Support for Arkansas Week provided by the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette.

The Arkansas Times and Little Rock Public Radio.

Hello again, everyone.

Thanks very much for being with us.

Fiscal sessions with the Arkansas General Assembly were designed to be intended to be fairly brief meetings, and the one just concluded fit that bill fairly brief.

They were also designed to address only budget matters with the sort of exceptions that we saw in the one just concluded.

And we'll get into that as well.

But also, they were hopefully designed to avoid a little spats, a little shower every now and then, maybe not this year.

And this edition will review the session.

And we'll begin with the president pro tem of the Senate, Mr.

Hester.

Senator Bart Hester, thanks very much for being with us.

The snag, Senator, seemed to be or was a budget for the State Game and Fish Commission.

What happened?

Well, thank you so much for having me, Steve.

Look, I think, you know, when members are down here and we're talking about a lot of budgets and a lot of amendments, sometimes we just don't get to the root of concerns.

And I think that's what happened.

We just we had four weeks.

Should have spent more focus and time on this from leadership perspective, but also from a membership perspective.

Members that had concerns probably should have a little bit a little bit more vocal.

We just kind of ran out of time and then here we are without a game of fish budget.

Well, one member who was vocal said that this this amendment when we're talking here about the salary for the game and or the potential salary anyway for the director of Game and Fish and she said that this amendment was sneaked into the agenda.

Is that fair?

Well, I don't think it's fair at all.

Or anything that goes to the normal process is not sneaked into or snuck in.

I'll tell you, I've been here.

You know, the session, physical session went on for weeks and for four weeks that was something was brought to my attention by many different people, was in many meetings that I was in.

It went from offering the the foundation, offering to pay more for Mr.

Booth salary and, you know, the legislature adjusted that.

So we would pay for thought we had an agreement and turned out we did not.

Well, as you say, sir, this thing should have in your words, it should have the process should have started a little earlier in the session.

Why didn't it.

Was why didn't it?

Well, you know, when we start session, it's real big.

There's a lot of things that we have to go through and talk about.

And so what you try to do is get through the easy things first, and then we'll work on the more difficult things or give them more time for people to talk about it and work through them.

So that's what we did.

We spent the first few weeks doing the things that that we knew were agreed on getting those in the past, but that also gave several weeks to work on these types of issues.

Look, I'll just tell you from a leadership perspective, in the meetings I said to him, we just did not see that this was going to be a problem on the last day, getting the 75 vote threshold in the House to pass it.

Yeah, well, there's no alternative.

Now, it would appear, save for the governor to call a special session or game and fish runs out of money in about a month and a half.

That's at the end.

I tried at the end of June.

They have no spending authority now that may have some money, but they have no spending authority.

And so we'll see what that looks like.

Look, I feel like Governor Sanders is going to call a special session.

We're not going to not have a game and fish.

We're not going to pay the 600 employees that are doing a great job working for the people of Arkansas.

We're going to get this fixed.

It's just not done yet.

Well, it's brim and crop season got well.

Brim season's coming up anyway.

And bass season, I assume you'll do this on a fairly fast track basis?

Well, I think we would have to.

Look, I hope we can get it done in May.

I have not spoken to the speaker.

I have not spoken to the governor about when we might call the fiscal session.

But look, we also know when you get into June and July, people are taking their grandkids and kids on vacation.

They're spending time.

They have plans.

It's something I think we need to get handled sooner rather than later, if for nothing more than just show respect to our game and fish employees who are doing such a great job for us.

Mr.

President, for the amount of money that was potentially anyway, the game infrastructure you learned would put him or her the position about on a par with other department heads.

If I understand the legislation correctly, is there something more at work here, a reluctance on some of the members?

Is there more at work here than just the dollars in the sense of it?

Well, there absolutely is.

And look, I think there's about four different issues at work right here.

I can't articulate all of them because I'm not certain that's what they are.

But one of the four issues is the is the director's salary.

We tried on the Senate it to amend that today.

Again, I don't know that a meeting that is the issue is the issue for some members but not for most.

Here's my position.

Anybody that's managing over 600 employees ought to make $200,000 a year.

I know that's a lot of money, but it is a huge job.

A job He never gets to go home from a job that his phone never stops ringing, a job that the pressures are real and all the time.

I think the position deserves close to $200,000.

And there are some members that want to keep that at 150.

I respect that position.

I just disagree with it.

Shift gears a little bit, if we can, Mr.

President.

A couple of months ago, certainly three months ago, the odds of the session taking up anything, any substantive legislation, anything other than fiscal seemed to be pretty remote.

But we had some crypto legislation go through.

We did.

I will tell you, it's not an issue that's affecting all of our members, but the members that it is affecting the people of Arkansas, that it's affecting in a negative way is a huge deal.

And I'll tell you, it's so compelling to to the stories that we heard of Arkansans that are having these crypto mines move in adjacent to their homes.

And it sounds like a jet engine going off 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

It's really unfair.

And I would like to think that if if it was happening to me or another neighbor, that everybody else would rally behind, too.

And I think the people of Arkansas would expect us to rally behind these people who were being really so unjustly treated by these Chinese companies.

If I if I can get a tax question in.

Mr.

President, no, no tax reduction legislation this session.

What is the feeling of the membership, including the leadership, about the next session?

You're budgeting here for about a 400.

That's the projection anyway, about a $400 billion surplus.

Yeah, I think it's going to be more than $400 million surplus.

Look, I think when the fiscal year ends, I think at that point we will start talking about a time to meet in August or September to continue to cut income taxes.

People of Arkansas, we continue to drop the rate.

Our revenues continue to increase.

That's a great sign for the economy and for the people of Arkansas.

Is that enough cushion, though, sir, in your estimation?

Well, it's enough cushion because we have over $2 billion in savings.

Look, if if we get it wrong or cut a little bit too much, that's the reason we put so much money in savings.

We don't think we are.

And look, if we if we have four or $500 million in surplus and we cut a couple hundred million off next year, that still leaves us a significant cushion along with our savings.

Well, we would offer congratulations, Mr.

President, because you've just gotten another term as president pro tempore.

What is the temperature of the Senate right now?

The rivalries can occur, as you well know.

Is there is there a peace in the Senate now?

Well, I think there's peace in the Senate.

I'll look, I'll tell you that.

Well, there will always be rivalries.

There will always be issues that we're fighting on.

But I'll tell you what I appreciate up the Senate, I really feel like 35 members respect each other and look, today we all work together.

I got members to stick around.

You know, when when you have members like Senator Hickey and Senator Ross and Senator and myself working well, Senator Blake Johnson, the whole team comes together and pushes forward.

It was it was another good day in the Arkansas Senate.

Now, Mr.

President, we thank you very much for your time.

I've got a feeling you'll be back with us soon.

Yes, sir.

All right.

Have a good day and we'll be right back.

And we are back.

And joining us now from Fayetteville, the leader of Senate Democrats, Senator Gregg Leving of Fayetteville.

Senator, thanks very much for for coming in.

Some of the same questions that we talked about.

Well, first of all, you're going to be back in Little Rock.

It would appear a little sooner than you'd anticipated.

Your thoughts on that?

It's certainly unfortunate.

Not necessarily surprised by the actions of the House didn't take today.

And failing to pass the appropriation for the Game and Fish Commission.

But certainly disappointed because it does mean that the legislature is almost certainly going to have to come in for a special session before the end of the fiscal year on June 30.

What is there more at work here than just the amount of money that a director of Game and Fish would earn or is or should earn might earn it?

To my knowledge, no.

That really does seem to be the crux of the issue in the House.

If there are other motivations, certainly haven't been shared with me.

But yeah, there were some House Republicans who were concerned about the appropriation raising the executive director salary from about 150 to about 190.

You know, a difference of about $40,000.

But now by coming back for a special session, which is going to have to at last for at least three calendar days, it's going to be a cost of at least $100,000 to taxpayers.

And again, for some people who might not understand, an appropriation is not actually money.

It's just a bucket that can hold money.

My understanding is that the Game and Fish Commission hadn't even decided to raise the director salary.

They were just asking for a bigger bucket in order to be competitive with surrounding states.

Well, I mean, the thinking well, the odds seem to favor a raise anyway.

But even if not, that would that that is would put the director of Game and Fish, which is an independent agency, but it would put him on a par or her on the director on a par with cabinet officers in the executive branch.

A fair argument?

Yeah, I think so.

I mean, that certainly is a significant jump and it's a lot more than the average Arkansan makes.

So I understand why some people would have an issue with that.

But you do have to remain competitive if you want the best people for jobs and government, you have to be able to pay them competitively.

And so if this is putting that position in line, then I personally didn't have any problem with it.

I don't know that anyone in the Senate had a problem with it because given my recollection, the Senate approved the appropriation unanimously.

Well, the House plainly had a problem with it.

Back to my question.

What's going on here?

Is there a dynamic that we simply don't see on the surface anyway?

Certainly seems to be, at least in the Republican caucus.

I mean, I haven't gone back and looked at the votes, but my understanding is that every House Democrat voted for the appropriation.

I could be wrong, but most of the issue with Game of Fish did seem to be in the Republican caucus.

Again, I'm not clear of any issue beyond the salary issue.

But again, unless the legislature acts to provide a budget for the agency before the end of the fiscal year, people aren't going be able to get their fishing licenses.

Their hunting licenses likely won't be able to fish on lakes.

The game and fish owns and operates all these critical services that the agency provides will simply go unfulfilled.

Well, I got a feeling we'll take care of that.

But on to the larger fiscal picture.

You've got a budget and you got a revenue stabilization budget that's somewhat in excess of 6 billion, probably double that when federal funds were added in dispensing through state agencies anyway.

Is this the you had some qualms about the budget and your conference in the Senate and the General Assembly had some qualms about that, but some reservations?

We did for a number of reasons.

I mean, I know it was touted that this was one of the smallest increases in recent history, but my understanding is it's only the smallest increase since 2022.

So I don't think anybody should get too proud of that.

Obviously, no one down in Little Rock wants to spend more than we should, but we there are those of us who think we need to spend everything that we need to to meet critical needs.

Our governor, for some reason, was determined to keep spending below 2%.

So what we ended up seeing was growth of about 1.76%.

If I remember correctly, it's about $109 million in growth over last year's budget.

What really concerned us, though, was that the Learns act, the education overhaul that we passed last year and that had bipartisan opposition accounted for 100 million of that 109 million and growth, a lot of that going to the education freedom vouchers.

So there's a lot of concern there about what the continued growth of that program is going to mean for the state budget.

And if you're artificially trying to keep the budget low, but Lawrence is eating up so much of the growth that you have, what what needs aren't going met because you're trying to meet this arbitrary threshold?

Well, the majority vote, the majority in both chambers and certainly the administration would argue this is exactly what Ms.. Sanders was elected to do and that she's frankly very proud of holding the increase at under 2%.

Well, I think any elected official would be proud to say that they've managed to keep spending under a certain amount of control.

But again, there are a lot of critical needs that might be going unmet just because you're trying to do so artificially.

I think the better thing to stand on would be to say that you are you properly sufficiently funding all of the state's needs, making sure that rural hospitals don't close, that rural schools don't close, and that all these critical resources in rural communities that do tend to be the most vulnerable stay alive and are thriving.

So those communities are alive and thriving.

Well, it would appear that with the surplus that's anticipated and President Hester mentioned this a second ago, that's the possibility as a strong possibility anyway, of a special session later in the year to address tax policy, meaning tax cuts.

Your thoughts on that?

Again, that's no surprise.

We've heard for some time now that it would be likely that we would come in to pass another round of tax cuts.

It is an election year after all.

Again, just any elected official who should would just naturally be opposed to the idea of cutting taxes.

But again, you got to look at where your growth, where you want to be, what you need to invest in, in order for the state to continue to grow and for Arkansans to get the services that they need.

You can't just continue to cut branches off the tree or some day you're just going to be left with the stone.

Fiscal sessions are, of course, designed to be exactly that.

Nothing more, no substantive legislation.

But the General Assembly addressed the crypto mining matter to your satisfaction.

Not particularly.

Again, I think most every lawmaker has some degree of regret over the legislation we passed in 2023.

So there was concern coming into a fiscal session that not only was this not an appropriate session to consider this type of legislation, but given the calendar that was originally laid out that we would only be working for about nine days over three weeks, didn't feel that we had the time to come up with a sufficient, meaningful and fully informed solution.

Part of the reason we wound up in this situation was because we moved way too quickly on legislation last year.

I believe that legislation was introduced in the last week of the session and passed pretty quickly.

So there was just concern that we would be able to get this right in the time frame that we had.

We were able to put some bills in place, hopefully that will provide some sort of meaningful relief to the Arkansans who are affected.

But I imagine you're going to see Democrats and Republicans come back to this issue more aggressively when we meet in the regular session next January.

Well, in terms of the regular session, your conference now, the Democratic caucus, anyway, is a decided minority.

What are your going to be your priorities?

Can you look ahead again?

Democratic priorities haven't really changed.

Continuing to defend public education.

Tough in rural communities, defend rural hospitals, defend health care, access for Arkansans.

And there's going to be a lot as we go into the fall with national messaging on some of those issues.

In terms of the presidential election.

You know, Democrats care about helping working people and making sure that all rural communities have the resources they need to continue to grow and thrive.

That doesn't always mean being able to go and cut taxes because, again, you want to be able to fund the resources that all Arkansans need.

So, again, public education, public safety, access to critical health care are going to be some of our top issues.

Yeah.

Well, the political climate within the General Assembly.

Is that going to be in any way conducive?

You don't have a great deal of muscle in either chamber, the Democrats.

So is that politically doable?

What's in that is fair?

There are just six of us.

Out of the 35 senators, but part of the Republican caucus and one of the issues of them being so large is that they aren't always able to be cohesive.

We are often able to find allies in the Republican caucus.

What I would say to Arkansans who are sort of frustrated right now, particularly those who may be consistently voted for Republicans, I understand that vote.

The idea of voting for a Democrat or somebody else might be very difficult.

But if you are frustrated with your Republican representation, you can't keep voting them back into power.

Or if things are never going to change, the message there is that they can do things you don't like, but you'll keep rewarding them by returning them to power.

So I think our cards really need to take a hard look at what they want to see from their elected officials when they go to vote this November.

Well, you have a great many candidates on the ballot for the General Assembly, both chambers.

Will the composition come January be different?

My party I mean, I. I am confident the Democrats are going to pick up a couple of seats this November.

We are still a ways away from being able to capture about half the chambers or retake the majority for sure.

But the Democratic Party is on a path to being able to do that at some point.

The frustrations I hear, obviously not just from Democrats in Arkansas, but independents and a lot of Republicans are clear.

But again, that's why they got to give so much thought to who they going to vote for this November.

Greg Ludwig is the minority leader of Senate Democrats in Arkansas.

Mr.

Letting.

Thanks very much for being with us.

Come back soon.

Thank you.

All right.

And we'll be right back.

And we conclude this edition with some sounds and images, some moments from Washington, from the nation's capital.

There's a new addition to the statuary of the seat of our government.

Each state is entitled to a place beneath the dome.

Statutes of individuals they choose as icons.

For the first time in more than a century, there's been a change in Arkansas's designees, stands there now in bronze.

Arkansas civil rights legend Mrs.

Daisy Bates of State's political leadership and the captains of both congressional chambers were on hand this week for a ceremony rich in symbolism and hour when the old made way for the new.

Some highlights.

Oh, my head.

While I run this to raise some Oh, my first one is raise.

You see, at the age of three, America through three angry, white, racist, raped, killed and threw her mother in a lake and were never held responsible.

A murderer come through racism, ran her father away from the paper mill job he held in thick Arkansas.

Leaving her with neighbors to be raised without either a mother or father.

America through blind sided white business owners, refused to advertise in her and else's newspaper because she pushed for justice in education, causing them to lose their newspaper without the ability to financially survive themselves.

The song of America was not the tune for Daisy Bates.

I have to believe that the Almighty had a bigger and better song for Daisy then just 26 years old.

Bates Associate and friend and dear friend to many in this room.

Annie Abrams describe Daisy's role.

Bates stood out as one of the few females in the leadership position in the movement for African-American Rights at that time, and she was the person for the moment.

Daisy risked everything in her life to make a difference in Little Rock and beyond, fighting for what she believed to be right, even when she knew she might lose the battle.

She was the true embodiment of courage.

Through it all, segregationists constantly threatened Daisy and her family.

They hurled rocks through her window.

They sent her shell casings through their mail.

They burned crosses on her property, but she fought on undeterred.

One year, a group of racist men rammed the back of her station wagon and threatened to drag her from her car and into the street.

She unlocked her door and politely pulled out her pistol.

The men took off.

Daisy Bates was not playing games.

Daisy Bates was a courageous woman.

She often spoke about being afraid, afraid when rocks were being thrown through her window, afraid that a bomb or an assassination could happen.

Afraid when she told the Little Rock nine, quote, One of us might die in this fight.

And I said to them, If they kill me, you would have to go on if I die.

Don't you stop.

It's a privilege to honor Daisy Bates, an extraordinary Arkansan, a civil rights legend.

This statue signifies her singular contribution to justice and fairness in our state and in our nation.

So I want to thank the Arkansas Statue Statuary Hall Steering Committee for their work to organize this event.

And I want to recognize the Little Rock Nine whom Daisy Bates so ably led.

Their bravery and grace in the face of injustice captivated a nation 67 years ago and has inspired generations of Americans ever since.

In 1997, my dad, then Governor Mike Huckabee, joined then President Bill Clinton to ceremonially open the doors of central to the Little Rock Nine.

It's still to this day, one of my most vivid memories from growing up.

Thousands cheering in the crowd, media from literally all over the world and up on the dais with the president.

The governor and the mayor was a daisy in her rightful place of honor.

I want to give a special thanks to the Arkansas State Committee, Governor Sanders, former Governor Hutchison and the Daisy Mates Home Museum Foundation board for going through this lengthy process and making today possible, finally possible.

And of course, we want to thank Benjamin Victor.

He is the sculptor of this magnificent statue.

Thanks, Rex.

In case you didn't know that this this is his fourth statue here in Statuary Hall.

And that may be a record.

I'm not sure, but it's amazing.

We're really grateful for his artistic contributions.

And I know most of you haven't been able to see the statue up close yet, but when you do, you'll you'll admire a lot of things about it.

One of the things I like, I noticed right off the bat is you'll notice a lot of the great citizens who are memorialized here have a grimace on their face.

She's got a big, beautiful smile.

And you know what that is?

That's the facial expression of someone who is an overcomer.

That's what that says to me.

That's right.

Come September, a second Arkansas statue will be added to the nation's capital.

A gentleman named Johnny Cash.

We'll have more on that in a subsequent broadcast for us right now.

That does it for this week.

See you next week.

Support for Arkansas Week provided by the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette.

The Arkansas Times and Little Rock Public Radio.