modern sense. ## Composition and term - **15 single-member districts**, numbered 1 through 15, covering all of Pulaski County (incorporated and unincorporated). - **Two-year terms**, beginning on January 1 of odd-numbered years. The current term is 2025-01-01 through 2026-12-31. The next general election for all 15 seats is November 2026; the next term (2027-01-01 through 2028-12-31) begins with the new Quorum Court class sworn in on 2027-01-01. - **Redistricting** occurs after each decennial federal census. The current district map dates from the 2020-cycle redistricting. The current 15 Justices of the Peace are documented at [[Pulaski County Quorum Court Directory]]. The official directory carries name, district, email, phone, service-start year, and committee assignments for each; neighborhood-level geographic descriptions, party affiliations, and photos are not published on the official source (primary public record, [Pulaski County official Quorum Court directory](../../web%20archive/2026-05-28/pulaskicounty.net/quorum-court.md)). ## Relationship to the County Judge The **County Judge** is the chief executive officer of Pulaski County and chairs the Quorum Court; the County Judge does not hold a JP seat and votes on QC ordinances only to break a tie. The current County Judge is [[Barry Hyde]], whose term ends 2026-12-31; the County-Judge-elect is [[Wendell Griffen]], who defeated Hyde in the 2026-03-03 Democratic primary and takes office 2027-01-01. See also [[Pulaski County Government]]. ## Powers Under Ark. Code § 14-14-901 *et seq.* and Pulaski County's adopted ordinances, the Quorum Court: - Adopts and amends county ordinances and resolutions. - Levies county taxes within the limits the state legislature authorizes. - Appropriates funds from the county treasury. - Approves payments in lieu of taxes (PILOTs) negotiated by the County Judge or the County Economic Development entity. - Approves Act 9 (1960) industrial revenue bonds and Act 4 (1969) ad valorem-exempt manufacturing-facility bonds. - Adopts county zoning where county zoning has been enacted. **Pulaski County has not enacted zoning in unincorporated areas** — the load-bearing fact for the regulatory posture of the AVAIO Project Leo site, which sits in unincorporated Pulaski County and consequently bypassed both the Quorum Court and the Planning Commission for its site-plan approval. ## Distinction from the Planning Commission The Pulaski County **Planning Commission** is an *appointed* body that advises the County Judge and the Quorum Court on land-use matters (subdivisions, site plans within zoned areas, conditional-use determinations). The **Quorum Court** is *elected* and is the *legislative* body. The two bodies do not share members and do not share authority: Planning is advisory; Quorum Court adopts ordinances. See [[Site plan review]] for how Pulaski County's land-use review process operates and why an administrative staff-level site-plan approval — as in the AVAIO Project Leo case — can occur without either body voting. ## Why Project Leo bypassed the Quorum Court The AVAIO Project Leo site occupies unincorporated land in Pulaski County where county zoning has not been enacted. The 2024-09 site-plan submission was reviewed administratively by Pulaski County Planning & Development staff under the county's site-plan review procedure (see [[Site plan review]]). Because the site required no rezoning, no variance, no PILOT through the Quorum Court, and no Act 9 industrial revenue bond, the project never reached the Quorum Court for a vote. The 2024-12-19 staff approval was administrative; no JP voted on Project Leo. See [[2024-12 Pulaski County Conditionally Approves the Project Leo Site Plan]]. The Quorum Court's first substantive data-center action came on 2026-05-26, when it considered a proposed twelve-month moratorium on new data-center site-plan approvals in unincorporated Pulaski County. That action is recorded at [[2026-05 Pulaski County Quorum Court Vote on Data Center Moratorium]] and is *after-the-fact* with respect to AVAIO. See that event page for the moratorium's contested status — the County Clerk's office issued a correction on 2026-05-28 announcing that the initially reported tally had miscounted the votes and that the moratorium did not in fact pass. ## How it appears in the corpus - **The 2026-05-26 vote on a one-year data-center moratorium** is the Quorum Court's first substantive corpus appearance. See [[2026-05 Pulaski County Quorum Court Vote on Data Center Moratorium]]. - **Pulaski County's 2026-05-22 FOIA response** confirmed that no Quorum Court ordinances, no PILOTs, and no industrial-revenue-bond records exist concerning AVAIO Project Leo through that date. See [[2026-05 Pulaski County Government FOIA Response]]. - **The directory of 15 sitting JPs and their committee assignments** lives at [[Pulaski County Quorum Court Directory]] and the 15 individual person pages. ## Stakeholders - The 15 Justices of the Peace (see [[Pulaski County Quorum Court Directory]]). - The County Judge ([[Barry Hyde]] through 2026-12-31; [[Wendell Griffen]] from 2027-01-01) — chairs the QC. - The Quorum Court Administrator (Justin Blagg) — operational records custodian. - The Pulaski Circuit and County Clerk ([[Terri Hollingsworth]]) — custodian of certified meeting minutes, ordinances, and roll-call sheets; FOIA channel for QC records. - Pulaski County Planning & Development (Director [[Van McClendon]]; Plan Review Coordinator [[Jim Cranor]]) — staffs site-plan review. ## Timeline - **2024-09-30:** AVAIO files Project Leo site plan administratively (no Quorum Court role). - **2024-12-19:** Pulaski County Planning staff conditionally approves the Project Leo site plan (administrative; no JP vote). - **2025-12:** Project Leo construction begins. - **2026-05-22:** Pulaski County FOIA response confirms no QC records on AVAIO Project Leo through that date ([[2026-05 Pulaski County Government FOIA Response]]). - **2026-05-26:** Quorum Court considers a proposed twelve-month data-center moratorium ordinance; the initial tally is reported by Arkansas Times the next day as a passage with an AVAIO carve-out. - **2026-05-28:** County Clerk's office corrects the count; moratorium did not actually pass. See [[2026-05 Pulaski County Quorum Court Vote on Data Center Moratorium]]. ## Maintenance Notes - The 15-JP directory is re-verified against the Tier-2 source [pulaskicounty.net/quorum-court](../../web%20archive/2026-05-28/pulaskicounty.net/quorum-court.md) on a **90-day cadence** beginning 2026-05-28. - Trigger-based re-verification: any JP resignation, special election, redistricting, or term turnover. - **Full roster rebuild required at 2027-01-01** when the 2027-2028 biennial term begins. Steven Person (D5) has filed for state House District 77; if he wins the November 2026 election his JP seat will turn over either at the end of the 2025-2026 term or earlier if he resigns. - The archive layer is append-only per archive date; old archives at `web archive/<YYYY-MM-DD>/pulaskicounty.net/quorum-court.*` are not edited. Each refresh creates a new archive entry. ## Notes - The "Justice of the Peace" title is historical, not judicial. JPs in Arkansas are county legislators, not judges. The wiki uses the title because it is the official designation. - The official directory page does not publish neighborhood-level geographic descriptions of each district. Uncorroborated neighborhood-level descriptions per district (Chenal, Heights, SWLR, etc.) have circulated; those descriptions are not Tier-2 evidence and must be sourced separately (county redistricting map, Pulaski County GIS) before any wiki page asserts a district-to-neighborhood mapping.