It dates me a little sure, but it also reminds me to keep transmuting transparency, holding the line even when, and especially when, the political machine of corruption glares back.

I published this editorial 21 years ago in The Courier as its editor-in-chief. I filed a FOIA lawsuit against then-Mayor Raye Turner over an illegal meeting of the Police Pension Board.

I’ve been doing this for most of my adult life. It is wihtin my nature to scribe light. At 19 years old, I covered the Westside Middle School shooting in Jonesboro for AP wire and Reuters. Just two years later, I was the sports editor at The Leader in Jacksonville and I was publisher in Paragould by 30.

Today, I publish Tracking Arkansas, still with an allegiance to open records policy, transparency and accountability because just like the editorial simply reads: “Public business should be conducted in the public.” We the people deserve it so.

I have resided in silence about what it means to watch an organization choose power over people, again and again and again.

I am done residing.

Tracking Arkansas

Judge Dismisses Murder Case Against Aaron Spencer, GOP Nominee for Lonoke County Sheriff

LONOKE COUNTY, Ark. — A circuit judge on Thursday dismissed the second-degree murder case against Aaron Spencer, the Republican nominee for Lonoke County sheriff, ruling that law enforcement’s mishan…

Read more

3 months ago · Tracking Arkansas and Scott Perkins

Today, a judge did what no prosecutor, no sheriff and no association has done in Lonoke County for more than a decade. He looked at the evidence — or rather, at the deliberate absence of it — and called it what it is.

Egregious.

A coverup.

A due process violation so complete that the only remedy was dismissal.

The case against Aaron Spencer is gone. Not because he didn’t kill Michael Fosler; he did. He called 911 and said so. But because the state, the Lonoke County Sheriff’s Office, specifically, made sure that no one would ever see what happened in those final moments.

And that, right there, is the machine I’ve been writing about since March.

The Pattern That Never Changed

Let me take you back to 2013.

Highway 38. My then-wife, Misty, alone in a driveway. Three armed deputies, including Sheriff John Staley. No other witnesses. Body cameras rolling — until they weren’t.

I filed a FOIA request.

The response: “The requested footage has been deleted.”

Not lost. Not corrupted. Not accidentally overwritten. Deleted. Intentional. Specific. Complete.

I took that to Chris Villines, my then-boss and executive director of the Association of Arkansas Counties. I told him this was a massive public trust violation. I told him the AAC had a responsibility to the citizens those counties served.

Chris listened. Chris nodded. Chris considered.

And then Chris said something I have never forgotten:

“Scott, I’m having to go with my sheriff on this one.”

Not “the sheriff of Lonoke County.” Not “Sheriff Staley.” My sheriff. Possessive. Personal. Political.

That sentence is the AAC in miniature. That sentence is the machine revealed. That sentence is the answer to every question about why transparency is impossible, why reform never happens, why citizens are always the last consideration.

The AAC does not serve the public. The AAC serves the elected.

Fast Forward to 2024

Aaron Spencer’s daughter was failed by that same machine. A predator charged with 43 sex offenses — including against her — was released on $50,000 bond. He never even had a first appearance before a judge.

And when Spencer found his daughter in that predator’s truck, when he acted as any father would, when he called 911 for help while deputies failed to locate her — what happened next?

The same thing that happened on Highway 38.

A dash camera, mounted on Fosler’s windshield, was removed by Detective Robbie McCain. Not photographed. Not logged. Not documented. The SD card was pulled out, inserted into a personal computer, viewed — and then, somehow, when the camera reached the Attorney General’s Office 11 months later, the card was gone.

Empty. Just like the Highway 38 footage.

Just like the body camera that wasn’t turned on when Deputy Michael Davis killed Hunter Brittain in 2021.

Just like every other recording that might show the truth about how Lonoke County law enforcement operates when no one else is watching.

The Judge’s Words Matter

The court didn’t just dismiss this case. The judge catalogued every violation of LCSO Policy 16-1 — the collection, identification, preservation and chain-of-custody procedures that Lonoke County deputies are trained to follow but apparently free to ignore.

The judge noted that LCSO typically sends electronics to the AG’s office without manipulating them. That McCain was trained not to remove SD cards. That he did it anyway. That he stored the camera in his personal office cabinet in an untaped envelope. That he didn’t log it for more than a year. That he didn’t mention its existence in any report.

“This establishes a pattern of policy and procedure violations and gives the appearance of a coverup.”

Those are the judge’s words, not mine.

And then this: “The court finds that conduct by law enforcement was so egregious that dismissal of this case is warranted.”

Egregious.

That’s a word judges don’t use lightly. It means extraordinarily bad. Shockingly. It means the conduct was so far outside the bounds of acceptable practice that the only just remedy was to end the case entirely.

The Courtesy That Was Ignored

While all this was happening, I sent an email.

To the AAC. To the Arkansas Sheriffs’ Association. To Scott Bradley, to Mark Whitmore, to Josh Curtis.

Subject: Legislative Proposal — Closing the Legal Rape Loophole.

The draft bill would amend Arkansas Code § 5-14-126 to make it a Class C felony for any law enforcement officer — deputy, constable, auxiliary, township officer — to have sexual contact with someone they have arrested, hold in custody or are investigating.

Thirty-five states have closed this loophole. Arkansas is one of 15 that have not.

The response: silence. No reply. Not even a “thanks, we’ll think about it.”

The machine was too busy protecting its own. Too busy defending sheriffs who preside over jails where inmates are assaulted and then humiliated over the intercom. Too busy running cover for a prosecutor who sat on a county judge’s four-month failure to report credit card theft until the Boone County story broke.

And too busy, apparently, to respond to a courtesy email offering them the chance to lead on something that would actually protect citizens.

What Dismissal Means

Absent an appeal by the AG, Aaron Spencer is now a free man. He’s also the Republican nominee for sheriff, running against the legacy of the man whose department lost the evidence that might have exonerated him.

Think about that. The man who killed Michael Fosler is asking voters to put him in charge of the very office that investigated him. And the incumbent he defeated — the 14-year sheriff, the 57-federal-lawsuit sheriff, the president of the Arkansas Sheriffs’ Association, the man whose jailers assaulted inmates and whose deputy killed an unarmed teenager — is no longer on the ballot.

The voters of Lonoke County already spoke in March. They chose Spencer. They rejected Staley. And now, with the criminal case dismissed, Spencer heads to the November general election as the Republican nominee.

The judge didn’t misunderstand. The judge read the file. The judge heard the testimony. The judge saw the pattern.

And the judge dismissed the case.

The Silence Ends Here

I have replayed Villines’ words at various times over the last dozen years. At first, I heard them as a disappointment. A failure of leadership. A moment where institutional loyalty trumped public trust.

Now I hear them as an indictment.

The AAC goes with its sheriff. The ASA goes with its sheriff. The machine goes with its own, every time, at the expense of everyone else.

But here’s what the machine forgets: judges read. Juries decide. Voters vote.

And sometimes, rarely, a judge looks at the wreckage of a case — at the deleted footage, at the missing SD card, at the policies violated and the procedures ignored — and says “enough.”

That happened today.

The dismissal of Aaron Spencer’s case is not a victory for vigilante justice. It is a condemnation of institutional failure. It is a judicial declaration that due process means nothing if the state can destroy the evidence that would prove innocence or guilt.

And it is a reminder that the silence I resided in for 13 years — the silence of that driveway, of that deleted footage, of that FOIA request answered with “deleted” — does not have to be permanent.

The silence ends here.

Now let’s see who, if anyone, in the machine is willing to answer for it.

Scott Perkins is a co-founder of Tracking Arkansas, a former communications director for the Association of Arkansas Counties, and the author of “My Shadow | The Core Guide,” a personal Substack documenting the machine years. Reach him at sperkins@arnonprofits.com.

EDITOR’S NOTE

This is not the investigation.

This is what the investigation feels like from inside.

This is The Machine Years Mini Series — my personal companion to Tracking Arkansas’s premiere investigation series and our real-time news coverage. The intrinsic evidence. The connective tissue. The silence is finally given voice.

If you’re just joining, here’s what you’ve missed so far:

—

⌇

The door to Room 151 opens the same way it always has. Same hydraulic, slow creak. Same worn threshold. Same smell of old paper and people.

I hadn’t walked through this door as a lobbyist in six years, since Jan. 11, 2017.

⟡

The last time I was in this room, I saw Lindsey and Christy walk in. Lindsey was one of the attorneys on the Association of Arkansas Counties (AAC) policy team and a former law clerk, and Christy was the communications coordinator, a position I created and a staffer I hired and managed until this moment. The handwriting was on the wall: they were there to introduce themselves to the members of House State Agencies as the official representatives of the AAC. I, formerly the communications and legislative director, then just the communications director, was being frozen out in the most passive-aggressive way possible.

I took the high road. I left without introducing myself. Not because I was wrong. Because I was done. Chris Villines, AAC director, had already rewritten my narrative in his head and to everyone else, a version of events that existed only in his map of the world. I found out I wasn’t going to be allowed to work out my notice when my policy team members walked into Room 151. Chris was obviously too afraid to face me and have a conversation, delaying his decision until it ran right up to forcing me to introduce myself, or not, as the AAC contact for the committee members. I ensured there wasn’t a scene, but it would appear to me that someone needed a scene, and didn’t have the guts to instigate it themselves.

◬

He and Saline County Clerk Doug Curtis – the “son swap or die” board member guy, which is a whole other investigation we’ve documented at Tracking Arkansas – had devised their self-serving plan. Take over both: the Saline County Clerk position without opposition, without even a campaign, enter county clerk non-elect Trevor Villines (manifested Nov. 13, 2025, when candidate filing closed. Trevor was the only candidate to file because that was Doug’s half of the swap.) And Josh, without a formal interview or having to compete among other “qualified” applicants, was handed a new position, title and career. That was Chris’ half of the swap.

Josh wasn’t qualified.

I said it then. I’ll say it now. We didn’t need another lobbyist. We needed an attorney. We had just lost JG – my dear friend, hired at AAC in about my third year, former county attorney, a man they all knew.

⌇

I met him when he got hired. He was brilliant. And he was suffering. He didn’t have a ton of legislative experience, especially considering the general assembly’s fairly recent historic flip to a Republican majority for the first time in 138 years. So, like most duos go, we helped each other out. Legislative mapping and strategic communications on my end, and JG reviewed my legal analysis and refined my case law research. It was our “ante in” at the start of our working relationship. Rapport with a new policy team member was critical to AAC’s communications and stakeholder engagement. I worked in step with him and circuit clerks all session on the Arkansas Circuit Clerks Association’s legislative package. We went to lunch most days toward the end of his time here. He and I introduced each other to some local eat spots. Looking back, it appears to me now that he might have been my only true friend in that building until one day, he was gone.

⨀

So when they slotted Josh into JG’s seat – not on merit, not on qualification, not after advertising the position, on what I thought back then was only a political alignment to Asa Hutchinson’s office. Josh was only a politico staffer among the many there, but his spouse, at that time, was Asa’s executive administrative assistant– I asked questions. Openly. Professionally. No recruitment for legal talent? Why didn’t we advertise the position or hire an attorney?

Chris never forgot that.

Chris never forgave that.

And Chris never stopped lying about what didn’t happen. At some defining point of time, only Chris would know, his mourning for JG took a harsh turn toward secretly writing me out and securing the son swap.

⟡

So when I walked back into Room 151 in 2023, I wasn’t just entering a committee hearing.

I was stepping through a portal.

The same room. The same committee chair: Rep. Dwight Tosh, still presiding, still decent, still unknowingly caught in the middle of a grudge that had metastasized for six years. Ironically, I too, was still caught up in the unknown. I didn’t know what storyline Chris told nor did I know that his reason for writing me out was to eventually allow Doug to write Trevor in.

The same committee. The same stakes: open government, transparency, the People’s Law.

But the energy was opposite.

In 2017, I left because Chris had stacked the deck.

I folded that hand and took the high road. I excused myself. I walked out of Room 151 with my integrity intact and my career in ashes.

In 2023, what brought me back to the Capitol was a lobbying contract from Women’s Foundation of Arkansas to oppose SB71. It wasn’t on the agenda that day because it had already passed the Senate before I was retained to oppose it. I was there scouting the committee that SB71 would soon run through. As I tried to get back into the swing of policy analysis, I flagged HB1610 as I read bills the night before, and decided to get eyes on the committee while I lobbied for better policy too.

And Chris?

Chris was already there. Already lying. Already pointing.

He didn’t know it yet, but the portal works both ways.

⨀

The Morning of the Ambush

I arrived early, an old habit. Give yourself time to read the room, feel the energy, remember which doors lead where.

Tosh saw me before I saw him.

“Well, there’s my buddy. Man, I haven’t seen you in so long, Perk. Great to see you. How are you?”

He stepped down from the dais. Hugged me, a real hug – the kind that says I remember you, I liked you, I’m glad you’re back.

We caught up. I told him I’d been fishing. He laughed. I eased back into the audience seating, taking my usual spot –right side, back row, good sightlines to the dais and the door.

For a moment, I felt something I hadn’t felt in Room 151 since 2016: peace.

⌇

Then Rep. Mary Bentley walked past me. She was also a fixture from my AAC days.

I extended my hand. Smiled. Said her name.

She kept walking.

Not a glance. Not a “not now, Scott.” Just... nothing. As if I was a pillar she had to navigate around.

She went straight to Tosh’s ear.

And who did she meet when she got there?

⨀

Chris.

He hadn’t walked in. He materialized – like he’d been hiding behind the doorframe, waiting for me to get comfortable. Same posture. Same refusal to make eye contact.

The three of them huddled. Tosh was still facing me, but Chris and Mary faced him, their backs to me.

I watched Chris point. He didn’t turn around, just hooked a thumb backward over his shoulder.

“He’s right behind me.”

I heard it. The same voice that had spent six years nursing a grudge because I asked whether Josh Curtis was qualified for a job his pact thought he deserved.

◬

Tosh looked past them, saw me, and said – genuinely, without guile:

“Yeah, he’s right there. I just got done talking with him.”

And then – and this is the moment the portal snapped shut and reopened at the same time – Chris and Mary said the exact same thing at the exact same time like timelines merging and collasping:

“He’s here to kill this bill.”

I shook my head. Actually, shook it.

Because I wasn’t.

That was it, though. That was when I took my metaphorical pen back. My voice was mine. I stopped being just a stand in and decided I did have lines in the script of my life. Chris wasn’t the false narrator of my storyline any more.
I witnessed his ways right in front of my eyes. The truth began to emerge at that moment. It still does.

I texted Mary that morning. A cordial text, professional. “Here’s an amendment that fixes your language. Opposition disappears. Clean, clear definition of public meeting.”

She didn’t respond. Fine. People get busy.

But this? This was an ambush dressed as a huddle. The same energy as 2016. The same refusal to see me as a person instead of an obstacle.

⟡

Just before they broke – Mary and Chris still with their backs to me, Tosh caught in the middle – Mary announced to no one in particular, maybe to the ceiling.

“Well, we like a good fight, don’t we?”

She about-faced and walked to her seat on the committee.

That was for me. Every syllable.

She didn’t have the intestinal fortitude to say it to my face. She didn’t have the human decency to shake my hand. She didn’t even have the professional courtesy to acknowledge my text and my offer of an amendment I’d already drafted.

No. Mary showed me exactly who she was that morning. Following Chris’s lead – which we now know was based on a figment of his own imagination about me, about who I am, about how my departure from AAC came to be.

On a personal note: Mary and I know each other. I’ve strategized for her, lobbied next to her. Machined some of her legislation. To snub my handshake like that?

Forget that she’s a C-tier legislator in a state not known for its legal, ethical, or stellar-in-character policymakers. That morning, she took the gold medal for cowardice.

⌇

Lindsey and I casually said hello when the committee recessed. She asked me what I was doing there.

“Opposing your bill, I guess.”

“It’s not my bill or our (AAC) bill,” Lindsey said.

I remember sarcastically thinking, “Then why is Chris in lockstep with Mary and both working the chair if it isn’t an AAC bill?”

I checked the AAC legislative package and bill tracking on the AAC website and didn’t find HB1610 earlier that morning. I didn’t know it was an AAC bill when I texted Bentley at 7 a.m. There is a strange and unique situational landscape that demands calling out right here. I don’t think the county judges knew it was an AAC bill, either. It’d be fun to take a poll of elected county officials by office type to find if any of the member associations knew about HB1610. But I digress. That’s a project for another chapter on another page. The same page where the mystery and the true story of Act 851 of 2023 awaits.

◉

The Portal, Explained

Jan. 11, 2017 – I took the high road. I saw Lindsey and Christy walk into Room 151. I excused myself. I left. Not because I was guilty. Because I was done.

2023 – I walked back into the same room. Same chair. Same Tosh. Same committee. Same Chris – still pointing, still refusing to turn around and face me.

In 2017, I left because I’d been dismissed by the machine.

You can’t write this guano.

But I lived it.

And now I’m telling it.

⨀

What Happened Next

The bill came up in the afternoon iteration of the committee that same day. I watched from home and messaged committee members.

I first texted Mark Hayes, executive director at the Arkansas Municipal League, who confirmed HB1610 was a city and county-supported bill.

Lindsey is the AAC liaison to the justices of the peace.

Right. That doesn’t track. That’s not symmetry. That’s quantum opposition. The same stage. The same players. The opposite outcome.

Mary took shots at the county judges during her explanation of the bill when she presented it to the committee.

“We have an imbalance of power between the county judges and mayors – and those all can visit, but JPs cannot, our city council members cannot … an inefficient and ineffective balance of power that I’m trying to fix,” Bentley said from the end of the table.

◬

She amended the bill to change the definition of a public meeting from a quorum to one-third of the body or more. The second time it went through House State Agencies, Tosh heard Bentley’s motion “do pass” and went straight to discussion, failing to get a second on the motion. He then moved forward on the vote, calling it for the “ayes” on a voice vote and then a roll call was requested. The motion, which was procedurally invalid, passed on the roll call.

Senators poked holes in it and then killed it twice in Senate State Agencies weeks later. The simple fix was to define a public meeting as three or more, Mary. Just like my text to you that morning, where I was being helpful.

The sad part is, had she used my suggested amendment, it would have passed and we wouldn’t be where we are today, with a rogue attorney general weaponizing the vagueness of the public meeting definition to accuse Board of Corrections members of violating FOIA.

⟡

And Chris?

He learned something that morning.

I don’t work for him anymore. I never really did.

The portal closed behind me when I walked out of Room 151 in 2017. When I came back in 2023, I wasn’t the same person.

But Chris was. He still is.

And that’s the difference between a man who grows and a guy who just gets older.

⨀

◉

Act I: The Brownie

She appeared in my doorway.

I don’t remember hearing her footsteps. Pulaski County Treasurer Debra Buckner moved like someone who had learned not to announce herself; a treasurer’s habit, or just the quiet of a woman who didn’t need a door slam to prove she’d arrived. Debra was a mentor of mine since I arrived at AAC. She was always supportive even though she did not pull any punches or sugar coat anything. She was one of the very few Association of Arkansas Counties board members in my work inner circle.

⟡

I was at my keyboard. I stopped typing midword. I turned my head first. Made eye contact before I spoke.

Then I pulled my fingers off the keys. I swiveled my chair ninety degrees, the rest of my body following my eyes, and I smiled.

The smile surprised me. It wasn’t professional courtesy. It wasn’t calculated. It was relief. For six months, my boss, AAC Director Chris Villines had been managing me out of my own life. First it was a demotion that came out of the blue after six years of service. Silent treatment in hallways, non-recognition at meetings. He disenfranchised me in front of stakeholders, behind the scenes, across both sides of the AAC building. He made me a ghost with a payroll entry.

Debra was the kind of person who didn’t have to bring me anything, so when she walked in and smiled back, I felt seen.

Not tolerated, not snubbed. Seen.

◬

She set something on my desk.

A brownie, foil-wrapped. Homemade from her kitchen. Topped with raspberry and cookie crumble, though I wouldn’t know that until later. At that moment, it was just a dessert morsel on a napkin.

“Here you go,” she said, or something close. I don’t remember her exact words. I remember her hands; I remember the napkin. I remember thinking: Someone in this building still knows I exist.

We spoke for a brief moment, maybe two. Nothing about budgets. Nothing about meetings. Nothing about my salary or my future or the thing she was about to walk into. Debra was one of my mentors in the various roles of county governement when I first came to AAC. She was someone who I respected.

Then she said she had to go. She walked out of my office.

And I watched her cross the hall.

⨀

Act II: The Walk Across the Hall

The law library, a.k.a. the county war room, was across from my office. I could see its door from my chair. It was a standard AAC budget committee meeting that day, nothing remarkable, nothing that would have made me look up from my work if Debra hadn’t just left my desk.

She walked toward the library door.

It opened before she reached it.

⌇

Chris was on the other side, holding the door for her. I could see his face. I could hear the low murmur of the small committee already seated inside: other board members, county officials, the quiet shuffle of papers before business.

Chris saw me.

He had to. My office door was open. I was right there, swiveled toward the hallway, the brownie still on my desk, my body still turned from the act of receiving something kind from someone who mattered.

He didn’t wave. Didn’t nod. Didn’t acknowledge me at all. But we made eye contact as he glanced over Debra’s right shoulder.

He just held the door for Debra while looking at me.

She walked through.

And he closed it.

The latch clicked.

◉

I sat there. The brownie sat there. The door sat there — closed, ordinary, just a door.

I didn’t know what was happening inside that room, and what it meant for my future. That the vote in there, orchastrated by Chris, would be the last push out the door for me.

I didn’t know if Debra knew what was on the agenda before she gave me the brownie.

I didn’t know anything.

And that’s the part I need you to understand:

There was no way for me to know. Not then. Not that day. Not for eight years.

⟡

The door closed. The meeting happened. I went back to my keyboard drafting a press release. The brownie sat there until I ate it. I really don’t remember that part. I remember the door.

⨀

Act III: The Letter and the Message

Dec. 16, 2016.

The next day.

⌇

Chris called me in. Or handed me something in the hallway. Or sat me down in his office. The details have blurred with time, but the document’s content are seared.

A letter.

A salary reduction, effective immediately because of my reduction in duties and change in title. Board action cited, a budget committee vote at the previous day’s meeting referenced. The meeting across the hall. The one with the door Chris held open for Debra.

◬

I don’t remember the conversation we might have had when Chris gave me the letter. I do remember trying to understand why the sudden demotion, the change in duties, and now the salary reduction.

All I could come back to was a write-up a couple of months before for a county clerks meeting that you’ll recall was the sole piece of paper in my file for supposedly not attending a county clerk meeting.

“You are watched closley because of your important position,” the write-up said.

I’m watched closely? That’s a laugh.

I remember thinking: “I haven’t been seen or included for months.”

I didn’t blow a gasket.

There’s an iteration of me — the school-yard version or the less-healed inner child iteration of myself, the one who regulates with anger and cutting words — that would have flipped that desk and created a scene for the ages. That version exists. He’s not hypothetical. He’s just not the one who survived.

The one who survived took the letter.

“You are watched closley because of your important position.”

◉

I was in my office. I looked at the spot on my desk where the brownie had been. I replayed the previous day.

The smile.

The napkin.

The “Here you go.”

The walk across the hall.

Chris opening the door. “You are watched closely,” etched and echoing in my head space.

The door closing to its frame.

The latch.

⨀

The question arrived fully formed, sharp as a blade:

Did she know?

Did she know when she walked into my office? Did she place that brownie on my desk — warm, homemade, human — while already aware of what she was about to walk into across the hall?

Or did she learn it in that room? Did the door close, did the papers come out, did Chris say the words, and did she sit there — once my advocate, my ally — and realize she had just given me a brownie on the way to take my salary?

Or was she neither?

Was she just another board member, another person in that room, another hand that went up or stayed down, and I will never know which because no public record exists, no vote was recorded, no minutes captured the moment?

⌇

The Question That Never Left

For eight years, I carried Debra in my map of the world as if she knew.

Because the alternative — that she was innocent, that Chris used her and the rest of the board, that the brownie was just a brownie and the door was just a door and the meeting was just a meeting where something happened that she may or may not have understood — the alternative was harder to hold than betrayal.

Betrayal makes sense. It can be defined. Betrayal has edges. It’s tangible. Betrayal is a story you can tell yourself at 2 a.m..

Innocence used as camouflage — that’s the one that keeps you up until dawn.

⟡

So I held the question for eight years. Through the “don’t work out your notice” letter, through the Saturday extraction to get my things so Chris wouldn’t have to answer questions from staff, through the years of silence and rebuilding. The picking myself up again and again and again to eventually co-found Tracking Arkansas. The question remained through what felt like a lifetime of uncertainty trapped in someone else’s narrative. It was the enduring and emerging question, the inquiry I danced with almost every day until I penned Chapter 4 only weeks ago.

Did she know?

I didn’t answer it because I couldn’t. Not without evidence. Not without FOIA. Not without finally, eight years later, asking for the documents Chris never wanted anyone to see.

◬

What the FOIA Said and What It Couldn’t

I filed the requests just this Feburary.

I waited.

The documents came back. The Tracking Arkansas team is still reviewing the massive amount of documents pertinent to our request and specific to other active investigations; however, this is what we know about the documentation, or the absence thereof, as we track the crumbs of Chris’ fictional storyline of how I left the AAC.

No official action by the board on my demotion or salary reduction in the public record. No vote recorded. No resolution. No motion. No second. No roll call. No budget committee meeting minutes in existence. Nothing in the minutes of the full board. No paper trail. No due process.

According to the law — the only law that matters for public bodies — the board never took any action on my salary on Dec. 15, 2016.

⨀

So what happened in that room?

What did Chris tell them?

What did Debra hear?

Did she raise her hand and vote yes? Did she stay silent? Did she object? Did she leave that meeting and wonder if she should come back across the hall and say something to me?

I don’t know.

The FOIA can’t answer that. The FOIA can only tell you what exists, not what was said in a room without a recorder.

⌇

But here’s what I know now that I didn’t know then:

If the board didn’t know – if Chris never told them, never brought a vote, never presented a resolution – then Debra is innocent. The brownie was just a brownie. And I spent eight years wondering why did she or other board members not even say a word to me or were they unaware what Chris was doing behind her back.

And if the board did know – if Chris told them, and they discussed it, and they reached some consensus without a public vote, without minutes, without due process – then they knew illegally.

No guiding legal authority. No public record. No notice to me. No opportunity to respond. No write-ups. No performance reviews. Nothing but a closed door and a handshake and a “we’ll let Scott figure it out.”

That’s not governance. That’s a conspiracy without the courage to put it on paper.

◉

The Door Remains Closed

I’m not going to answer the question here.

Not because I don’t have an opinion. Not because the evidence is unclear.

Because for eight years, no one but Chris and the board knew. Not the public. Not the board members themselves, maybe. And I want you to sit in that not-knowing for just a moment longer, the way I sat in my office on Dec. 15, 2016, with a brownie on my desk and a door closed across the hall.

Did she know?

Did the board know?

Or was Chris the only one in that building who knew exactly what he was doing, and counted on the rest of us never comparing notes?

⟡

The brownie doesn’t tell you.

The FOIA doesn’t tell you.

The door, that ordinary, wooden, latched door, doesn’t tell you.

But here’s what I can tell you with certainty:

Chris handed me a salary reduction letter on Dec. 16, 2016. He claimed board action. He claimed a vote. He claimed a meeting.

The public record shows none of that happened.

The door closed anyway.

And I ate the brownie.

And I started asking questions, the kind of questions that crumble silence in the void. Exposing what lies in shadows, the emptiness of what should be full and complete, changing the unknown to the seen for the people who deserve it, to perserve a fair and complete record of what oftentimes is swept under or fades into the margin of error. Giving the record its voice from the dark places like the space between Chris’ handwritten note and what did or didn’t happen on the other side of that door that is why I scribe light.

⨀

Eight years later, I’m still digging, tracking crumbs of evidence and the tables have turned.

“Chris, you are watched closely because of your important position.”

◉

There’s a particular feel to a personnel file you were never supposed to see.

It’s not the paper — most of those exist in digital limbo now, ones and zeros waiting to be summoned or suppressed. It’s not the ink or the official letterhead or the notary stamps that may or may not mean anything.

It’s the absence.

The negative space where documentation should live. The silence where procedure should have spoken.

I’ve spent the better part of the last decade learning to read that silence. And what I’ve found in the space between what my former boss Chris Villines said happened and what the records actually show is a pattern that runs deeper than one man’s personnel file.

It runs all the way to the foundation of how the Machine operates.

The Letter That Started It All

On Dec. 15, 2016, I received a letter signed by Chris that changed everything.

It came on the Association of Arkansas Counties letterhead.

I still remember reading it in my office. I looked up and out my window, the weight of six years in that building settling differently than it ever had before. The hum of traffic on Third Street. The daily lunchtime chaos of Cotham’s rush playing out in the parking lot below.

Six years.

And now this.

What the Letter Said

Let me be precise about what Chris put in writing, because precision matters when you’re dealing with people who trade in ambiguity.

The letter served two purposes: to formalize a salary reduction and to introduce vague performance concerns.

First, the salary action. The letter stated that due to a recent title change from “Communications and Legislative Director” back to “Communications Director,” the associated duties had been reduced. It claimed the Board and Budget Committee had reviewed and approved a salary adjustment to $76,295.00, effective Jan. 1, 2017 — a figure that retroactively matched my rate before the promotion.

Second, the allegations. The letter claimed that over the preceding months, Villines had been approached by board members and staff regarding conversations where I purportedly questioned the organization’s future, its leadership, and the abilities of fellow staff members. These alleged conversations, the letter suggested, were a concern moving into the next year.

The letter was specific enough to sound credible. Vague enough to be impossible to defend against.

That’s the trick, isn’t it? The art of the personnel action in a place where personnel actions are supposed to mean something.

What Wasn’t in My File

Here’s the thing about personnel files in government organizations: they’re supposed to tell a story.

Performance reviews. Disciplinary warnings. Documentation of meetings. Votes from executive sessions where personnel matters are discussed and decided on.

My file told a different story.

When I requested my complete personnel file in 2025 — eight years after the fact — I expected to see the documentation that would support Chris’s claims. The “conversations” he referenced. The paper trail that justified a demotion and a salary reduction after six years of service.

Instead, there was one written warning from September of that year for missing a County Clerk’s Association Continuing Education Board meeting. Except I called into the meeting and attended by phone. I attended the rest of the conference in person.

No performance reviews documenting issues. No notes from any meeting where my performance was discussed.

The silence was deafening.

The New FOIA Finding: What the Board Minutes Actually Show

That was the state of things when I published the first installment of The Personnel File the AAC Doesn’t Want You to See on Tracking Arkansas. But we kept digging.

In a follow-up request, we asked specifically for the board minutes from the December 2016 meeting referenced in Villines’ letter — the meeting where the board allegedly “finalized” my salary reduction.

We got them.

And here’s what the minutes show: a line item approving the general budget. That’s it.

No mention of my name. No mention of a salary reduction. No discussion of a title change. No vote on personnel action.

The letter claimed the board had reviewed and approved the salary adjustment. The minutes show no such thing.

What about the Budget Committee? Villines’ letter said the Budget Committee had reviewed and approved it as well. We asked for those records, too.

No minutes exist. No agenda. No documentation of any meeting where my salary or demotion was discussed. Other documents we requested included documents related to my change of title and job duties and all communications about the board regarding my departure. Their response? “No public records exist.”

So let’s be clear about what the AAC’s own records tell us:

The December 2016 letter claimed board and budget committee approval. The board minutes show only a routine budget line item. The budget committee has no records at all.

The approval Chris wrote about didn’t happen in any documented meeting. It existed only in the letter itself.

Why the Letter Was Written

The FOIA response tells us what wasn’t in my file. But it doesn’t answer the question that’s been hanging over all of this for eight years:

Why?

Why write a letter full of unverifiable claims? Why reduce a salary without documented board approval? Why go through all of this for a communications director with six years of service and no major performance issues on record?

Looking back, knowing what I know now, I understand.

The alleged conversations Chris referenced in the December 2016 letter — the ones he claimed board members and staff had brought to his attention — dated back more than a year. To the summer and fall of 2015.

I was having conversations with colleagues and board members about the hiring of Josh Curtis as Government Affairs director. We had recently lost one of our staff attorneys, leaving us with only two attorneys to provide the AAC’s nine associations with legal advice, continuing education, and lobbying support. My argument: we needed another attorney, not another lobbyist.

I had these conversations because Chris wasn’t listening to my advocacy for what the policy team actually needed.

What I didn’t know then was that I was questioning a succession plan in the making.

While Chris hired Josh, Josh’s father — Doug Curtis, the Saline County Clerk — hired Chris’s 16-year-old son, Trevor, into the clerk’s office. A quiet exchange. A future secured.

The transaction wasn’t completed until 2025, when Doug waited until the last day of filing to announce his retirement — and only after he had a “conversation” with Trevor that morning to hand off the office. Trevor was the only one to file for the seat.

Campaign finance reports show that despite filing on the last day, Trevor started raising money back in October — two weeks before filing began. Chris wrote a $2,000 check on Oct. 31, four days before filing opened.

If I know one thing about Chris, it’s this: he would not put himself in the position of having to choose between supporting his son and supporting his AAC board member in an election.

The understanding happened long before filing occurred. And more people than Trevor and Doug knew about it.

So when Chris wrote in December 2016 that I had been having conversations that questioned the organization’s future and its leadership, he was right about one thing: I was asking questions.

But I wasn’t asking about the future of the AAC in some vague, disloyal sense. I was asking why we were hiring a lobbyist when we were bleeding attorneys. I was asking why my advocacy was being ignored. I was asking the kinds of questions that someone running a quiet succession plan — built on reciprocal hires and unspoken understandings — couldn’t afford to have asked.

The letter wasn’t about performance. It wasn’t about “events” or “incidents” or concerns about the organization’s future.

The letter was about removing someone who was asking the wrong questions at the wrong time.

And it worked. For almost a decade, it worked.

But the questions I was asking in 2015 weren’t wrong. They were just early.

And the biggest irony? The policy team now has four attorneys and one lobbyist.

The Silence Finally Given Voice

This chapter is a follow-up to The Personnel File the AAC Doesn’t Want You to See because it’s true.

Chris doesn’t want you to see it. He doesn’t want you to know that the letter he signed was built on claims that don’t exist in any record. He doesn’t want you to know that the board approval he cited never happened in any documented meeting. He doesn’t want you to recognize the pattern.

But the silence has finally been given voice.

Not through dramatic revelations. Not through whistleblower testimony or leaked documents. Through the simplest, most mundane mechanism our system provides: a Freedom of Information request filed eight years later.

“No records exist” is supposed to be the end of the conversation.

We’re making it the beginning.

What Comes Next

This is the latest chapter in The Machine Years. There will be more. More records. More silences broken.

The investigation continues. Tracking Arkansas’ Arkansas Machine investigation series is still unfolding. And the connective tissue between what happened in my personnel file and what’s happening across Arkansas government is becoming clearer every day.

The Machine was built to generate questions without answers. Our job is to keep asking until the answers become unavoidable.

There’s a moment — a precise, quantum flicker — when the air changes. When enough Arkansans stop scrolling, stop sighing, and start seeing. That’s the moment the Machine flinches. That’s the signal burst they cannot route around, cannot spin, cannot buy off with another dark money PAC.

Because the Machine’s lifeblood isn’t power. It’s inattention. It thrives on you looking away. It breathes because we’re too tired, too cynical, too busy surviving to ask the only question that matters: Who is really running this state?

Well. We’re looking now.

And what we see in this Secretary of State runoff is so embarrassingly transparent, so insultingly lazy, it should make every Arkansas woman laugh out loud, if the stakes weren’t so deadly serious.

Let me paint the picture for you.

Bryan Norris and Sen. Kim Hammer emerged from a three-way primary separated by just a few thousand votes, with Miller County Judge Cathy Hardin Harrison pulling a little more than 85,000 Arkansans who wanted someone else. That’s 85,000 voters up for grabs. Eighty-five thousand people who didn’t pick either of these men.

And what does the Machine do? Does it offer policy? Does it make a case for why women should feel confident in the Machine’s candidate? Does it address the actual concerns of Arkansas families?

No.

It creates narratives. It grabs the nearest hollow storyline and runs it into the ground, banking on us being as dumb as their out-of-state strategists assume we are.

Suddenly — conveniently — we’re hearing whispers that Norris is somehow anti-woman. Current Secretary of State Cole Jester even called for Norris to drop out over “offensive and demeaning language towards women” found in old social media posts.

Never mind the context. Never mind the data. Never mind the rank hypocrisy of it all.

Because here’s the thing the Machine is hoping you forget:

The same people running this narrative preside over a state that leads the nation in everything a woman shouldn’t have to fear.

Arkansas ranks 50th in the nation for women’s health, according to America’s Health Rankings. Our maternal mortality rate sits at 38 deaths per 100,000 live births, while the national average is 23. We have the third-highest infant mortality rate in the country, according to the Arkansas Center for Health Improvement. The March of Dimes gave us an “F” for preterm births.

And here’s the kicker — the detail that makes this entire sexism smear so obscene it should be studied in political science courses as a case study in projection:

When Wisconsin finalizes its expansion of postpartum Medicaid coverage in the coming days, Arkansas will stand alone as the only state in America that refuses to extend Medicaid coverage for new mothers a full year after birth.

Every other state. Every. Other. State. Has figured this out.

Not us.

Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders signed a maternal health package last year but opposed the postpartum extension, saying there are “other coverage options.” Meanwhile, women in this state are dying at rates that would shock our grandmothers.

So let me ask you something, and I want you to really sit with this:

Who doesn’t value women?

Is it the Army veteran with some regrettable social media history?

Or is it the political Machine that has controlled every lever of power in this state for years, that runs on “family values” while families bury their mothers and daughters, that leads the nation in maternal mortality and responds by doing less than Mississippi, less than Louisiana, less than Texas? Hammer has been there for 14 years, a reliable tool for the Machine.

Tell me again: who doesn’t value mothers? Who doesn’t value pregnant women’s health?

The Machine. That’s who.

And now they want you to clutch your pearls over a few bad words?

The Real Impact: Rural Women, ALICE Families, and Obstetric Deserts

Let’s talk about who really pays the price for this manufactured outrage while the Machine ignores the actual crisis.

Nearly 28 percent of women of childbearing age in rural Arkansas rely on Medicaid for health coverage. That’s significantly higher than the national rural average of 23.3 percent, according to a recent Georgetown University study.

They are often ALICE families — Asset Limited, Income Constrained, Employed — working jobs that don’t provide health insurance, earning too much to qualify for assistance programs but never enough to afford private coverage. They’re our childcare workers, our home health aides, our retail associates. They’re the backbone of rural economies, and they’re one hospital closure away from catastrophe.

And here’s what the “pro-life” Machine won’t tell you: Arkansas ranks sixth in the nation for the highest percentage of maternity care deserts. Nearly 51 percent of our state is a maternity care desert, with no birthing facility or obstetric clinician, according to the Arkansas Advocate.

When a rural hospital closes its labor and delivery unit — or closes entirely — it’s not just Medicaid patients who suffer. Every woman in that community loses access to care. Every family must drive farther, often risking delivery on the side of a highway. Every town loses its largest employer, its economic anchor.

The Machine claims to be staunchly pro-life. But what is pro-life about forcing a woman in rural Arkansas to drive two hours for prenatal care? What is pro-life about watching your state have the third-highest infant mortality rate? What is pro-life about refusing to extend postpartum Medicaid coverage — a policy every other state has adopted — while knowing that nearly half of all births in rural areas are covered by Medicaid?

This is the real war on women. It’s not fought with regrettable social media posts. It’s fought in hospital boardrooms, in legislative chambers, in budget hearings where the Machine decides that some women’s lives are acceptable losses.

The Machine thinks we’re that dumb.

They think we’ll forget the dead mothers — our daughters, our sisters, our friends — when they wave a social media screenshot in our faces.

They think we won’t notice that the same people calling Norris unfit for women are the same people who made Arkansas the deadliest state in America to be pregnant.

Friends, we are not drinking the Kool-Aid. No to Jester, to Breanne Davis and Missy Irvin, to Team SHS, to all who follow the Machine.

We are smarter than Sarah and her handlers think we are. We are more aware than the dark money PACs budget for. We are the echolocation signal they cannot jam, the authentic sound of Arkansans remembering who we are.

This movement — #FriendsAgainstMachine — isn’t a slogan. It’s a frequency. It’s the smallest unit of measurement in the quantum field: a mustard seed of observation. The Machine can’t see it because it doesn’t compute. It can’t buy it because it’s not for sale. It can’t spin it because it’s already true.

When we pay attention, together, with authentic intent, the Machine’s structure frays. Its volatile energy exposes itself. It starts acting erratic, desperate, cruel. Sound familiar?

Look at this runoff. Look at the hollow narrative they’re spinning. Look at the maternal mortality stats they’re hoping you forget. Look at the rural women, the working poor, the families in obstetric deserts who are invisible to their “pro-life” agenda.

That’s not governance. That’s glitching.

We are the signal. We are the geometry behind the pattern. The collective map we’re drawing together, in real time, with every conversation, every vote, every refusal to look away.

The runoff is our point break. The moment the collective radar pings. The question isn’t just Hammer or Norris. The real question is: will we watch closely? Will we remember who put us last? Will we see through the hollow narratives to the hollow men — and women — spinning them?

The Machine thinks we’re asleep.

Let’s build something they cannot comprehend: a connected Arkansas. An aware Arkansas. An Arkansas where women don’t have to die for the sin of living in the wrong state.

Are you watching closely?

We are.

This is not the investigation.

This is what the investigation feels like from inside.

Today, Tracking Arkansas released a PAID subscriber-exclusive article that pulls back the curtain on a new dimension of the machine. I’ll share what it felt like to uncover it.

What it felt like to realize that the web I’d been mapping from outside had strands I’d never seen — strands that led to places I thought I’d left behind.

This is The Machine Years Mini Series — my personal companion to Tracking Arkansas’s premiere investigation series. The intrinsic evidence. The connective tissue. The silence is finally given voice.

If you’re just joining, here’s what you’ve missed so far:

—

*[Chapter 1: The Dream Job Was Actually a Download] *
The story of how I spent seven years inside the AAC, believing I was on the right side, not yet understanding that I was the communications director for a $34 million shadow budget.

*[Chapter 2: The Gestapo Sheriff and the Deleted Driveway] *
The flashback to 2016, Highway 38, Sheriff John Staley, the deleted body cam footage, and Chris Villines’s response when I reported it: “Scott, I’m having to go with my sheriff on this one.”

—

Now, Chapter 3.

— Scott

CHAPTER 3

THE NATURE OF THE WEB

A spider’s web is an engineering marvel.

Its filaments are protein structures, hierarchically organized, thinner than human hair, yet stronger than steel by weight. They are designed to be invisible — not by magic, but by physics.

The individual strands are so thin, and their refractive properties so precisely calibrated, that light passes through them at most angles. To a passing insect or a casual observer, the web does not exist. It is hidden in plain sight.

But everything changes when your eyes catch it just right.

When the source of light refracts off its filamentous structure at precisely the correct angle — when the observer’s spatial location aligns with the physics of reflection — the web, still invisible to every other point of view, illuminates in its entirety.

Suddenly, the trap reveals itself. Suddenly, you see the architecture.

The thing that was always there, always waiting, always working — the web — comes into plain view.

This is the machine.

Hidden in plain sight, the filaments of power — the trusts, the PACs, the contracts, the deleted footage, the silenced whistleblowers — have been engineered to remain invisible to most observers from most angles.

But now, at this moment in Arkansas history, the light has shifted.

The observer has moved.

And the Dark Webb the Machine weaves is illuminated in its entirety.

THE DISCOVERY

What I Found When I Stopped Looking Away

Today, Tracking Arkansas published something new. I can’t tell you what it is. Not here. Not now. Not in this space.

But I can tell you what it felt like to find it.

The Moment of Recognition

There’s a moment in every investigation — if you’re doing it right — when the strands start to connect.

You’ve been collecting filaments for weeks. Months. Maybe years. Individual facts, discrete documents, small observations that don’t seem to mean much on their own.

Then one day, you’re looking at something — a deposition transcript, a financial disclosure, a FOIA response that arrived three months late or a Supreme Court decision — and the light shifts.

You see it.

Not just the strand in front of you. The whole web.

The connection between this document and that one. The through line from 2013 to 2026. The way a decision made in a closed boardroom years ago created a filament that’s still vibrating today.

That happened to me today.

I was reviewing materials for the investigation Tracking published today. I was reading the Arkansas Supreme Court’s 5-2 Gamble decision. When I read the last words of the dissent opinion authored by Associate Justice Courtney Hudson, I saw flashes of campaign finance disclosures that we have pored over, screenshots of dark mailers, and highlighted images of the faces of the machine we have plotted and connected on our investigative map.

And then the light shifted. I saw the whole web at once.

And it was bigger than I’d imagined.

THE ECHO

What It Feels Like to Recognize Your Own Strands

Here’s the part I didn’t expect: Some of the strands led back to me.

Not to things I’d done wrong. Not to complicity in the way I’d feared. But to moments I’d forgotten. Conversations I’d dismissed. Decisions I’d made without understanding their context.

The machine doesn’t just catch citizens – it catches everyone who works inside it.

You don’t have to be corrupt to be connected. When you’re caught in the web, you’re complicit. You just have to be there, doing your job, serving the machine’s interests without knowing whose interests you’re really serving.

I was there for seven years.

And this week, thanks to an investigation I helped conduct, I saw filaments I’d never noticed before.

Filaments that connected my work to things I’d rather not think about.

Filaments that made me understand, finally and fully, why Chris said what he said in 2013:

“Scott, I’m having to go with my sheriff on this one.”

Not just because he was corrupt. Because he was caught. Just like all of them.

The web doesn’t discriminate.

It just catches.

THE COMPANION

Why The Machine Years Exists

I started this personal stack for a reason, and it’s not to compete with Tracking Arkansas. Not to duplicate its work. Not to provide an alternative to the document-driven, data-verified investigations that are our signature.

To accompany them.

Tracking Arkansas follows the money. Maps the power. Exposes the connections. Publishes the documents.

My Shadow, The Core Guide follows the interior, maps the emotional terrain. Exposes what it feels like to be inside, then outside, then inside again. Publishes the silence.

Together, they tell the whole story.

The external and the internal. The document and the feeling. The machine and the man

DON’T TEASE ME BRO

What You’re Missing (And How to Get It)

Today’s Tracking Arkansas investigation is for paid subscribers only.

Not because we’re greedy. Because this work costs money. FOIA fees. Document retrieval. Source protection. Server costs. Time — so much time.

And because some information shouldn’t be free.

Not in the sense that it should be hidden. In the sense that it should be valued. Supported. Sustained by the people who understand that transparency is not a product — it’s a public good that requires public investment.

If you’re not already a paid subscriber, here’s what you’re missing today:

A new dimension of the machine. A strand you didn’t know existed. A connection that changes how you understand everything you’ve read so far.

I can’t tell you more than that.

But I can tell you this: when I saw it, the light shifted for me.

And I’ve been inside this machine for thirteen years.

How to Get It

Step 1: Go to Tracking Arkansas on Substack.
Step 2: Click the “Subscribe” button.
Step 3: Choose the paid option.
Step 4: Read today’s investigation.

It’s that simple.

And while you’re there, scroll through the archives. Read everything. Share what matters. Become part of the community that’s making this work possible.

THE RETURN

Why I’m Writing This Now

For seven years, I was silent.

I didn’t write about AAC. I didn’t talk about AAC. I didn’t think about AAC in complete sentences. The experience existed in my neural architecture as an encrypted file, accessible only with the right passphrase, and I’d forgotten the passphrase on purpose.

I founded Tracking Arkansas. I built a social enterprise that weaponizes transparency. I investigated corruption. I published documents. I exposed the machine.

But I didn’t write about the seven years I spent inside the machine’s chassis.

I told myself it wasn’t relevant. I told myself my personal history would distract from the mission. I told myself the work was forward-facing and the past was past.

None of that was true. The truth is that I wasn’t ready.

I wasn’t ready to admit that the dream job was a download. I wasn’t ready to admit that I’d been effective at something I now recognize as fundamentally corrosive. I wasn’t ready to admit that the silence I resided in wasn’t strategic or protective or even particularly dignified.

It was just silence.

The silence of someone still processing.

Still decrypting.

Still trying to understand how the narrator became a character in someone else’s story.

I’m ready now.

THE WEB AND THE WEAVER

A spider’s web is made of filamentous structures that appear transparent at most angles, in most light.

But FROM THE OBSERVER’S perspective — when your eyes catch it just right, when the source of light refracts off its protein architecture instead of passing through — the web, still invisible to other points of view, illuminates in its entirety.

This is that moment. Not just for me – for all of us.

The machine is visible now: the strands are illuminated; the connections are clear.

What we do with that visibility — whether we look away or tear it down — is up to us.

I’m choosing to tear.

Tracking Arkansas. This is Scott.

The bar tab is public record. The web is visible now.

The Machine Years continue.

This is the connective tissue between what I knew then and what I understand now.

PART ONE: THE DRIVEWAY

Highway 38, Lonoke County, Arkansas, 2013

The old house sits back from the road.

The old place on Highway 38. It belonged to Bud Shock, my grandfather. It’s the kind of rural Arkansas property that accumulates stories the way an attic accumulates boxes: layered, dusty, mostly forgotten until someone needs to find something.

On this particular evening, someone needed to find my half-brother.

James Dennis Perkins, Jr.

He wasn’t there. He hadn’t been there. But Sheriff John Staley and his deputies were convinced otherwise. They had a deadline. A lawsuit filed by VC&M Development. Something about toilets displayed in trees, a disputed property line, and an impact on a lot sale behind the homestead. The kind of civil dispute that becomes a criminal matter only when someone with a badge decides to make it one.

A couple of neighbors were watching a fire in a space between the houses and shooting some rounds, mostly being moderately loud in rural Arkansas. I’m sure they had a couple of drinks, or a handful, perhaps.

Someone noticed the noise coming from a house on Highway 38. A house the sheriff was extremely interested in.

The Lonoke County Sheriffs’ Office takes civil procedure and notice of service with the utmost diligence.

They needed to serve Dennis.

They were running out of time – if the summons wasn’t served before the deadline, the lawsuit could be dismissed.

So they came to the old house on Highway 38 to serve a civil defendant in the early morning hours. They came two deputies deep, with blue lights on and Staley enroute.

What happened next was captured on body cameras and dash cameras, until it wasn’t.

It was a confrontation between three armed men in uniform and one woman alone in the dark.

One deputy at a time showed up until the sheriff pulled in. By then, the neighbors were inside. When they approached Misty, she had her .380 with the clip out and chamber open. Laying in front of her. She showed signs of intoxication. They confiscated the gun.

They made repeated attempts to get her to go into the house. Misty didn’t live there. She was socializing with Dennis’ neighbors. We lived in Austin, but on foot it was only about a half-mile away.

They were convinced Dennis was in the house and that Misty could somehow get him to come outside. It took two hours before Staley was convinced Dennis wasn’t there and that Misty wasn’t going into the house. He made her call someone to pick her up, and he cited her for several misdemeanors, which were dismissed.

PART TWO: THE OFFICIAL RESPONSE

FOIA Request, 2013

When I learned what had occurred — when Misty told me about the guns, the questions, the isolation, the feeling of being the only unarmed person in a driveway full of deputies, I did what any former journalist turned communications director would do.

I filed a FOIA request.

Body camera footage. Dash cam footage. Any and all recordings of the incident at my grandparents’ property on Highway 38 involving Sheriff John Staley and his deputies.

The response arrived weeks later.

“The requested footage has been deleted.”

Not lost. Not corrupted. Not accidentally overwritten.

Deleted.

Intentional. Specific. Complete.

Three male law enforcement officers. One female citizen. A rural driveway. No other witnesses.

And every single camera — body and dash — had been wiped clean.

PART THREE: The Unmandated Report

Chris Villines, Executive Director, Association of Arkansas Counties

I did what I was supposed to do.

At the time, I was the communications and legislative director for the Association of Arkansas Counties. My job included managing relationships with elected officials across the state, including sheriffs. My job included flagging issues that could become liabilities for the association. My job included documenting everything.

So I documented.

I called Chris Villines into my office, or perhaps I walked into his; the geography of that moment has softened with time, but the content hasn’t.

I told him what happened.

I told him about the FOIA request. I told him about the response. I told him about the deleted footage — the complete, intentional destruction of public records involving a confrontation between law enforcement and a civilian with no other witnesses.

I told him this was a massive public trust violation.

I told him this was exactly the kind of thing the AAC should be concerned about, not because we were watchdogs, but because we represented the counties. Because we had a responsibility to the citizens those counties served. Because if we looked the other way on something this clear, this documented, this intentional — what were we even doing?

Chris listened.

Chris nodded.

Chris considered.

And then days later, Chris said something I have never forgotten:

“Scott, I’m having to go with my sheriff on this one.”

PART FOUR: THE WEIGHT OF THE WORDS

What “My Sheriff” Meant

Let me translate that sentence for you.

“My sheriff.”

Not “the sheriff of Lonoke County.” Not “Sheriff Staley.” Not “law enforcement in this jurisdiction.”

“My sheriff.”

Possessive. Personal. Political.

Chris Villines was not evaluating evidence. He was not weighing public trust against institutional loyalty. He was not considering the implications of a county-funded association siding with a sheriff who had just presided over the destruction of public records. He looked away from crimes by a member-county sheriff but ran straight to the bank with that county’s member fees.

He was choosing his tribe.

The sheriff was one of his. The sheriff sat on Arkansas Sheriffs’ Association (ASA) Board and his county was a member of AAC Risk Management Services (AACRMS) Trust pool. The insurance, property and casualty, and liability policies protecting county property like vehicles and jail property. We now know the sheriff was running a disturbing, defiant and dehumanizing jail at the exact same time I’m calling out Staley’s complete disregard for public trust evidenced in my personal first-hand experience. AACRMS provided the jail’s self-insured risk management coverage. It still does. The sheriff was part of the machine that kept the AAC funded, powerful, relevant. He still is.

Misty was a citizen.

Misty was my then-wife.

Misty was, in the arithmetic of the machine, a rounding error.

The evidence was clear. The law was clear. The public trust obligation was clear.

None of it mattered.

Because Chris was “having to go with his sheriff on this one.”

PART FIVE: THE PATTERN EMERGES

2013 Was Not an Isolated Incident

I did not know it at the time — I was still inside, still downloading, still believing that this was an aberration rather than a feature — but the Highway 38 incident was not the last time Lonoke County law enforcement would delete footage to protect itself.

Unfortunately, the deletion of public records by Lonoke County law enforcement is as common as handcuffs on their belts.

It was a pattern.

It was a practice.

It was policy, just unwritten.

The Aaron Spencer Case: 2024-2025

Fast forward nearly a decade.

Aaron Spencer is running against Sheriff John Staley.

Aaron Spencer is also under charges for murdering the pedophile who went after Aaron’s daughter.

Here is what happened, in the barest outline:

Lonoke County failed the Spencer family. Failed them repeatedly. Failed them systematically. Failed them in ways that directly assisted the reentry of a known predator into the population, with no regard for public safety, with no consideration for the child already harmed.

Why?

Because, in my opinion, John Staley was manipulating influence to create a “mega-prison closer” event.

A tragedy. A rape. A murder. A narrative.

The kind of event that dominates headlines. The kind of event that justifies prison expansion. The kind of event that proves — proves! — that the SAFE Act’s early release for non-violent offenders is a death sentence for the public.

Never mind that the SAFE Act had nothing to do with this predator. Never mind that the law they blame for releasing violent criminals doesn’t actually release violent criminals. Never mind that the entire narrative is built on a foundation of sand.

The machine needs stories.

And a child — Aaron Spencer’s daughter — was nearly sacrificed to provide one.

The predator was released back into the population, released by a system that knew what he was. Released by officials who should have protected her.

And then Aaron Spencer killed him.

And then, in a coincidence that is not a coincidence at all, the dash cam footage of Aaron Spencer’s confrontation with the predator was lost.

Lost. Deleted. The pattern is to erase the record that should have been kept by Lonoke County deputies.

The Attorney General’s office later claimed the camera was “empty” when their investigators reviewed it. If you follow @TrackingArkansas, you already know that looking for integrity in Tim Griffin’s Attorney General’s office is like someone’s first snipe hunt.

Empty.

Just like the Highway 38 footage.

Just like every other recording that might show the truth about how Lonoke County law enforcement operates.

PART SIX: THE CONNECTIVE TISSUE

What Chris’s Sentence Taught Me

I have replayed Chris’s words at various times over the last dozen years.

“Scott, I’m having to go with my sheriff on this one.”

At the time, I heard it as a disappointment. A failure of leadership. A moment where institutional loyalty trumped public trust.

Now I hear it as a thesis statement.

That sentence is the AAC in miniature.

That sentence is the machine revealed.

That sentence is the answer to every question about why Arkansas counties operate the way they do, why transparency is impossible, why reform never happens, why citizens are always the last consideration.

The AAC does not serve the public.

The AAC serves the elected.

Sheriffs. Judges. Clerks. The people who sit on boards. The people who control trust funds. The people who can make trouble or make nice.

Citizens are not stakeholders.

Citizens are funding sources.

Citizens pay the premiums. Citizens vote in the elections. Citizens show up at the county courthouse and wait in line and expect their government to work.

But citizens are not “my” anything.

Not to Chris.

Not to the AAC.

Not to the machine.

PART SEVEN: THE COURTESY EMAIL

2025: Trying Again, Knowing Better

This brings me to something I sent last session.

An email.

To Scott Bradley, Executive Director of the Arkansas Sheriffs’ Association.

To Mark Whitmore, Chief Legal Counsel of the AAC.

To Josh Curtis, Governmental Affairs Director of the AAC.

Subject: Legislative Proposal — Closing the Legal Rape Loophole

Counsel, sheriff, Chris and Josh,

As a part of our new product and its launch to Arkansas citizens, AR Bill Tracker, a product of Level Up Consulting and in partnership with Arkansas Nonprofit Initiative, extends a courtesy invitation to lead on the below draft bill due to its importance to the citizenry, minors and adults, and that it pertains to some of the elected officials (and their office’s employees) whom you represent in policy making. Of course, I’m referencing sheriff deputies and auxiliary officers, but it covers constables and justices as well.

Our draft bill is in its entirety pasted below. This is a courtesy email because this legislation was not found on any publicly available access to the AAC’s leg package or the ASA’s and we intend to move forward with it in a timely manner.

Running it without “support” or without any leading efforts from your stakeholders is a path I didn’t want to take without vetting the opportunity to your leadership, especially due to the media coverage we have predicted in our analytics without your support.

We have in-depth policy analysis to accompany the draft and state by state data (35 states have closed the loophole, 15 have not). I’ll begin reaching out to our ideal sponsors in both chambers this afternoon.

Thank you for attention to this legislative solution. I look forward to hearing from you.

Scott Perkins
sperkins@arnonprofits.com
Co-owner - AR Bill Tracker and Level Up Consulting, LLC
Co-founder - Arkansas Nonprofit Initiative, LLC
Policy for the People

The attachment:

A draft bill titled “EXPAND PROTECTION AGAINST ABUSE OF AUTHORITY ACT”

Its purpose: to amend Arkansas Code § 5-14-126 to expand coverage for sexual assault in the third degree — specifically, to close the loophole that allows legal rape to occur when the victim is in custody or under investigation by law enforcement.

Thirty-five states have closed this loophole.

Arkansas is one of the fifteen states that have not.

The bill would make it a Class C felony for any employee, contractor, auxiliary member, or township officer of an Arkansas public law enforcement department to engage in sexual activity with someone they have arrested, held in custody, or investigated, regardless of “consent.”

Because consent, in that context, is not consent.

It never was.

The response:

None.

Crickets.

Silence.

The same silence followed the Highway 38 footage.

The same silence followed every attempt to hold the machine accountable.

I extended a courtesy. I offered leadership. I gave them the opportunity to get ahead of an issue that should have been theirs years ago.

They chose silence.

PART EIGHT: THE PATTERN REVEALED

2013 — 2025

Let me lay it out clearly:

2013: Sheriff John Staley and his deputies delete body cam and dash cam footage of an incident involving a female civilian alone with three armed men in a rural driveway. I report this to Chris Villines. Chris says he’s “having to go with his sheriff.” The footage stays deleted. The public never sees what happened. (I was actually on the phone with the sheriff and Misty several times during the incident and have audio recordings of the interaction.)

2024-2025: Lonoke County fails the Spencer family. A predator is released. Aaron Spencer’s daughter is endangered. Aaron Spencer kills the predator. Dash cam footage of the confrontation is deleted. The attorney general’s office calls the dashcam “empty.” The pattern continues.

2025: I send a courtesy email to the AAC and Arkansas Sheriffs’ Association offering them the chance to lead on closing the legal rape loophole, a bill that would protect citizens in custody from the very people empowered to hold them. No response. Silence.

The pattern is not a pattern of individual bad actors.

The pattern is the machine.

The machine deletes footage when it is inconvenient.

The machine protects sheriffs when sheriffs need protecting.

They fund dirty prosecutors before any charges would ever see the light of day.

The machine ignores citizens when they need help.

The machine is silent when silence serves.

PART NINE: WHY THIS MATTERS

The Gestapo Sheriff and the Deleted Driveway Footage

I call this flashback “The Gestapo Sheriff and the Deleted Driveway Footage” because that’s what it felt like.

A woman, alone.

Three armed men, in uniform, with guns and badges and the full authority of the state.

No witnesses.

No recordings.

Nothing but her word against theirs.

That is the world the machine creates. A world where the only check on state power is the good faith of the people wielding it. A world where cameras are optional and citizens are on their own.

That is not democracy.

That is not public service.

That is not what we pay for.

We pay for body cameras so that when a woman is alone in a driveway with three deputies, there is a record. We demand transparency so that the people with guns and badges are accountable to the people who fund them.

The machine deletes all of that.

And then the machine is silent when asked why.

PART TEN: THE BRIDGE TO NOW

From the Driveway to the Bill

I have been silent about the Highway 38 incident for almost 12 years.

Not because I forgot. Not because it stopped mattering. Not because I made peace with what happened.

Because I wasn’t ready.

When the cameras are deleted, when the sheriffs are protected, when the silence descends — we are alone.

Just like Misty in that driveway.

Just like Aaron Spencer’s daughter and any woman detained in Lonoke County Jail, failed by the system that was supposed to protect her.

And the shooting death of Hunter Brittain by a Lonoke County deputy? The body camera was not turned on. Silence.

Just like every citizen in custody, vulnerable to the very people holding them, with no protection and no recourse.

The bill I sent them would change that.

It would make it a felony for a deputy to have sex with someone they’ve arrested, regardless of “consent.”

It would close the loophole that treats people in custody as fair game.

It would say, clearly and unequivocally, that the state’s power ends where the citizen’s body begins.

Thirty-five states have done this.

Arkansas has not.

And when I offered the AAC and the Sheriffs’ Association to get ahead of it, to shape it, to be on the right side for once, they chose silence. In stark contrast, they are the loudest voice projected from the machine’s megaphone, alarming the citizens to false urgency for a mega-prison.

Because the machine does not protect citizens.

The machine protects itself.

And protecting itself means never admitting that citizens in custody need protection from the machine.

CLOSING: THE SILENCE I RESIDED IN

I have resided in silence about what it means to watch an organization choose power over people, again and again and again.

I am done residing.

The Gestapo Sheriff and his deleted driveway footage are not ancient history. Neither are the events in the Aaron Spencer case. Nor was the shooting death of Hunter Brittain by a Lonoke County deputy where his body cam was not turned on.

They are the template.

They are the pattern.

They are the machine, revealed.

And now you know.

It is the story of a driveway, a sheriff, and a sentence that taught me everything I needed to know about the machine I served.

If you believe that citizens deserve better, that cameras should not be deleted, that sheriffs should not be protected at the expense of the public, that people in custody should not be vulnerable to the people holding them, subscribe to My Shadow, The Core Guide.

No spin. No institutional framing. Just the unredacted interior.

The silence ends here.

My Shadow, The Core Guide is the personal stack of Scott Perkins, co-founder of Tracking Arkansas. These are the stories behind the investigations: the intrinsic evidence, the connective tissue, the silence finally given voice.

Editor’s note: This is Part 2, Read Part 1 of “The Machine Years” mini series (The Machine Years, Part 1) The File …. AAC Doesn’t Want You to See, on this Substack.

I had to sit with it. I built a pond and contemplated. I not only helped run the machine, I was a moving part in a corrosive structure with an anti-citizen scheme and a theatrical currency. That currency is loyalty over the law. For years, I replayed my time at the Association of Arkansas Counties. Not to dwell. Not to to be stagnant or depressed. Not to fail to move on. But I had to sit with the realization that I had been written out of my own screenplay. The narration of my story was taken by someone who it didn’t belong too. Day after day, I was either told by peers or just by being excluded in the team’s projects:… the passive-aggressive message was heard loud and clear. I was only a stand In and I didn’t have any lines in this scene. For six months, I carried on all while being exiled, defamed, wrongfully separated and mentally tortured to the breaking point. This carried on for months…. It’s a tall mountain to look at! To authentically acknowledge and bring into awareness the fact that your voice was silenced while another narrator began to spew his false accusations. He spewed them for years. He still is. He spewed them when he got wind that I was rising, picking myself up and had accepted an exciting position in my field of expertise - print media. He curb stomped me in front of all of AAC. He pushed the message: “ Scott was fired for cause, he is a criminal, a psychopath, check CourtConnect and I or AAC can’t say any more. This was a year and half after I separated from AAC and he spewed his venom over one weekend and convinced Vickie Vowell to rescind her six figure salary offer to be her general manager. It was offered Friday, accepted and I was to be in the office Monday. Internally, I sensed the silence AAC and Chris sentenced me too, lift or lighten up. I remember being able to calmly breath for the first time since the separation.

I was planning my clothes for the next day that Sunday with a refreshed and rebirth essence of energy …. my nightmare was almost over. They weren’t going to be writing me out of my own story anymore.

As soon as I picked a shirt, I heard my notifications ding alerting me to an e-mail in my inbox. It was a brief, curt, chickenshit and unprofessional as I have ever seen cryptic message from Vickie. With no explanation. It claimed she would not be pursuing any general manager position at this time and decided to not move forward with my announcement and first day. She gave no other explanation. She didn’t respond to email or calls. The next morning, I called and texted. I was supposed to be getting to know staff and planning changes for Arkansas Money & Politics magazine. I was supposed to reclaim the narration of my own story that was stolen from me. Vickie never communicated with me again about why she offered me $100,000 one day and hours later treated me like a troubled, psychopathic criminal. I crashed into depression. Dove into the bottle while AAC policy staff and Chris poured another round for keeping Perkins down. And down I was. Almost all the way down.

I tried to kill myself weeks later because I was identifying with their false narrative and could not see any light in the tunnel. I was exactly where Chris wanted me. On set, triggered and no lines in the scenes of my own life. No, Chris took something that didn’t belong to him. He took it repeatedly, lied about it and kept the sole of his dress shoes firmly pressed on the back of my neck all while standing in the shadows of the dark, dark wings where the slogan “75 Counties. One Voice.” resides. This personal identity yo-yo about took all I had left of my tattered soul. Years would follow as I picked up the pieces of myself one by one.

The Machine Years is a compliment opinion and biography series to the @TrackingArkansas’ series The Arkansas Machine. Scott is a cofounder and a former insider who knows the skeleton structure of the Machine and he is sharing his personal thoughts and experiences in this space.

You want to know how the Machine works?

I didn’t learn it by investigating it. I learned it by being inside it. By being good at being inside it. By believing, with total sincerity, that I was doing the right work in the right place with the right people.

That’s the part they don’t tell you in the political thrillers. The protagonist always knows he’s a mole. I didn’t know I was a mole until after I’d been exfiltrated.

This is the story I have refused to tell for seven years.

Not because I was afraid. Not because I was protecting anyone. But because the silence itself—the silence I resided in—was the only way I knew how to process the download.

My name is Scott. My former peers at the AAC and my lifelong friends call me “Perk.” I was the Legislative and Communications Director for the Arkansas Association of Counties. For six years.

I’m posting this personal companion piece to Tracking Arkansas’ The Arkansas Machine series.

But this is “The Machine Years.”

It’s the most honest thing I’ve written in seven years.

We founded Tracking Arkansas because Arkansans needed to weaponize what I learned.

But I’m writing this series because I need to unredact it first.

It was my dream job.

Until I realized the dream was actually a download..

THE HONEYMOON

I came to AAC from newspapers. This was 2012, 2013—right in the maw of print journalism’s consumption crisis. I’d watched newsrooms gutted. I’d watched reporters I admired take buyouts or just take off. I’d watched the Fourth Estate get downsized into a fifth estate, then a sixth, then a corner office with a “content creator” job description. I was a publisher in rural Arkansas managing those consolidations. I drove home from a publisher’s budget meeting from Padukah, Ky, one October evening in 2010 and I knew the end was near for true local or even regional journalism. I called Janie, who was my editor at the time, I shared my news of the departments we had to consoldiate immediately and I said, “It’s time for you to move on. I’m encouraging you to look for your next opportunity.”

So when AAC came calling, I didn’t hesitate. A real communications role. Legislative strategy potential. Actual influence on actual policy. No more writing obituaries for a dying industry while the industry itself refused to admit it was terminal.

I thought: This is where I can actually do something.

And for years, I did.

I built relationships. I drafted talking points, I taught newly elected officials about media relations and was the AAC’s expert on the Freedom of Information Act. I was lead strategist, liason to the county clerks. I was the state and national media spokesperson. I stood in the hallways of the Capitol and explained why counties needed state inmate reimbursement increases and that those funds critically demanded distribution that was efficient, why complete school election consolidation was unworkable at present. I ran point and spearhead a 13-state coaltion against overlybroad designations for the yellowtail darter, to name one, under the Endangered Species Act and Proposed Rules of the Waters of the US during the O’Bama administartion. I drove the idea and strategized from my toe beans all the way to the bridge of the Machine on one of its most substantial accomplishments - placing four-year terms for county officials on the general ballot.

Counties deliver services. Counties are the level of government closest to the people. Counties shouldn’t get screwed by Little Rock.

All of that was true.

It was also very incomplete.

THE CHASSIS

Here’s what I didn’t understand at the time:

It needs you to believe so thoroughly in your mission that you stop questioning who benefits beyond your immediate win column. It needs you to see the opposing argument as enemy fire rather than competing values. It needs you to mistake institutional loyalty for moral clarity.

I was very, very effective.

I lobbied. I message-disciplined. I defended. I advanced.

And somewhere in those six years, I stopped being a reporter who happened to work for an association and started being an operative who happened to have once been a reporter.

The difference felt subtle at the time.

It feels like the Grand Canyon now.

THE COURTHOUSE OF CARDS

I’m not going to name names here. Not yet. Not in this post. This series is called The Machine Years for a reason—it’s going to take multiple installments to unspool what I know and when I knew it and what I did with that knowledge. This series runs parallel with ’ “The Arkansas Machine” investigative dive in to the collective of our reporting and tracking of the realtime policy landscape in Arkansas.

But I will say this:

There were meetings. There were documents. There were conversations that I replayed for months and even years afterward, trying to pinpoint the exact moment I went from an impactful asset to a risk. The exact moment when the architecture revealed itself—when I understood that the organization I’d given six hard years of my life to wasn’t just advocating for counties.

It was running a statewide influence operation.

And I was the No.2 executive and communications director for that operation.

The Courthouse of Cards didn’t collapse all at once. For me, it collapsed the way actual houses collapse in slow motion: one load-bearing wall at a time, each failure creating stress fractures in the next, until the whole structure is groaning and you’re standing in the rubble wondering how you didn’t hear the nails pulling out.

I heard them.

I just didn’t want to admit what the sound meant.

THE DOWNLOAD

Here’s the part that took me seven years to articulate:

My time at AAC wasn’t a career. It wasn’t a paycheck. It wasn’t even a “learning experience” in the conventional sense.

It was a download.

I was embedded. I was trusted. I was in rooms where decisions were made and then unmade and then remade to benefit people who weren’t in the rooms at all. I saw how power actually moves through Arkansas—not through legislation, not through elections, but through relationships so intertwined that the concept of “conflict of interest” becomes almost laughably quaint.

Who polices the police?

Who audits the auditors?

Who lobbies the lobbyists?

THE SILENCE I RESIDED IN

I’ve only recently been able to name: the silence I held myself in about AAC. About the Courthouse of Cards. About what I saw and what I did and what I didn’t do.

That silence wasn’t strategic. It wasn’t protective. It wasn’t even particularly self-aware.

It was the silence of someone still downloading.

Still processing.

Still trying to understand how the dream job became the hard drive, and how the hard drive became the chassis, and how the chassis became the Machine I now investigate every single day. I haven’t talked about my time at AAC.

Not with family. Not with friends. Not with the therapists I probably should have seen sooner.

I told myself I was protecting sources. I told myself I was moving forward. I told myself the past was past.

None of that was true.

The truth is that I wasn’t ready.

I wasn’t ready to admit that the dream job was actually a download. I wasn’t ready to admit that I’d been effective at something I now recognize as fundamentally corrosive. I wasn’t ready to admit that the silence I’d been residing in wasn’t strategic or protective — it was just silence.

This series ends that silence.

(Intro - Text-to-Speech Voice, glitchy, over a bed of chaotic digital noise that suddenly cuts out)
[Sounds of notification dings, social media sounds, a news clip, alarm clocks, all cut abruptly to silence]
[On screen text.]

Initiating System Silence...
Running: core_guide.exe
Command: locate shadow /silence_i_reside

(Part 1: Verse 1 - Rap Delivery over a sparse, tense fractal heart-beat like bass line. Three note riff (1 and a half heart beats). Boom, Boom, (1-2), Rest (3), Boom (4), Boom, boom (5-6), Rest (7), Boom (8)

The world’s on fire on a tiny glass screen,
Another algorithm feeding the machine.
My anxiety’s trending, got a million replies,
But the comment section’s hollow behind the lies.
So I’m logging off, Xing it out closing the extrinsic tab,
Running a diagnostic on the pain that I have.
This ain’t no glitch, man, it’s a feature, it’s data,
My soul tryna speak in a silent mantra.
The pattern emerging from the chaos and rage,
Is my shadow, the core guide, on a new kind of page.

(Chorus - Melodic, the beat drops to a simpler, deeper resonance, full heart beat, deeper than Part 1) 1, 2 (Boom boom) Rest (3-4), Boom Boom (5-6), Rest (7-8)

I am the source light, I am the cast shade.
Quiet quitting the mess the evil men made.
From the vantage of source, in the æternal light,
It’s my shadow, the core guide, for the silence I reside.
My core frequency, my guide... finally satisfied.

(Part 2: Verse 2 - Rap Delivery - the beat is more confident now. Boom, Boom, rest, Boom (1-4). Boom, Boom, Rest, Boom (5,6,7,8)

Words of men cast vibes and lies, every day coming on time like a bus
you learn helplessness but the only filter you need is to own your own status.
I’m the main character, the NPC, and the game,
The “Are you watching closely?” whispered without any shame.
This body’s a vessel, a temporary station,
This contrast, a lesson in self-acceptation.
And the answer it whispers, in the silence, deep inside,
Is my shadow, the core guide, for the silence I reside.

(Chorus - Melodic, with more layered harmonies – instrumentals guitar, Dobro, digital harmonica, voice jam mixed voices)

I am the source light, I am the cast shade.
Quiet quitting the mess that the evil men made.
From the vantage of source, in the eternal light,
It’s my shadow, the core guide, for the silence I reside.
My core frequency, my guide... finally satisfied.

(Bridge - Rock Ballad Style - The music swells to full tempo then pulls back to near silence for the last line)

AND in the lead on the big screen... THE set DISSOLVES!
I SEE THE SELF-CODES... AS THE PROBLEM RESOLVES!
DROWNING IN Stressful Trends and Stand-ins... BUT MY OWN DATA EVOLVES!
THE DUALITY IS CRITICAL... I am the message you feel vibing in the frequency you find.
...and in the echoed patterns where silence blankets the machine, after the space between the noise falls into the void.
It’s my shadow... the core guide... for the silence I reside.

(Final Chorus - Starts powerful, then breaks down to a whisper on the mantra)

(I AM THE SOURCE LIGHT!) I am the source light, I am the cast shade!
(THE SOUND! THE SILENCE!) Quiet quitting the mess that the evil men made!
(SEE ME! FREE ME!) In the eternal light...
It’s my shadow, the core guide, for the silence I reside.
(It’s my shadow... the core guide... for the silence I reside...)

(Outro - spoken intimately over a fading, single-note synth pad) 1,2,3,4
(Boom (1), rest (2), Boom 3, rest (4), etc.

The silence between the notifications. The sound anchored between the echoes. It’s my shadow. The core guide. For the silence I reside. (Beat fading rapidly.)
I authentically harmonize with your resonance. Light activates dormant code. You can find. Can You See? (Whispered.) We are one. And one is we.

FOIA Request Drop: Inside the AAC – Mapping the Machine’s Coordination on the Franklin County Prison

Following our series launch “The Arkansas Machine”, we are moving to the next phase: obtaining more of the internal communications that show how the policy infrastructure operates.

The Arkansas Association of Counties (AAC) is a critical but often overlooked nexus of power. It is not just a policy shop; it is a lobbying arm, a networking hub, and a conduit between county officials, state legislators, the Governor’s office, and private vendors. As our reporting has shown, the push for the Franklin County prison and the 3,500 maximum-security bed expansion is a top-down project of the political machine.

To understand the coordination, we have filed the following comprehensive FOIA request with the AAC. We are seeking communications that will show the direct links between AAC policy staff, the Governor’s office, the Attorney General’s office, key lobbyists, and legislators on this specific issue.

We are also requesting salary and staffing data to map the AAC’s resources and potential concentrations of influence within specific geographic areas.

This request is a direct probe into the operational core of the machine. We will post all responsive documents we receive for our subscribers, redacted only as required by law.

NEXT STEPS FOR SUBSCRIBERS

• We will email this request to the AAC immediately. The clock on their legal response time begins then.

• We will update this post with any acknowledgment, response, or production of documents.

• We will analyze and publish any documents we receive in future installments of “The Arkansas Machine.”

This request targets the wiring diagram of the machine. The prison in Franklin County is the output. These communications are the input and the processing. We are going to trace the signal.

Stay vigilant. We’re tracking.

— Scott Perkins & Janie Ginocchio, Tracking Arkansas