# Hugh McDonald Hugh McDonald ([email protected]) is the state official [[Melody Neil]] addressed as "Secretary McDonald" in AVAIO's 2026-03-03 "Tier IV equivalent generators" request. He replied within five hours — "I can't opine but would be happy to engage Secretary Khoury" — and forwarded the request to E&E Secretary [[Shane Khoury]] the next afternoon: "Don't know if you are aware of this - happy to connect you or your designee at your request." ## Role and affiliations Addressed as "Secretary McDonald" with an arkansas.gov address; the corpus record itself does not state his department. (Publicly reported as Arkansas Secretary of Commerce; that identification — and his widely reported earlier career at Entergy Arkansas — needs a Tier-2/3 archive before the wiki states it as fact.) > [!web-research-unresolved] Archive a Tier-2 source (governor's appointment release or commerce.arkansas.gov bio) for McDonald's title, and a Tier-3 source for his pre-Commerce career (reported: president/CEO of Entergy Arkansas). The Entergy history matters: AVAIO routed a question about an *Entergy ESA carve-out* through him. ## Appearances in the corpus - [[AVAIO Tier 4 Equivalent Email to the Commerce Secretary]] — recipient and forwarder of the AVAIO request (260305-email.pdf, pp. 1–2). ## Notes The chain he initiated reached the DEQ air-quality deputy director within 48 hours of AVAIO's email.