Court rejects ballot-issue backer

Won’t force action from attorney general, justices rule

The Little Rock attorney seeking to get a proposed ethics amendment on the November ballot Thursday lost his effort to get the Arkansas Supreme Court to force the state's attorney general to approve his ballot title or substitute it with her language.

By court order, the Supreme Court denied David Couch's petition to compel Arkansas Attorney General Leslie Rutledge to OK the name and title on his ballot proposal so that he could go forward with gathering 84,859 valid signatures before they must be submitted to the secretary of state's office by July 8.

One justice, Paul Danielson, would have granted Couch's petition.

Couch filed his complaint against Rutledge with the high court May 13 after Rutledge denied his proposal for a third time.

Couch argued that his proposal, which among other things would have reduced the allowed amount of individual campaign contributions as well as prohibited corporations from contributing to political action committees, suffered by Rutledge's repeated rejections.

He claimed that Rutledge was not following the law and should have substituted language for what she didn't like in his proposal. He said this was often done by previous attorneys general. He also said Rutledge's office took too long to rule -- 10 business days rather than 10 calendar days -- on his proposals.

Rutledge's office argued that Couch's proposal was misleading and that, although she can substitute language, she is not required to.

State attorneys also argued that "business days" do not break state law as evidenced by decades of using "business days" instead of calendar days when responding to ballot proposals.

Rutledge spokesman Judd Deere issued a statement Thursday that said Couch's complaint failed because he offered misleading ballot titles. Her responses were timely, Deere wrote.

Couch said the court's ruling cedes too much power to Rutledge.

Metro on 05/21/2016

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