Last week, the other shoe dropped.
When last we touched upon Arkansas state legislator Micah Neal, he had pled guilty to steering hundreds of thousands of state tax dollars to a small private college in exchange for big, fat bribes.
He also implicated the state’s No. 1 term limits opponent, former State Senator Jon Woods, as chief hoodlum in the criminal scheme. Woods is best known for his dishonestly worded 2014 amendment responsible for hoodwinking voters into weakening term limits.*
And it is upon Woods that the shoe fell.
The fingered wheeling-and-dealing Woods, pursued by both the FBI and an angry electorate, chose not to run for re-election in 2016. Now he’s finally been indicted on 13 felony counts of fraud and bribery. Woods helped secure $600,000 in state funds to Ecclesia College, allegedly for tens of thousands in kickbacks.
“I do know this confirms what I’ve always suspected about Jon Woods,” wrote Max Brantley in the Arkansas Times. “He never had a job. He bragged about the good life he lived off state pay, per diem, travel and the hog slopping legislators enjoy. I should mention, too, that he was the architect of the so-called ethics amendment that provided a path to 1) longer terms in office; 2) higher pay; 3) an end-around an end to wining and dining restrictions despite the appearance that’s what voters had done.”
Former Sen. Woods does deserve a longer term … in jail.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
* State term limits activists are currently gathering the more than 100,000 signatures they need on petitions to place their original, stricter term limits on the 2018 ballot and allow Arkansans an honest vote.
