Support for Arkansas Week provided by the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, the Arkansas Times and Little Rock Public Radio.

And hello again, everyone.

Thanks very much for being with us.

How to spend more than $6 billion?

Well, proposal budget.

Call the General Assembly on the session and tell the members you'll approve it if they approve it, more or less.

It's the fiscal session of the legislature.

The meeting that occurs in even numbered years to set state spending in the fiscal year that begins in mid-summer.

Education, public and private.

Now higher ed medical care for the indigent and prisons and the budget is where we begin.

The session began, as always, with an address by the chief executive.

Here's Governor Sarah Huckabee Sanders in an excerpt.

We are building a better, a safer and a stronger Arkansas.

In fact, our work is making Arkansas a model for the nation.

Our priorities are reflected in the budget that we put before us.

Hard as it may be, I made a promise to the people of Arkansas that we would work to slow the growth of government.

And with the help of my cabinet, we have kept it.

This year's budget increases spending by only 1.76%, far below the 3% year over year average that we have had in recent years.

If you send me a budget that funds critical services for Arkansans while slowing the growth of government, I will sign it.

And they seem the General Assembly seems likely to do pretty much exactly that.

We're joined now by Andrew DeMello, the capital bureau chief of the Associated Press and one of the Arkansas Advocate and chosen Eleanora of Little Rock Public Radio.

Thanks to everybody for coming in.

Andrew.

We are off and running.

It is a budget indeed proposed that is significantly lower than in previous sessions, but it's also lower than inflation.

Yeah, that's right.

And nearly all of the increase that the governor has made in her budget is education related, primarily linked to a learns her her legislation that she signed last year creating a new voucher program.

And the criticism that you're hearing from some Democrats and advocacy groups is that this is not keeping up with inflation and it's going to leave some some services underfunded.

Well, let's take it from the top there in terms of education.

Antoinette.

Yes.

Education, lots of things.

So the overall proposed increase is about $109 million.

And about 100 of that intervention is for the Lawrence Act.

So lots of things that the Lawrence Act does.

The vouchers being the biggest.

Increasing teacher pay to 50,000.

For the vouchers specifically about 65.8 million of that.

So the majority of it is going to the educational free and the count program which earlier this month opened up applications for year two people were able to start renewing.

So if you were in the first year and you wanted to renew for the second, you could start doing that in March.

But they opened it up to brand new people on April 1st.

Brand new schools for new people.

The governor and the Education secretary had a big event kind of announcing that, and they were really excited about that.

During her State of the State address, she mentioned that on the first day, 1800 new people signed up.

And so she's expecting it to grow about a quarter of that, she said.

Our active duty military families and military reservists.

Now, the first group they were allowed in year one, as we've expanded into year two, that second group is part of that new group that's being allowed to illicit that.

Again, this this new expanded group includes.

Sure.

Why?

Sure.

So the new expanded group includes eligibles anyway.

Yes.

Eligibility?

Yes.

You don't have to, but the eligibility is expanding as we're rolling this out over three years.

So in year two, it's expanding to include students that are enrolled in D. Rated schools, children of veterans, military reservist and first responders.

Yeah, Chelsea, this would seem to have its own momentum.

Yeah.

The governor's really proud of this program that Antoinette just said is eventually going to be open to everyone.

One of the guests she had at the State of the State address was a young kid with Down's syndrome in his family who was allowed to go to the Compass Academy using Education Freedom Account money.

And she was really proud that she was able to help provide this kid with this experience and give them all this money.

What's interesting is when we've talked about this before is a lot of this money is going to families who are already on the higher end of the socioeconomic spectrum.

So it's not necessarily going to the most financially needy people.

But this is exactly the sort of the program the governor wanted.

This was an early initial criticism of the plan.

And its first stage was that most of the great majority of the money was going to families who were already in private or parochial schools.

That's what we've seen looking at other states that have rolled this out over the years.

When this first was announced here, I did speak to some folks that are you know, this is what they study.

And that's what they said.

They said like in Arizona, for example, I think it was like 75% in that first year of their program.

Those were all people who were already going to private school.

So it wasn't necessarily getting those new students, as has necessarily been advertised by the governor.

That may change as we move forward and more people are available to or eligible to enroll will have to wait and see.

But the criticism of folks that have been kind of opposed to this is that it's the financial piece, right, that they are arguing you're taking state funding and giving it to private schools because this is used for allowable expenses, but it's mostly been for private school tuition.

But the criticism is that they're not private schools are not held to the same standards as public schools.

Public schools, for example, have to admit everyone.

They have to provide transportation and they have to test students.

And that's not all required of these private schools, the EFA schools, they do have to test the students, but that's the only equal requirement.

Andrew When we expect the criticism of this program to continue to grow, particularly in parts of rural Arkansas anyway.

Definitely.

And you know, Democrats have said they hope to at least highlight their concerns about the cost of the program, especially, you know, seeing how much of the budget increase is going toward it in in this first year.

But we also have to remember, it's a predominantly Republican legislature and the governor has been, you know, her top agenda items get through fairly easily this year.

We're not expecting that much pushback to her budget in this session either.

So there may be some, you know, complaints about it, but we don't really expect it to really slow down her or her plans, at least for the fiscal session.

Okay.

And it looks like state employees, many anyway, are going to get Andrew a little bump, but it's kind of a stop gap approach that the governor is doing pending a restructuring of the grid.

Yeah, that's right.

You know, the governor has has made some temporary proposals with the pay plan, but this is kind of laying the groundwork for 2025 when she wants to have a larger overhaul to the pay to the pay plan.

But this is at least giving, you know, giving a one time increase to state employees, at least to try to be able to help recruit employees and be able to retain the employees they have.

But the bigger changes that we're going to see are on the way next year.

Well, speaking of reshuffling things, we've got a supplemental of what basically is a supplemental appropriation this year in excess of $4 million.

And this goes to the criminal justice program, and it is to reimburse local entities, local jails, counties for holding state inmates.

So there was a little bit of discussion and some conflict at a meeting on Thursday about this that the Department of Corrections has come requesting $4.2 million for this current year, not for the next fiscal session and the fiscal year.

And so that was kind of part of the issue that was happening.

The concern is that they will run out of funding to reimburse the county jails that are holding state prisoners.

Before we get to that next fiscal year, Senator Jimmy Hickey of Texarkana voiced a lot of concern about this, because part of this is that the money that kept saying, you know, the money can be rolled over, so whatever isn't used can be rolled over.

His point was, well, then then we don't have an accurate budget because you should be budgeting for that for next year.

And additionally, the state budget officer said, you know, I think they miscalculated and I think it's actually closer to 3 million.

To which he was like, so why are we asking for 4.2?

Senator Linda Chesterfield, a Democrat from Little Rock, mentioned that, well, if we know that for sure, we'll be safe with the 4.2.

We should go with that.

Where's the three?

You know, if we are short, we'll have to come back here again and do this all over again.

So why not just give them that?

Because they don't have to use the full 4.2, but we have to give them the permission in order for them to access.

So potentially there's a million bucks hanging out there.

Exactly.

It eventually worked out that everybody voted for it and they'll move forward with that.

But it definitely did cause a lot of conversation.

Yeah.

Arkansas Department of Correction is going to figure big in this fiscal session and absolutely in the next regular session anyway.

Yes.

Department of Corrections is going to keep having conversations about things.

There was another meeting Thursday.

Nice way to put it.

We are we are having discussions and conversations.

That's what's happening right now.

And Thursday, there was also another meeting where subpoenas were issued.

So that ongoing conversation between the corrections and the governor's office.

They have been a legislative group, has been looking into the procedures of the boards and specifically this contract with the lawyer that they hired to represent them in this case against the governor's office.

Yeah, that lawyer was paid over $200,000.

It was $200,000 for the initial price, and then an extra $7,000 were tacked on to that.

He said in a hearing that he did it for his love of employment law.

But the Arkansas legislature is really a stickler about procurement law, and there is some evidence that this maybe didn't actually follow current law.

It's a little awkward because they're suing the governor.

So, you know, it's strange that they had to get, you know, legislative approval to sue the governor.

It was a very awkward situation.

But I thought the members of the board of Corrections seemed a little embarrassed about the way that the whole thing had played out.

But this lawyer's going to be on the payroll until, I think, December.

And on top of that, the second person they subpoenaed was Alonzo Jiles, who's on the Board of Corrections, and he's tied to the boarding school, the Lord's Ranch, which is in northeast Arkansas.

And there's a lot of allegations at that boarding school of like child sexual abuse and a lot of horrific things like that.

And so they want to hear from him, too.

Yeah, well, even if the board has to eat a bit of crow, I mean, the situation basically the legal the arguments anyway, in in as it involves the board of corrections haven't changed.

Yeah.

The substance of the debate is these hearings are going on for a long time and they're incredibly repetitive and I think it's a lot of just like they're very frustrated with the board of Corrections, the way they handled the situation.

I think they really want to drive that home.

The legislature does.

There's a lot of questions about process and procedure, I believe.

And in these hearings, what we've found, you know, I think it was last week or maybe the week before, they all start to blend together, but they were sort of talking about like, well, what is your procedure, you know, for doing this or for doing that?

And the point with this particular issue, with this contract for this lawyer and issues about procurement law, and if they follow those procedures and and there is even the changing of the amount from originally is 200,000 in the form of submit it was to 7000 is like a lack of procedure.

But also, as someone pointed out in Thursday's meeting, is like I don't know that they did this intentionally.

It's such a unique position and it's such a unique situation that we're not really sure necessarily what the rules are, what the processes.

And I think a lot of times that's what we've seen legislatively since I've been covering the legislature in last two years, is there are a lot of things where, especially like with procurement law, where people are questioned by legislators about did you follow this process?

And they didn't.

But then it's a question of intent.

And a lot of times it's people didn't know or they made a mistake or things like that versus they intentionally did something malicious.

Yeah.

Andrew This is all a kind of a kind of way, a prelude to what's going to unfold in the next session, and that's involving the Department of Correction prison expansion, prison staffing, etc.. You know, this is all, you know, going against the backdrop of the implementation of the criminal justice overhaul that was signed last year.

Concerns that they're going to be about the impact this is going to have on the prison system as a whole.

You know, we've seen a backlog of prisoners in county jails.

And there's the concern about what's going to happen.

You know, as you have these tougher sentencing laws taking effect and this is going to be happening at the same time, you've got this, you know, fight over powers between board of correction and legislature and the governor, and it's not going to be resolved anytime soon, and it's going to be contentious.

Yeah, however it comes out.

Okay.

Speaking of procurement, the session begins as there is still uncertainty over the outcome of a legislative audit, investigation or inquiry requested by the legislature into the governor's acquisition of a podium.

Andrew, what do we know about it?

As of today, by the way, for the benefit of our audience, where we're taping it midmorning on Friday?

Yeah.

Yeah.

There's the caveat of, you know, as of 1025, we have not seen the audit into the infamous $19,000 lectern that's gotten so much attention.

Earlier this week, the co-chair of Legislative Audit Committee said basically that it will be released to the public by early the middle of next week.

There's still question about how is it going to be released?

Is there going to be hearing on it?

And what exactly is it going to say?

You know, we got a little bit of a hint of where things may be headed.

The attorney general's office released a non-binding legal opinion that appears to kind of lay the groundwork for a potential defense that the governor may have, depending on what the findings are.

And we still don't know what they're going to be.

But this is kind of still hanging over the session right now.

And at midmorning, I would emphasize again, we have not none of us, I don't think, have had the opportunity to read the AG's opinion anyway.

No.

Yeah.

No, but I will look at it as soon as we get out of here, because I'm very I'm very curious to see what it says, because this is something that's been ongoing since last fall.

And as I kind of mentioned before with procurement law and things like that, a lot of it is process and I I'm curious to see what they say and then what comes out of that, because you can find one thing.

But then my understanding is it's if you take steps to do something about what you find moving on, this is a fiscal session on what what's termed substantive legislation typically is not included, and it requires an extraordinary vote of General Assembly to consider non fiscal matters.

Well, the crypto issue would seem to have some momentum behind it.

Yes.

So in order for folks to consider things that are not part of the budget, so non fiscal issues, they have to pass a while resolutions and then that they can talk about it.

Right.

So the Senate started the process Thursday.

Well, Wednesday and Thursday, they approved a resolution to talk about a plan.

But then also several of I believe eight in cryptocurrency on Thursday.

And then this all has to be approved by the House before people can introduce actual legislation and start talking about this.

But the crypto currency thing that's happening is there've been a lot of complaints from residents around the state that are near these cryptocurrency mines and about noise and and energy and things like that, and they're looking for ways to regulate it and do something now instead of waiting till the legislative session next year.

Yeah, there's just several problems with these crypto mines.

They're giant computers that are often put in these rural areas the size of a football field, and they make this loud, screeching, humming noise.

So there's kind of I've narrowed it down to three problems.

There's the energy issue, there's the loud screeching noise.

And then the third thing is the ties to, you know, communist China.

And then there was a recent congressional report that tied cryptocurrency, not necessarily these mines, but cryptocurrency to the terrorist group Hamas.

So there's just a lot of stuff that makes people squeamish and it kind of covers all of its bases there.

I've seen I've been talking a lot to Brian King about it and the reason why we're seeing all of these crypto mines pop up.

He said that they're popping up like mushrooms after a spring rain.

And the reason why we're seeing this is because during, in his words, the Banana Republic, part of the last legislative session, because he thinks they passed too many bills too quickly, they passed a bill that deregulated crypto mines with very little discussion.

And now we're seeing all these crypto mines pop up.

And a lot of these people who live in these real area say they're way too loud and they're very uncomfortable with the ties that these crypto miners have to foreign countries.

And there's just a lot of questions that people have.

So he's trying to move now to regulate the mines, maybe give people warning periods like six months in order to bring the mines.

We had there was a really interesting legislative session, a legislative meeting a couple of days ago where they talked to call in Reed.

And he is the former mayor of a small town in New York and New York state.

And he talked about how these lobbyists came into his town and told him these mines are so great, they're going to burn all these jobs and ended up being the total opposite.

He said McDonald's did more for the economy in his town than these crypto mines did.

It was a huge disaster.

Yeah, well, you mentioned the energy issue.

These things are and consume enormous amounts of energy just to operate.

They consume as much energy as a lot of like small towns generate.

So that's a really concerning for a lot of people.

And so people are worried it could hike up their energy bill or make it difficult for them for people to want to live in that area unless it property taxes.

There's just a lot of concerns.

And I think Brian King is extremely curious to just learn more about these mines.

Senator Missy Irvin is having a study done on the mines.

And also just on top of that, I think he wants people to have the right to be able to refuse them or cities to have the right to refuse them.

I know some cities have passed noise ordinances to keep for Vilonia on Harris and pass laws to try to keep their ordinances, to try to keep these mines from come through town.

Multiple pieces of legislation on the issue.

Andrew Miller Would would this, with the issue, seem to have the momentum, momentum behind it for this legislation?

Yeah, for this session that there's at least momentum for the discussion.

We have to remember though, that there's been a tradition for the fiscal sessions since we've had them since 2009 or so that people want to keep legislators want to keep these limited, they want to keep it to the budget.

So if this blows up to an issue that kind of takes over and kind of turns this into almost a regular session, that may kind of dull some of the momentum on this.

If the ideas are everywhere and it seems to be from scaling back, making tweaks to the law, to repealing it entirely and coming up with a whole new regulatory system of.

So it kind of depends on, you know, how much of that momentum get ends up being killed by things going in completely opposite directions.

Yeah, it's always been the approach, the philosophy behind a fiscal anyway, unspoken is in out 30 days and let's get out of here.

Right.

And there was something in talking to Democrats Thursday they kind of stayed out of they decide to stay out of the votes on that.

And one of the legislators that I talked to, that's kind of what they said is, you know, historically we've said that this is or he personally had said that, you know, we try to just stick to the fiscal and I want to hold to that.

And but, you know, the Republicans that were for these particular issues had said, you know, I think it was Senator Clark who had said, you know, I don't want to wait a whole year if that's causing this much trouble for constituents.

Is there something that could be done right now?

So they're looking at, you know, a variety of different things that could be done now to sort of, I guess, a stopgap measure, if you will.

Democrats, particularly in the Senate, have been silent on this.

Now they are decided distinct minority in there.

But Joe, see that?

Yeah, there's a woman named Gladys Anderson and she lives next to the one in Greenbrier.

And she has an autistic son and an elderly mother.

And it's incredibly loud.

She'll send me audio of it and it's this loud shrieking noise and she really can't leave her house or go outside.

The people, the neighbors said they can't go outside because of the sound.

So what you hear those stories and I mean, she's been profiled in The New York Times and these are pretty harrowing stories about people stuck next to these crypto mines and they can't move because no one wants to take their house and it's just unbelievably loud.

And so I think there might be some kind of urgency.

We're also seeing a lot of grassroots movements of local community members who are just really eager to stop these mines from coming to their community.

Yeah, well, any logic behind or the thinking behind the Democrats sitting this one out, essentially?

They didn't really tell me specifically.

They just said, you know, we just decided to sit it out.

We have a couple of reasons why they didn't tell me specifically what those reasons were.

I mean, other than, you know, the piece with the fiscal focusing just on the fiscal things and keeping it to that, okay, a previous act or actions of the General Assembly has the state in court.

Andrew Demelo and we're talking about the gender issue.

Yeah, that's that's right.

The eighth U.S.

Circuit Court of Appeals this week heard arguments over Arkansas's ban on gender affirming medical care for youth.

This is the law that got struck down last year by a federal judge as unconstitutional.

And this was a rather unusual hearing because it was the full eighth Circuit hearing it rather than a three judge panel.

And it was an interesting hearing where they really seemed to focus on arguments about whether or not this this law bans or this law discriminates on the basis of sex.

And this could be a landmark case, you know, appears to be headed toward the U.S. Supreme Court right now, which has already been asked to block two other similar laws.

You know, you have 24 states that have similar restrictions on gender affirming care.

So this is you know, this was a major step toward, you know, seeing this eventually end up before a before Supreme Court.

Yeah.

Any indication at all from the from the tenor of the arguments, the texture of the arguments, even where this thing is going to go in terms of the appellate level or the eighth Circuit.

Anyway, it was kind of hard to tell because you only had a handful of judges, you as a ten judge panel hearing it or ten judges hearing it, and you only had a handful of judges asking questions.

One judge, who was the only judge who's been appointed by a Democratic president, was really, you know, questioning the the state, you know, very know repeatedly about some of their arguments.

And you had you had the ACLU use attorney also facing some questions, too.

So it's kind of hard to tell where that where it's headed right now.

And you have to remember that eighth Circuit previously, you know, declined to overturn the preliminary injunction that had temporarily blocked this law.

So it's kind of interesting to watch where this is going to be headed.

But there was they didn't really tip their hand on where the ruling is going to go.

You want to tip your hand or I you want to guess anybody?

Oh, I would I would dare to guess.

I'm interested to see what happens because we've kind of gotten this space where you start having this patchwork of laws.

You know, as Andrew mentioned, there are other states that have similar things.

And in some places they've been allowed to implement.

Their version of the law in Arkansas was the first and it was blocked and and still currently blocked.

So I'm curious to see, like I, I agree with him that will probably end up in the Supreme Court.

And you know what it will actually turn into.

And it's just interesting, I think also to me as an Arkansan, to see something like this landmark case start here in Arkansas and then work its way up.

Yeah.

Wouldn't be the first time, though.

And, you know, part of the larger fabric here is that so many states, including Oregon, particularly in the South, but not only the South, venturing into the field of social issues with legislation that are destined for the courts and the outcome one way or the other.

Yeah, there has been an uptick in bills that have been introduced and or passed and laws not just in Arkansas but around the country, specifically affecting transgender folks in the last recent years.

And and so I'm curious to see if that will continue this year or for here in Arkansas for the legislative next year.

But that's just a trend that we've been seeing in recent years.

Yeah, got to wrap it there because we're simply out of time.

Thanks to everybody for coming in.

As always, we thank you for joining us and we'll see you next week.

Support for Arkansas Week provided by the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, The Arkansas Times and Little Rock Public Radio.