# Barry Hyde Barry Hyde is the elected County Judge of Pulaski County, serving as the chief executive officer of county government and as the chair of the [[Pulaski County Quorum Court]]. His current term ends 2026-12-31. He was defeated in the 2026-03-03 Democratic primary by [[Wendell Griffen]], the County-Judge-elect who takes office 2027-01-01. Hyde's role as County Judge does not include a Quorum Court vote except to break a tie. ## Role and affiliations - **County Judge, Pulaski County.** Chief executive officer of Pulaski County government; chair of the Pulaski County Quorum Court (votes only to break a tie); ex officio executive over the county's Planning & Development, Road & Bridge, and administrative offices. - **Term:** ends 2026-12-31. - **Successor:** [[Wendell Griffen]], County-Judge-elect, takes office 2027-01-01. - **Party affiliation:** Democratic (per partisan-primary filing in the 2026 cycle; primary lost to Griffen 2026-03-03). - **November 2026 ballot status:** not on the County Judge ballot — primary loss makes him a lame-duck executive through the end of 2026. ## Contact The County Judge's office is housed at 201 S. Broadway, Little Rock, AR 72203. Direct contact details for the office are routinely available through the Pulaski County official website; the wiki defers to the official directory and does not record County-Judge-office contact info beyond the institutional mailing address pending a dedicated Tier-2 archive of the County Judge's office page. ## Data center positions - **2026-05-26 vote on the twelve-month data-center moratorium ordinance:** As Quorum Court chair, Hyde presided over the 2026-05-26 meeting but did not vote on the underlying ordinance (he votes only to break a tie). Whether his chair-role conduct affected the initially-reported tally — which the Clerk's office corrected on 2026-05-28 to establish that the moratorium did not in fact pass — is not in the Tier-3 record. See [[2026-05 Pulaski County Quorum Court Vote on Data Center Moratorium]]; the #26-341 production (the Clerk's correction statement, the ordinance, and the voting worksheets) confirmed the failure but did **not** include any internal Clerk-office / County-Judge correspondence on the correction (FOIA item 3) — which the drafted follow-up reply requests. - **2026-05-28 executive order — 30-day application pause.** On or about 2026-05-28, after the moratorium was found to have failed, Hyde issued an executive order directing Planning & Development not to accept new site-plan / planning applications for thirty days (carve-outs for mobile-home parks, RV parks, and multi-family developments), citing high-intensity digital infrastructure as *"of great concern to the citizens of Pulaski County"* (Tier-3 KARK / Fox16 / ADG; web-archive pending). Per available reporting the order is an administrative intake pause — not a repeal of any ordinance or of the Quorum Court's 2026-05-26 referral of five measures to the Planning Board; exact scope and expiry await the primary text. See [[2026-05 County Judge Executive Order Pauses Data-Center Planning Applications]]. ## Appearances in the corpus - [[2026-05 Pulaski County Quorum Court Vote on Data Center Moratorium]] — presiding officer at the 2026-05-26 meeting. - [[2026-05 County Judge Executive Order Pauses Data-Center Planning Applications]] — issuing County Judge. - [[2026-05 Pulaski County Quorum Court Refers Five Data-Center Measures to Planning Board]] — presided over the meeting that adopted the 11-3 referral. - [[Pulaski County Government]] — chief executive of the affiliation org. - [[Pulaski County Quorum Court]] — chair of the Quorum Court ex officio. ## Notes - Hyde's lame-duck status through 2026-12-31 is procedurally relevant for any data-center-related ordinance, PILOT, or Act 9 bond decision considered by the Quorum Court before year-end. The County Judge's veto power, agenda-prioritization authority, and influence over Planning & Development staff continue through the end of his term notwithstanding the primary loss. - As County Judge, Hyde is the chief executive of county government and the ex-officio chair of the Quorum Court; the office is distinct from the fifteen elected Justice-of-the-Peace seats.