Thursday, September 2, 2010
Arkansas Politics Nelson sues over Game and Fish
Posted by Max Brantley on Thu, Sep 2, 2010 at 11:34 AM
Here's a copy of a lawsuit by Sheffield Nelson over the governance scheme at the state Game and Fish Commission. The Democrat-Gazette wrote at some length about it recently.
It's simple, really. The Commission has established a committee system for rules changes — much like the legislature or county governing bodies. The net effect is that three members of key committees effectively set policy for the whole eight-member commission.
Nelson, a former member and chairman of the Commission, has been an outspoken critic of the practice and has named Craig Campbell, Emon Mahony and Rick Watkins as effective Game and Fish czars.
A side note: It's been interesting to me that reporting on this issue has delved hardly at all into the fact that it is the latest iteration of one of the most momentous political feuds in Arkansas history. Sheffield Nelson was a protege of financial baron Witt Stephens, but they split over Nelson's running of Arkansas Louisiana Gas Company. The split has been evident in all manner of political controversies, notably the Sheffield Nelson-Tommy Robinson race for the gubernatorial nomination in 1990. Campbell is Witt Stephens' son-in-law. Emon Mahony, it happens, once ran a gas company owned by the Stephens family. What goes around keeps coming around.
Don Eilbott is representing Nelson. Does a committee system so limit the power of some commissioners that it is unconstitutional? Interesting theory.
Speaking of...
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Gas tax group alleges poll intimidation UPDATE
May 23, 2012Sheffield Nelson, who's leading a grassroots campaign to increase the severance tax on natural gas, said petition canvassers at primary polls yesterday were intimidated by representatives of the industry-funded group fighting the tax increase. /more/
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Nelson on right side of gas tax debate
April 11, 2012Sheffield Nelson is an odd person to be waging a one-man crusade against the business and political establishment to raise taxes on the Texas and Oklahoma gas producers who have been drilling in the Arkansas shale. /more/
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Sheffield Nelson, unlikely severance tax champion
April 10, 2012Times columnist Ernest Dumas, who draws on nearly a half-century of coverage of Arkansas politics, including the essential role gas exploration and taxation have played in politics, examines today former gas executive Sheffield Nelson's somewhat role as a severance tax champion and his past leadership of the very business orgtanizations fighting him today. /more/
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Sheffield Nelson schools Beebe on severance tax
April 6, 2012I never really expected Gov. Mike Beebe, who cut his teeth golfing with the lobby in the Senate, to be a supporter of the Sheffield Nelson-backed initiative to raise the pitifully low severance tax on natural gas. /more/
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Stands accused
March 21, 2012Is the Arkansas State Chamber of Commerce "un-American," as Sheffield Nelson suggests? It's a close call; reasonable men might disagree. That the Chamber is unconscionable, on the other hand, was verified long ago. /more/
- More »
Comments (3)
Showing 1-3 of 3
Even the Hatfields & McCoys formally ended their feud after only 13 years. Are the Stephens' and Nelson more stubborn than those?
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wondered when someone in media would recall the Nelson-Stephens feud. Thanks Max. Sheffield's just upset that the Commission is overturning the policies that he pushed through. Arkansas now has a very good group of knowledgeable commissioners.
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