# Pulaski County Government The county government of Pulaski County, Arkansas (Little Rock) — including the County Judge's Office, the Quorum Court, the County Clerk, the County Attorney's Office, the Planning & Development Department, and the Road and Bridge Department. Distinct from the separately elected [[Pulaski County Assessor's Office]]. ## People **County Executive (County Judge):** - [[Barry Hyde]] — County Judge, Pulaski County; lame-duck through 2026-12-31 (lost the 2026-03-03 Democratic primary to [[Wendell Griffen]]); chair of the [[Pulaski County Quorum Court]] ex officio. - [[Wendell Griffen]] — County Judge-elect; takes office 2027-01-01 as chief executive of county government and ex-officio chair of the Quorum Court. **Quorum Court (legislative body — 15 Justices of the Peace serving the 2025-2026 biennial term, full directory at [[Pulaski County Quorum Court Directory]]):** - [[Rebekah L. Davis]] (District 1, Budget Committee). - [[Natalie Capps]] (District 2, Budget Committee). - [[Kathy Lewison]] (District 3, Agenda Committee; current tenure since 2009, prior 2003–2006). - [[Julie Blackwood]] (District 4, Agenda Committee; institutional `@pulaskicounty.net` email). - [[Steven Person]] (District 5, Agenda Committee; running for Arkansas state House District 77). - [[Donna Massey]] (District 6, **Budget Committee Chair**; longest current tenure, since 1999). - [[Dianne Curry]] (District 7, Agenda Committee). - [[Curtis A. Keith]] (District 8, **Agenda Committee Chair** + Budget Committee). - [[Tina Ward]] (District 9, Agenda Committee; district includes the Project Boar site at the Little Rock Port). - [[Patricia Young-Baker]] (District 10, Agenda Committee). - [[Aaron Robinson]] (District 11, Budget + Agenda Committees). - [[Luke McCoy]] (District 12, **Budget Committee Vice Chair** + Agenda Committee; institutional `@pulaskicounty.net` email). - [[Phil Stowers]] (District 13, **Agenda Committee Vice Chair** + Budget Committee; sponsored the AVAIO-grandfathering amendment at the 2026-05-26 moratorium vote). - [[Paul Elliott]] (District 14, Agenda Committee). - [[Staci Medlock]] (District 15, Budget + Agenda Committees). **Quorum Court administration:** - [[Justin Blagg]] — Director of Quorum Court Services / Parliamentarian; `[email protected]`; 501-340-8310. Administers the agenda and packets and advises on procedural thresholds; his review of the meeting recording produced the corrected moratorium tally. **Circuit and County Clerk's Office:** - [[Terri Hollingsworth]] — Pulaski Circuit and County Clerk; serves as Quorum Court Secretary; records custodian for QC certified meeting minutes, ordinances, and roll-call sheets; issued the 2026-05-28 correction notice on the contested 2026-05-26 data-center moratorium vote and produced the certified records via NextRequest #26-341 on 2026-05-29. - Tiffany Trotter — Community Outreach Director, Clerk's office; issued the 2026-05-28 moratorium vote-correction press release. **County Attorney's Office:** - [[Hamilton Kemp]] — County Attorney; FOIA custodian for county government; gave the consolidated data-center FOIA response; authored the 2026-05-27 memorandum refusing to sign the moratorium ordinance on Arkansas Data Centers Act grounds. - Cedric Simpson — paralegal, County Attorney's Office; transmitted the Project Leo records. **Planning & Development Department:** - [[Van McClendon]] — Director. - [[Jim Cranor]] — Plan Review Coordinator; the county's lead reviewer of Project Leo. **Office of the County Judge:** - LaTresha Woodruff — Director of Communications, Office of County Judge Barry Hyde. ## Roles in this corpus - **Recipient of the Project Leo FOIA request.** Recipient of a 2026-05-22 Arkansas FOIA request for AVAIO / Project Leo PILOT, Quorum Court, bond-financing, zoning, and correspondence records. The county responded that only Planning & Development records were responsive — see [[2026-05 Pulaski County Government FOIA Response]]. - **Producer of the Project Leo planning file.** On 2026-05-22 the county produced its Planning & Development file on the AVAIO data center — 25 documents, the [[county-pulaski/project-leo-2026-05-22/_overview|Project Leo planning file]]. Its only land-use review of the project was an administrative [[Site plan review]] by Planning & Development staff; the county [[2024-12 Pulaski County Conditionally Approves the Project Leo Site Plan|conditionally approved the site plan in December 2024]]. - **Legislative body considering the 2026-05-26 data-center moratorium.** The [[Pulaski County Quorum Court]] considered emergency ordinance **26-I-37A** — a twelve-month moratorium on data-center development in unincorporated Pulaski County, sponsored by Justices [[Rebekah L. Davis|Davis]], [[Tina Ward|Ward]], and [[Julie Blackwood|Blackwood]], with a [[Phil Stowers|Stowers]] floor amendment adding a criteria-based grandfather clause. Initially marked as adopted, the ordinance was corrected on 2026-05-28 by Clerk [[Terri Hollingsworth]]'s office, which stated the votes had been miscounted and the emergency ordinance did not reach the 10 votes required. See [[2026-05 Pulaski County Quorum Court Vote on Data Center Moratorium]]. - **Producer of the certified moratorium-vote records (Tier-1).** On 2026-05-29 the Clerk's office produced the certified records behind the moratorium vote via NextRequest #26-341 — the ordinance and amendment text, the Clerk's correction statement, County Attorney [[Hamilton Kemp]]'s memo refusing to sign, the agenda packet, the organizational ordinance, and the voting worksheets — see [[2026-05 Pulaski County Clerk Produces Quorum Court Moratorium Records]] and the production [[county-pulaski/data-center-moratorium-2026-05-29/_overview|Quorum Court moratorium records]]. County Attorney Kemp objected that the moratorium violated the Arkansas Data Centers Act of 2023; the [[Pulaski County Quorum Court]]'s surviving response was an 11-3 referral of data-center measures to the Planning Board (see [[2026-05 Pulaski County Quorum Court Refers Five Data-Center Measures to Planning Board]]). ## Notes The county operates an online FOIA portal at pulaskicountygovernment.nextrequest.com. The absence of county PILOT, Quorum Court, and industrial-development-bond records for AVAIO / Project Leo is explained by the Project Leo planning file: the data-center site is in unincorporated, **un-zoned** county territory, so it required no rezoning, no variance, no Quorum Court vote, and no public hearing — only staff site plan review. As planner [[Jim Cranor]] put it, "with the ordinances currently adopted, Pulaski County would have difficulties stopping uses like data centers" (see [[Pulaski County Planning Correspondence on Project Leo]]). A prior version of this page listed [[Jim Cranor]] as "Director, Planning & Development." The contemporaneous 2024–2026 records show [[Van McClendon]] as Director and Cranor as Plan Review Coordinator; corrected accordingly.