Why Is State Rep. Jane English Allowed To Vote? (UPDATED)

I’ve written previously about State Representative Jane English’s unethically move out of her House District just so she could run for the State Senate.

She lived in a perfectly fine Senate district, but instead decided to go seat-shopping and moved into the open seat currently held by term-limited Senator Mary Ann Salmon. English abandoned the people who elected her to office.

With today’s opening of the fiscal session a legitimate question arises: Why is Rep. Jane English allowed to vote on any legislation?

What if English’s vote is the deciding vote in a committee meeting or on the House floor? That doesn’t pass the smell test if an issue is decided by someone who doesn’t represent the people who elected them.

Should Jane English be allowed to vote for one of the candidates for Speaker of the House? I don’t believe so.

The House should vote on whether or not Jane English should be allowed to remain in the House.

The House voted on a similar issue in 2011 when then-State Rep. Fred Smith was accused of not living in his district — a charge he denied — and the House ultimately voted to seat him. The difference here is that English admits that she doesn’t live in the district.

If they do not take a vote on this matter, the House leadership sends a clear signal that is perfectly fine to move out of a district once elected. Can one reasonably argue that it’s ethical for a House member to get elected to office from a district and then move out of the district when it suits them politically?

In the end, Jane English is the type of politician who gladly breaks rules, or searches for legal loopholes, to further their own political ambition. You can’t trust a politician like Jane English because her word is mud.

UPDATE: My Republican colleague Jason Tolbert has what he likely believes is a potential bombshell on Speaker of the House Robert Moore’s primary residency in his latest post.  Click here to read his post.

My take on his story: Meh, looks like a simple oversight and not much to it.

Looking at the official form Tolbert put on his post, it appears Moore has owned this home for almost 22 years and may have applied for the homestead exemption long before he was in the State Legislature.  Moreover, when Tolbert spoke with Moore, the Speaker said he hadn’t even thought about the homestead exemption until Tolbert brought it up. Moore said he’d fix the paperwork.

Moore says his primary residence is in Arkansas City, which is completely different from Jane English who admits her primary residence is no longer in the district.

One of Tolbert’s weak arguments for defending English’s move out of her district is that, in his opinion, the Arkansas Board of Apportionment drew a map that kept English out of term-limited Mary Ann Salmon’s Senate district. Tolbert offers no proof for this assertion, just that the Board’s majority is held by Democratic elected officials. On top of that, English could have run in the Senate district she lived in, she just didn’t want to challenge incumbent Eddie Joe Williams.  Note that Representative Fred Allen is challenging Senator Joyce Elliott in the Democratic primary and didn’t go seat-shopping like English did.

Tolbert’s basic defense of Jane English’s abandoning her district is this: whenever you don’t like what a legal entity does, such as the Board of Apportionment, it’s perfectly fine to ignore the rules and just do what you want.

The ethically challenged English is not to be trusted since she can’t keep to the most basic concept – live in the district you were elected to.

It’s disappointing that some Republicans are trying to defend a legislator who moved out of her district and they’ve twisted themselves into pretzels with complicated and unconvincing logic.

In the end, it likely won’t matter much since the last person to pull this trick, Republican State Rep. Jim Magnus, went on to lose in his State Senate bid.  Looks like English is right on track to repeat history.