By Rob Moritz
Arkansas News Bureau

LITTLE ROCK — Sheffield Nelson, a former chairman of the Arkansas Game & Fish Commission, sued the commission today alleging the panel is illegally controlled by three members.

“It’s just a takeover of power by three commissioners where they absolutely rule and run the commission,” Nelson said in discussing the lawsuit he filed in Pulaski County Circuit Court.

At issue is the seven-member commission’s June restructuring of committees which allowed for three members — Craig Campbell, Emon Mahony and Rick Watkins — to sit on all major committees.

“They set it up in a form where the three of them make up the majority on every major committee,” Nelson said. “The only way you can get anything discussed at the commission level is for it to get a do pass out of one committee or another, and all of those committees are dominated by three people,” he said.

The lawsuit contends the creation of that committee structure violates Amendment 35 to the state constitution because it allows the three commissioners to control the commission.

Under Amendment 35, which voters approved in 1944 to create the Game and Fish Commission, the commission must be governed by commissioners representing each of the state’s four congressional districts.

“As a result of the utilization by the commission of said rules, regulations and procedures, the rights of the sportsman and citizens of the state of Arkansas of at least one congressional district of necessity have been compromised,” the lawsuit said.

It seeks a judge’s declaration that the committee structure is unconstitutional.

Keith Stephens, spokesman for the commission, said the commission would not comment on pending litigation.
Nelson, of Little Rock, was appointed to the commission in 2000 by then-Gov. Mike Huckabee and served as its chairman before completing his term in 2007. He twice ran unsuccessfully for governor as a Republican in the 1990s.