Benny Magness, the former chairman of the Arkansas Board of Corrections and a longtime Baxter County businessman, has gone to court to stop a state settlement that would brand him as an official who broke Arkansas open government law.
Magness led the corrections board until his term ended Dec. 31, 2025. On May 1, he and current board member Lee Watson asked a Pulaski County judge to let them join a lawsuit that names them by name. Neither man had a vote when the board agreed to the deal they are now fighting.
The fight puts a familiar Twin Lakes figure at the center of a statewide battle over who controls Arkansas prisons. It also raises a basic question of fairness. Can a government board admit, on the record, that two named people broke the law when those people were never allowed to defend themselves?…