Wendell Griffen says Pulaski County is well-prepared to fight AVAIO’s lawsuit

Wendell Griffen, the 70-year-old retired circuit court judge, was pulled back into action as the chief executive of Pulaski County by the specter of a bully. 

In Griffen’s telling, County Judge Barry Hyde, the county’s chief executive for 11 years, was running roughshod over his constituents by pushing through the $6 billion AVAIO Digital data center outside of Wrightsville — and thwarting regulations on the project — in the face of intense backlash.

Griffen said Hyde misunderstood the county judge’s relationship with other elected officials, treating himself as the boss rather than respecting their respective powers and responsibilities. Griffen said he views the role as “at best, first among equals.” He aims to focus on accountability, transparency, fairness and inclusivity, he said. 

After trouncing Hyde in the primary in March, Griffen beat challenger Republican Michael Rushin in Tuesday night’s general election. Rushin ran on a campaign of vehement support of Hyde’s veto of the data-center regulations, which went into immediate effect on Oct. 27, when the veto was overridden in a 10-4 vote. Griffen was the chief architect and author of the regulations. Griffen took home 66% of the vote, about 84,400 votes. 

We had a chance to sit down with Griffen after his win to ask how he plans to keep the AVAIO lawsuit from draining attention and resources and his ideas for more sensible county development. 

Griffen is the first Black Pulaski County Judge, all the more noteworthy for a man who grew up in a sharecropping community in rural Arkansas and attended segregated elementary schools. 

Griffen said this election marks a turning point in the way Arkansans vote more broadly.  

“For much of the history of our state and our county, voting has been racially stratified… Chris Jones, Fred Love, Wendell Griffen never could get above 38% for statewide voting, even though we each had very good resumes, but Pulaski County is showing that we’re seeing much more cross-cultural voting, cross-generational voting,” Griffen said. 

The County Judge role is more powerful than voters may realize. Griffen said his new duties include responsibility for roads and bridges, overseeing the disbursement of funds and supervising 1,200-plus county employees.

Hyde did not act alone in inviting AVAIO into the county. The mayor of Little Rock and the Chamber of Commerce praised the project. Griffen said cooperation is the way forward, noting he’s not anti-development but in favor of reasonable development. “I don’t think that the county should pretend or should try to be a competitor to the Chamber of Commerce, or the city of Little Rock, or any of the other municipalities, but there should be collaboration and coordination,” he said.

theOn Oct. 28, AVAIO Digital filed suit against the county and Hyde (as well as Pulaski County Justice of the Peace Julie Blackwood) in federal court, a case that threatens to drag into Griffen’s tenure, beginning Jan. 1. The company argues that the county’s data center ordinance is unlawful. The suit also mentions Griffen’s significant influence on the process, arguing his communications with JPs violates Freedom of Information Act laws. 

A practicing lawyer for decades, Griffen seemed unfazed by the suit. He believes the Arkansas Constitution reserves land-use authorities to localities — and Act 851, passed in 2023, does not revoke that right, he said.

“[Land-use] powers are expressly reserved to localities, much to I suppose the frustration of some of the people in the high-intensity digital infrastructure sector who would have, I think, preferred that the local governments be hands off. We’re not, and we’re not going to be,” said Griggen.

As to whether the lawsuit might distract from his other duties or drain the county coffers, Griffen said he thinks the county is well-equipped to fight the charges.

“We  have a county attorney’s office, and I fully expect that our county attorney’s office is capable of handling litigation. We also have a very good relationship with the Association of Arkansas Counties that has litigation counsel, and so I think that those resources will be more than adequate for the task.”

Per the Encyclopedia of Arkansas, Griffen was born in Prescott in a rural sharecropping community in Pike County. He earned his undergraduate and law degrees at the University of Arkansas, and was appointed chairman of the Arkansas Workers’ Compensation Commission by Governor Bill Clinton, serving from 1986 to 1987. He served on the Arkansas Court of Appeals from 1996 to 2008 and as a Pulaski County circuit judge from 2011 to 2022. He is the current pastor of New Millennium Church in Little Rock and now lives in Little Rock with his wife, Patricia Griffen, a clinical psychologist.

Griffen lit up when asked what he does for fun, saying he spends his free time fighting bullies.

“I was the only Black boy in my high school class, so I know about being bullied, and I made myself a promise: if I ever became strong enough and smart enough, I would not use my strength or my smarts in oppressive ways, but I would use my strength and my smarts in ways that protected people,” he said.