LITTLE ROCK -- The Arkansas Senate Ethics Committee on Monday recommended the full Senate strip Sens. Alan Clark, R-Lonsdale, and Mark Johnson, R-Ferndale, of committee chairman and vice chairman posts and make them ineligible for per diem and mileage payments for the rest of this year.
Clark is the Senate Judiciary Committee chairman, while Johnson is vice chairman of the Joint Energy Committee, the Joint Budget Committee Claims Subcommittee and the Legislative Council -- Charitable, Penal and Correctional Institutions Subcommittee
The Senate Ethics Committee also recommended that the full Senate issue both senators a letter of reprimand, not have the Senate president pro tempore consider them for appointment to serve on the Boys State, Girls State or Senate Ethics Committee in the future, and remove Johnson from the Senate Ethics Committee.
The Senate Ethics Committee found that Clark admitted that he did not attend the Boys State meeting June 3, and that he knowingly sought reimbursement from public funds by requesting another senator sign his name on the sign-in sheet for that meeting.
The committee found Johnson signed the name of another senator on the sign-in sheet at the Boys State meeting June 3, when Johnson knew the senator did not attend the meeting.
The committee voted Monday to approve these findings and recommended penalties after it met in closed executive sessions for more than four hours Monday, more than five hours Wednesday and more than seven hours Thursday to consider evidence on ethics complaints filed by Senate President Pro Tempore Jimmy Hickey, R-Texarkana, and deliberate about its recommendations.
Johnson, who has served in the Senate since 2019, said he signed in Clark for attending the June 3 Boys State meeting after he got a text from Clark stating that Clark was ill and asking Johnson to sign him in. He said he erroneously assumed that Clark already had been at the Boys State meeting and he thought he was "doing a courtesy for a colleague that was feeling ill."
He said the ethics committee's recommended penalties are "over the top" for a matter that was a correctable error that could have been dealt with short of filing an ethics complaint.
Clark, who has served in the Senate since 2013, could not be immediately reached for comment by telephone on Monday afternoon.