#164, OTOH, Janie Ginocchio & Scott Perkins, Co-Founders of Tracking Arkansas, 6-16-26, part 1

Glen and April talk, in this first part of our conversation, with Janie Ginocchio and Scott Perkins, co-founders of Tracking Arkansas, a nonpartisan accountability journalism outlet they launched in 2025. What began as a public resource for tracking legislative bills has grown into a publication that combines policy analysis with investigative reporting. Janie and Scott walk us through that evolution, describe their framework for deciding which stories warrant deeper investigation, and introduce their ongoing series "The Arkansas Machine," which examines how political relationships, lobbying, and money influence public policy in Arkansas — across both parties. They also take us inside a specific case involving campaign finance reports and connections between the Attorney General's office and members of the legislature, explaining how that reporting led them to file formal ethics complaints and what they learned about the ethics complaint process itself — including its strengths, its limitations, and the gaps in current law that the process revealed. Throughout, they reflect on what it means to do this kind of work in a state with concentrated political power, and why they believe an informed public is essential to a functioning democracy. Tracking Arkansas is available at TrackingArkansas.com, on Substack, and on Facebook.

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