Arkansas Blog

The Arkansas Supreme Court has upheld Circuit Judge Tim Fox's finding that the Little Rock School Board had not misspent taxpayer money in buying out the contract of former Superintendent Roy Brooks.

Here's the opinion. In short, the court has issued a clear and unanimous statement that severance pay for a school official is a constitutional expenditure of school funds. The Constitution prohibits expenditure of school funds for any but school purposes. This opinion will protect other districts  from similar illegal exaction lawsuits.

(Loose thought: The court's frequent repetition of the Constitution's clarity about restricting expenditure of school money to school purposes got me thinking again about tax increment financing. A previous court ruling crippled developers' desires to expropriate school money for shopping centers, hotels, etc. in tax increment finance districts, but a few TIF projects linger on where developers are reaping a few school mills above the state-required base rate. I still ask: How can this be constitutional?)