# Pulaski County Clerk — Data-Center Moratorium Vote Records (production overview) Nine documents produced by the **Pulaski Circuit and County Clerk's office** (NextRequest portal request **#26-341**) on 2026-05-29 — the certified and supporting records behind the contested 2026-05-26 Quorum Court vote on a twelve-month moratorium on data-center development in unincorporated Pulaski County. This production is the **Tier-1 documentary payoff** for the [[2026-05 Pulaski County Quorum Court Vote on Data Center Moratorium|moratorium-vote event]], which until now rested only on Tier-3 *Arkansas Times* reporting and its editor's-note correction. ## Provenance Produced through the **Pulaski County Government NextRequest portal** (`pulaskicountygovernment.nextrequest.com/requests/26-341`) in response to the Arkansas FOIA [[Joshua Dunlap]] submitted 2026-05-28 to Clerk [[Terri Hollingsworth]] for the certified minutes, roll-call sheet, and Clerk-correction memorandum on the data-center moratorium ordinance (drafted request: `_phase0_workdir/foia_clerk_hollingsworth_2026-05-28.md`). Documents were released across three portal messages on 2026-05-29 between 14:25 and 14:36 UTC; the request was published and closed at 14:37 UTC ([correspondence thread](https://mail.google.com/mail/u/0/#all/19e741ff9f927446)). The nine files are stored, unmodified, in `raw/county-pulaski/data-center-moratorium-2026-05-29/`. The release also pointed to two external public records (the meeting agenda PDF and the meeting video) archived separately under `web archive/2026-05-29/`. The four `.docx` files extracted directly; all five PDFs are image-only scans recovered via `ocr_pdf_fitz.py` at 300 DPI. ## What's inside The nine produced files plus two referenced external records are organized into the following source pages: - [[Data Center Moratorium Ordinance 26-I-37A and the Grandfather Amendment]] — the moratorium ordinance text and the [[Phil Stowers|Stowers]] floor amendment that added the grandfather clause (`26-I-37 Moratorium.docx`, `Amendment 1- 26-I-37-Grandfather Clause-moratorium.docx`). - [[Pulaski County Clerk Statement on the Corrected Moratorium Vote]] — the Clerk's office press release establishing the vote was miscounted and the ordinance did not pass (`05.28.26 Pulaski County Circuit and County Clerk-Statement Quorum Court.docx`). - [[County Attorney Memo and AG Opinion 2023-060 on the Moratorium]] — County Attorney [[Hamilton Kemp]]'s 2026-05-27 memorandum to file and the attached Arkansas AG Opinion No. 2023-060 (`0307_001.pdf`, `0308_001.pdf`). - [[Certified Quorum Court Voting Worksheets 2026-05-26]] — the Clerk's per-item handwritten voting tally sheets for the 2026-05-26 meeting (`0305_001.pdf`). - [[May 2026 Quorum Court Agenda Packet]] — the meeting packet, including Director/Parliamentarian [[Justin Blagg]]'s late-item memo, the agenda, the base ordinance texts, and the April 28 minutes (`May FQC packet.pdf`, `0306_001.pdf`). - [[Quorum Court Organizational Ordinance 25-I-01]] — the 2025-2026 Quorum Court rules of procedure, including the two-thirds emergency-ordinance threshold the vote turned on (`25-I-01.docx`). ## The central finding: two county records disagree on whether the moratorium passed The production surfaces a **direct contradiction between two Tier-1 county records** on the central factual question: - **County Attorney [[Hamilton Kemp]]'s memorandum (2026-05-27)** states the Quorum Court *"adopted the above referenced ordinance [26-I-37A] by vote at its regular meeting on May 26, 2026"* — over his counsel that it violated state law — and that the ordinance therefore *"does not bear my signature"* ([[County Attorney Memo and AG Opinion 2023-060 on the Moratorium]], `0307_001.pdf`). - **Clerk [[Terri Hollingsworth]]'s statement (2026-05-28)** states that *"the amended Ordinance 26-I-37 ... was marked as adopted when it should not have passed. 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]], `05.28.26 ...docx`). The Clerk's 2026-05-28 correction is later-in-time and is the operative record: the moratorium **did not pass**. The Kemp memo, written the day before the correction, reflects the same miscount the Clerk later disavowed. This contradiction is tracked at [[T004 - Did the Pulaski County Data-Center Moratorium Pass]] and flagged inline on [[2026-05 Pulaski County Quorum Court Vote on Data Center Moratorium]]. ## The ordinance and the grandfather amendment The moratorium ordinance (Item **26-I-37**, an **emergency ordinance** sponsored by Justices [[Rebekah L. Davis|Davis]] and [[Tina Ward|Ward]]) would impose a **twelve-month** moratorium on the acceptance, processing, review, and approval of any zoning application, site plan, building permit, special-use permit, or variance for new or expanded data centers in unincorporated Pulaski County, during which the Planning Department and Planning Board would study impacts and draft permanent zoning ([[Data Center Moratorium Ordinance 26-I-37A and the Grandfather Amendment]], `26-I-37 Moratorium.docx`). The base text carried no grandfather clause. [[Phil Stowers|Justice Stowers]]'s floor **Amendment 1** added **Article 8 (Grandfathering)**: the moratorium would not apply to projects that (1) executed binding utility interconnection agreements, (2) received final County approvals, or (3) submitted complete interconnection applications and received preliminary utility study acceptance before the effective date (`Amendment 1- 26-I-37-Grandfather Clause-moratorium.docx`). The amendment is **criteria-based and names no project**; because [[AVAIO Digital Partners|AVAIO Project Leo]] received final administrative County site-plan approval in December 2024, it would fall within prong (2) — which is why the amendment was publicly characterized as an AVAIO carve-out. The consolidated amended version is **"26-I-37A"** (sponsors Davis, Ward, [[Julie Blackwood|Blackwood]]). ## The County Attorney's legal objection (now Tier-1) [[Hamilton Kemp]]'s memo grounds a substantive objection that survives the procedural miscount: in his view the moratorium *"impermissibly suspends authority granted by Arkansas law to permit construction of data centers in Pulaski County,"* citing the [[Arkansas Data Centers Act of 2023 (Act 851) and 2024 Amendments|Arkansas Data Centers Act of 2023]] (Ark. Code § 14-1-601 et seq.) and its amendments (Ark. Code § 23-119-101 et seq.), consistent with **Arkansas AG Opinion No. 2023-060** (attached to his memo as `0308_001.pdf`). This upgrades the [[AG Opinion 2023-060 and County Authority Over Data Centers]] concept from a Tier-3 paraphrase to a Tier-1 anchor and supplies the statutory hooks behind the County Attorney's "the county could be sued" warning. ## People and orgs - [[Terri Hollingsworth]] — Pulaski Circuit and County Clerk; Quorum Court Secretary; author of the correction statement. - [[Hamilton Kemp]] — Pulaski County Attorney; authored the 2026-05-27 memorandum refusing to sign the ordinance. *(new person page)* - [[Justin Blagg]] — Director of Quorum Court Services / Parliamentarian; transmitted the packet and the late-item memo. *(new person page)* - [[Rebekah L. Davis]], [[Tina Ward]] — sponsors of the base moratorium ordinance; [[Julie Blackwood]] — third sponsor on the amended 26-I-37A; [[Phil Stowers]] — sponsor of the grandfather amendment. - [[Barry Hyde]] — County Judge and Quorum Court presiding officer. - [[Pulaski County Government]], [[Pulaski County Quorum Court]], [[AVAIO Digital Partners]]. ## Concepts - [[Arkansas Quorum Court Ordinance Procedure]] — the two-thirds-of-membership (10-of-15) emergency-ordinance threshold, anchored Tier-1 by [[Quorum Court Organizational Ordinance 25-I-01]]. - [[AG Opinion 2023-060 and County Authority Over Data Centers]] — the ban-vs-regulate analysis, now Tier-1 via the produced opinion text and Kemp's application of it. ## Events - [[2026-05 Pulaski County Quorum Court Vote on Data Center Moratorium]] — the underlying governmental action, now Tier-1 anchored by this production. - [[2026-05 Pulaski County Clerk Produces Quorum Court Moratorium Records]] — the FOIA delivery event for this production. ## Cross-references - This production is the Tier-1 anchor the moratorium-vote event page anticipated; it confirms the moratorium failed and supplies the ordinance, amendment, and County Attorney records, but **does not establish a clean per-JP corrected roll-call** (see Open questions). - It connects the [[2026-05 Pulaski County Quorum Court Vote on Data Center Moratorium|moratorium]] to the [[AVAIO Project Leo Site Plan and County Review|AVAIO Project Leo planning file]]: the grandfather amendment's "final County approvals" prong maps onto the December 2024 administrative site-plan approval documented there. ## Open questions / follow-ups - **The corrected per-JP roll-call is not cleanly in the record.** The certified voting worksheets (`0305_001.pdf`) are handwritten and the AYE/NAY marks are not machine-legible; more fundamentally, per the Clerk's own statement these are the sheets that were *"recorded incorrectly."* The authoritative corrected tally (reported in Tier-3 as 9 ayes / 4 nays / 2 present) traces to a review of the roll call **and the meeting recording** — i.e., the Swagit meeting video (archived link, `web archive/2026-05-29/`). Individual JP positions on the moratorium and the Stowers amendment therefore remain not definitively established by this production. - **Internal correction notes / worksheets (FOIA item 3).** Whether the Clerk's office withheld any internal calculation worksheets or communications that surfaced the miscount — and if so under what exemption — is not stated; no § 25-19-105(f)(3) log accompanied the production. - **Re-vote / reintroduction.** Whether and when 26-I-37 is reintroduced (or cured) is not addressed in the produced records.