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

The Arkansas Times and Little Rock Public Radio.

And hello again, everyone, and thanks very much for being with us.

We are on the verge of a legislative session to serve the state's budget for the approaching fiscal year.

And in case you've not noticed, it is also an election year.

The governor's proposal for state spending, the administer nation and the Arkansas Prison Board, the primaries and what they suggest or may for the balance of the year.

With a look at all that and more Arkansas advocates, Antoinette Carter from Little Rock Public Radio, Jo Celia, Nora and independent journalist Steve Bronner.

Thanks to everybody for coming in.

Steve, we've got the governor's spending agenda.

What she seems most proud of is that it's as small as it is, less than a 2% increase.

In fact, it's 1.76% over the previous budget.

That's still an increase, but under inflation.

So, you know, she's she's proposed a $6.31 billion budget for the fiscal session.

Right now, they started in 2009 after voters approved them.

So we had these every two years in between the regular session is supposed to be just on budgetary matters, but they can vote on other things if they decide to do it with a two thirds majority.

But yes, she's a proposed 6.31 billion.

That's an increase of 1.3 million.

And with the budget surplus projected, 376.6 million.

Now, that's more than the last one, but less than we had this gargantuan surplus just a few years ago.

In fact, we had 1.6 to 8 billion in 2022, which was just obscene, absurd, never even contemplated before.

So but between tax cuts and increased spending and the COVID dollars are not quite flowing into the state like they used to.

But the surplus is shrinking, so there's no plans for a tax cut.

This session of the governor has steadily decreased SESSIONS She says she wants to get rid of income tax entirely, but no plans for this one.

They're going to kind of wait and see what the numbers look like after the fiscal year ends June 30th.

They'll probably have a special session after that where taxes will probably be cut.

Yeah.

Do we see anybody see a trend line any way, Steve, on on state revenues, given those tax cuts, the surpluses are not as big as they used to be, but this was bigger than the last one.

All right.

So projected I mean, we don't know what the future holds, but that's where we are.

So the trend line is way less than those humongous ones of a few years ago, but still healthy enough that we can still probably cut taxes, assuming that we can keep paying for the things that we've added, like $50,000 a year, teacher salaries and and other things that are that are that will pop up.

Okay.

Well, you mentioned the teacher salaries.

The biggest increase to this budget next year is for education.

A lot of it is for the priorities, the provisions in the Lawrence Act.

You mentioned the teacher salaries, the amount that they are increasing.

This is roughly $100 million.

The majority of that, about 64 million is for the voucher program, the Educational Freedom Account program being phased in over three years.

It's going to provide state funding, about 60 $700 right now for students for eligible education expenses, mostly private school tuition.

Right now.

The second year of the program will expand to include more kids.

It was capped at one and a half percent of the enrollments this year.

It's going to be 3% and expand to like schools that were included the first year children of military veterans and first responders, things like that.

So it makes sense that you would need more money, I guess, you know, because you're in theory, going to have more kids that would take advantage of this potentially.

Right.

So that's about the $64 million that that 100 million.

And then the other 35 million is for other things.

The large piece being the teacher salary, which is, of course, being raised from 36000 to 50000 as the minimum.

And the state has said we will help schools by paying the difference.

And so this is kind of where that funding has come from to support that.

Is it fair to say that that learns, if it's not tweaked or adjusted, is it's only fair to assume that it's going to continue to demand additional funding?

There have been discussions and questions about what the funding is going to look like as we continue to go forward.

I believe last year when this was being discussed, some lawmakers who were more familiar with budgetary things were saying that eventually it'll be like worked into the budget anyways.

It could be worked into places like the The Matrix, which is used to calculate per student funding and things like that, because that's something they're looking at right now.

They're going through the adequacy process of determining, you know, how much they're going to lot for that.

And so that's something that could be worked in Well, and the voucher program is still very much alive and expanding.

It is expanding.

I spoke to the Department of Education yesterday and they said applications will start April 1st and, of course, expanding to more students there.

And again, it's opt in.

So there's you know, even though it's at 3% cap, there's no guarantee that all of those students are going to apply.

Of course, what I'll be really interested to see is if more private schools decide to opt in this year.

Last year there was almost 100, I believe, that participated in the initial year.

And some of the folks I talked to, you know, they were about why they didn't participate the first year.

They're like, well, we kind of want to wait and see how this plays out and what this looks like.

And then other schools and there were a handful that I had talked to over the summer who had applied and then didn't end up participating because they didn't qualify.

One of the reasons being like, oh, they hadn't been in operation for a whole year yet, which is one of the qualifications to participate in the program.

So I'm really curious to see if there's an uptick in private schools that buy in or if it stays equal, what that looks like if if the bulk of it thus far has been concentrated in urban Arkansas, whether it's the northwest corner or central Arkansas is there, it's going to be tough for some rural districts or rural areas to take advantage of it, of vouchers.

The student base isn't there are there are challenges.

A number of the rural areas, we've we've kind of done some researching last year, looking kind of at a map to see what this looks like.

And some of there just aren't private schools in that area, so it's not nearby.

It doesn't mean you can't take advantage.

They could go to a nearby the nearest town or wherever is the nearest private school.

But the issue there is private schools are not required to provide transportation.

So in these rural areas, which are generally lower socioeconomic conditions, you know, mom and dad might be working two or three jobs and they don't have time to take you or they don't have the gas money to take you.

That type of thing.

There is there is in the Learning Act, some money for like creative transportation, things like that.

But I haven't heard too much about like how that's playing out or how that funding will be used to support things like that.

Yeah, and the accountability argument is still alive, at least in some quarters.

Steve Joseph of the General Assembly.

Yeah.

We don't exactly know what those accountability parameters are going to look like.

The governor keeps promising them, and she's pretty adamant that they're going to hold private schools to account to the same accountability standards as public schools.

And we also don't know how homeschooling is going to factor in yet.

But right now, the rules would say that by 2025, these are going to this these education freedom accounts are going be open to everyone.

Yeah.

Okay.

Moving on.

We need to update our our assessment or our coverage anyway, of the, shall we say, tension between the administration, the Sarah Huckabee Sanders administration, the governor's office and the Board of Correction, the prison system.

Chelsea.

So let's recap.

Joe Per Feehery, who was on the board, he decided to add a bunch of prison beds at the governor's behest, but not at the behest of the Board of Corrections.

They didn't want to add the prison beds.

They said they didn't have the room or the staff or the capacity.

So it triggered this massive lawsuit.

After they tried to get rid of Joe Periphery, they went to a hearing and they hired an outside counsel for $200,000.

That was the number on the contract.

The problem is they didn't go through and they admitted this in a legislative hearing.

They didn't go to the state procurement process.

You can't just hire your own outside counsel.

You actually have to ask the governor for approval, which is ironic, because they're literally in a lawsuit with the governor.

So they hired this independent.

Yes.

So they literally hired this outside counsel for $200,000.

And then now they're admitting that the spinning Magnus admitted that this was not proper and not the correct way to do it.

He's still going to have this contract until the end of the year and he's still going to work for them.

And they really like this lawyer when he was questioned at the hearing, Bernie Magnus was literally asked by the lawyer they hired, Are you happy with my performance?

And everyone on the board of corrections all said they were really happy with this guy's performance.

He went around, asked all the Board of Corrections if they were happy with him.

So it's basically this is an issue of procurement law and whether or not it was done correctly.

And currently these lawsuits with the board of Corrections, they're headed to the Arkansas Supreme Court.

So we'll have to see what happens with them.

When last we addressed the issue on this broadcast anyway, there seemed to be there were some signs of a detente between the governor and the board of corrections.

Is that still alive?

Well, her big thing is she wants to add more prison beds and build a new prison.

And there's just not enough staff.

I mean, Arkansas corrections officials are paid incredibly small amounts of money.

They're often these very rural areas.

And it's really hard to get people to come and work in these jobs.

I found jobs for corrections officers that were paying 30, 40, $20,000 a year, and you have to move to some very small rural town.

So there is really just a huge staffing shortage right now with the prison board.

And they she wants to keep building prisons and keep adding prison beds.

And so that's kind of where the big conflict comes in.

It's just there's not enough money and staff to build all these prisons that she wants.

The middle ground, though, is that I think everybody involved agrees that they need more space because there's overcrowding and and and there's more likely to come in with the governors of the Protect Act is basically folks are going to have to serve more of their sentences.

So in theory, you're going to have more people in jail longer.

So you're going to need spaces to hold all of these people.

So I think the middle ground is that everybody seems to agree that like we need more space, it's just a disagreement about how to get there and who's in charge of saying how we get to get there and how to pay for it, how to pay for it.

It's expensive.

So the matter of prison staffing is not a new one.

This is didn't pop up over the last couple, four years now and again it's you know, if cut taxes are going to be cut and if the surplus is dwindling.

I mean you would think that just as we raise taxes, raised teacher salaries last session, if this is an issue, that maybe that would be something to be considered this time, how do we pay prison guards?

So maybe that would be the middle ground that Antoinette was talking about, ready to go.

And recruiting staff is its own issue, aside from.

Yeah, that's you do that with money pay people have money they will move.

Yeah so maybe it has to be a lot.

Also more news from the executive branch and that is the governor's decision for a second time to commit Arkansas National Guard forces to the Texas border.

Yeah, I think it's 40 that are going to be right once again, we've just heard a lot about immigration and border security has become a hot topic with the as the election ticks up.

And that really seems to be a focus of a lot of Republican elected folks running for office, both at the federal level and at the state level.

So it wasn't super surprise to see that happen.

But that does seem to be kind of a story thread that will probably continue to see throughout this election season.

And she made a Steve Jose a rather well documented trip to the Texas border some weeks ago, a couple of months ago, I think 13 other governors at the border to talk about border security.

We don't exactly know what these National Guards troops are going to be doing, she says.

They're going to be combating human trafficking and drug trafficking.

But right now, we just know they're being sent to the border, which is something that's really important to Republicans right now is border security.

It's a gift to wrap up.

The situation at the border is let's face it, it is a gift to GOP governors or to Republican members of Congress for that.

Well, it's definitely a hot button issue.

I think it was the same day that she made this announcement that the Supreme Court, just after she made the announcement, or maybe they made it right before, I think she made her announcement that the Supreme Court made its announcement that it was allowing a Texas law to go into effect that would allow Texas police officers to arrest suspected undocumented folks that were crossing into the country.

But then that has now, since then by appeals court turned back and now it's being blocked again.

So there's a lot of back and forth with the courts about what can and can't be done.

So again, it'll be something that will continue to be a discussion over the next couple of months.

Speaking of the political climate, we are through the primaries now.

We've got more a lot more politicking, the politicking to go, including this this unusual, to put it mildly, a case, a race for the Arkansas Supreme Court chief justice of the Supreme Court.

Yes, there's going to be a runoff in the Supreme Court for the chief justice position.

And historic because whoever wins, it'll be the first woman elected to the position you have.

Karen Baker, thank you.

And Rhonda Wood, who are already on the court.

I will note that there has been a woman in that position before.

She was appointed by Governor Mike Huckabee in 2003 of that very day.

Nikki.

Thank you, Lucy.

Names this morning.

So but it will be the first woman elected to the position.

And it is because Chief Justice Dan Kemp is retiring.

And so the seat is open.

These two justices are going for that seat.

So whoever wins will be vacating the current seat that they have, and that will leave a vacancy for Sarah Huckabee Sanders to fill.

Yeah, In fact, Hillary should be appointing two justices because of the results of the elections by why this is.

This would be the first elected female Supreme Court justice.

But Arkansas actually has had a majority female Supreme Court, one of several states that has that.

But so it's not terribly unusual, but this would be the first time that we had a female justice.

Well, you know, Josie, I'm sorry.

Yeah, it's interesting because they're both working mothers, but so they actually have a lot in common, but they are sort of offices in the way that Ken Baker has been doing this for a little bit longer.

She's been in the law for a lot longer.

Rhonda was a little bit younger.

She's a little bit more social media savvy and she's a little bit more honest about the fact that she has like religious kind of conservative ties.

What's interesting is because they're both Supreme Court justices, they can't tell us exactly what they believe or their policy positions.

So in talking to voters, I've noticed a sense of a little bit mild confusion and kind of not knowing exactly, you know, what each candidate believes.

I mean, their opinions are all online line, but they're kind of all deciphered.

Well, and they can also they are free or at least they have felt free so far in recent years anyway, to make clear their ideological leanings.

Yeah, I think kind of as Josie pointed out, that's something that I know talking to voters, they said, you know, the thing I have the hardest time with are judicial races because I can't necessarily find information on them.

And I think the general public is very familiar with a two party system.

You know, somebody the Republican, somebody is a Democrat.

And so when somebody doesn't have that letter next to their name, they're like, okay, what do I do with that?

How do I figure out what they believe?

But as folks who've been in the court system for a while, you can kind of look at their track record and see like, okay, they typically go this way on these type of things or that way.

And so you can kind of glean from that what they might do in a different position, which I think is something that like the governor could look at and kind of decide who she picks, maybe someone who might be favorable to something that might come up in her administration.

Right.

And something to note, too, I think speaking about the general public is, you know, with the Arkansas State Supreme Court, you know, it's not a forever term, it's not a lifetime term like the US Supreme Court.

So the folks she's appointing, they're only going to serve until the next general election.

So basically two years and then someone has to run for that position.

That can be a very eventful period of jurisprudence.

Could be jurisprudence anyway.

You know, Steve, you know, she was talking about when I was talking about the voter confusion, the challenges of trying to figure out what to do if that was reflected in their election, the results it was I don't have the exact numbers, but it was like 28, 25, 24, 21, very, very, very close all the way through from fourth, from first to fourth, which indicates to me my theory that a lot of people are guessing.

You know, that's how that that worked out.

Course, the last name I remember.

Yeah, right.

And so interestingly enough, the one who finished first campaign the least, Justice Becker did not campaign particularly hard, didn't raise much money or any money I couldn't even find a website for.

But they are different in their in their stances.

I asked them both, What is your wish justice and you must align with at the US Supreme Court level, Becker said.

Roberts would would not said she did not want to say because that would indicate where she would be, you know, did not want to prejudice herself.

So that's why she didn't answer that.

But that would kind of supposedly Baker was more of the John Roberts centrist type and would is considered to be the more conservative type of justice.

And she does go to word does go to Republican Party events and she is a member of the Federalist Society.

You can get kind of understanding of it from that of Baker.

We often use the word conservative to describe herself, but she says what she means by that is she's legally conservative, so she does want to change the law.

So I guess that's sort of the same thing.

But she says she's conservative in a legal sense.

Yeah, like constructionist.

Yeah.

Okay.

Or what?

Do we have a sense at all of where the state is politically?

So obviously still red, but any anything beyond that, what's the mood out there that you guys pick up that state Democrats have had?

They recently released a poll, part of the poll.

They didn't they didn't release every part of the poll, but they had a poll where it was 60, 34 Republican.

They were not surprised by that.

But they've they say that they have some battleground districts where they think they have a shot, 17 where they think that they would have a shot of doing something.

You know, it has been a long it's been a steady slide since 2008.

That was the last time Democrats really were competitive in elections, or at least that's when it began to resonate, the 2010 elections, really when it began.

And after that, it's been you know, Democrats are down to about 17 seats in the House and six in the Senate.

And, of course, no constitutional all sorts of congressional races.

So that is unlikely to change much.

But you have to think that perhaps we have that the Democrats have reached the bottom.

Republicans have reached there.

They can't get much.

They can't get much more.

So Democrats are hopeful that this is the election, that they can maybe turn the tide a little bit.

They want to get a super majority.

There's that was seem to be they want to break the Republican supermajority that allows Republicans to do whatever they want without having to consult Republicans or Democrats.

But that seems unlikely at this election.

But, you know, at least we might be nearing the end of the of the of the true just the public is weighing everything.

Yeah well in 2008 2010, that was around the time that we saw a big takeover from Tea Party candidates and those four state House reps that we have in Washington right now are all Republicans.

And they've all came about around that time.

Democrats have put forward four Democratic candidates to run against each of those incumbents.

And they have a long road ahead of them.

And I think some of them are very polished and impressive and I think will be interesting to see what happens to them.

But they have a they're going up against a huge machine with they're very well-funded.

And we just have not really seen any kind of successful challenges in the past to anything That said, one of the things that they're really proud of is having those more races contested.

I think they said this is the most contested since like 2012, which was when the Republicans took over the legislature for the first time since construction, that they were in charge of all of that.

And I think with the supermajority that we've been dealing with at the legislature or with Republicans, we sometimes forget that like for a very long time, it was it was Democrats that were in charge here.

And there was a a press conference that the Democratic Party of Arkansas held that Jesse and I went to.

And one of the things they were talking about was kind of getting complacent.

Right.

You've been in charge for so long and you don't necessarily do the work that you need to do to get voters to the polls and they said that they are committed this time to doing that work, you know, knocking on doors, sending out mailers, talking to people and really saying why you should vote Democrat.

Yeah, the index cards get a little dusty if you don't look at them every now and then go, oh, what are the races I'm most interested in watching?

And the one that the Democratic Party is really focused on is in West Memphis.

There was Deborah and Ken Ferguson.

They're not related, but they were Democrats and they're both leaving their positions.

And so right now we have a runoff, Democratic runoff for those positions.

And Democrats really want to hold onto those two seats just because they have so few seats in the legislature, that being a hold on to any seat is really potent.

So I'm keeping my eye on that one specific and still hanging on to all this is right next door to us.

Our friends in Pop County can't figure out whether they want a casino or not.

Maybe one day we'll know they're trying, but they should soon open that application period up again.

That's been tied up in litigation over the last several years, just trying to get that fourth license out for that casino.

And hopefully this is you know, this is the time.

I think this is the third time they're trying to do it.

The third time's a charm maybe that's trying to get a consortium on the ballot that would that would allow local voters to oppose an amendment.

And it's raised $200,000, all from the Choctaw Nation, which seems which, ironically enough, consistently operates a bunch of casinos nearby in Oklahoma.

So that will be something to watch.

They have enough money to actually race to actually get the signatures.

And so we'll see if that gets on the ballot, though, still hanging the abortion amendment out, gathering signatures, gathering signatures.

I know Republicans are pressuring people not to sign it.

It'll be interesting to see because we've talked about this a lot on this program.

Abortion is relatively unpopular here in Arkansas.

And it's also just really hard to get people to sign petitions because they're not paying these volunteers to go out and sign petitions.

So you have to take time off of work and drive around and get people to sign this ballot amendment.

That's not really necessarily that popular.

I think they need 90,000 signatures from 50 from 50 different counties.

So that's a lot.

Yeah.

And it's worth mentioning, too, that a signature gathered is not necessarily a signature that's upheld when under under review.

And the group that's trying to pass the amendment has they did their campaign reporting did not raise much money and has said that they did not get any money from national groups so far, which would indicate to me that the national groups are going to put their money where they think they can win and that Arkansas may not be a state where they can win.

Right?

Well, in our cases, very limited government.

The group behind this particular one, I spoke to them this week about a new opposition group to them, Stronger Arkansas formed last week and I am speaking to them.

They're like, you know, we're not surprised.

It's abortion.

We knew there'd be several folks opposed to it, and there's about a half dozen other groups, ballot question committees that have already forms.

But the interesting thing about Stronger Arkansas is that it's led by Chris Caldwell, who is a political consultant and also the governor's very close to the.

Yeah, his her campaign manager from her gubernatorial race.

And then he's already going to be the reelection campaign manager.

And then the other folks on the committee are also folks with really close ties to her.

And we weren't able to reach them for comment this week.

But in speaking to Arkansans for limited government, they said, you know, they're interested like, this is a very interesting thing to see.

And it's not just this stronger.

Arkansas is not just against the abortion amendment.

They also said that, you know, their purpose, their stated purpose is the disqualification, as you mentioned, getting your signatures okayed or the defeat of the abortion amendment, an amendment with medical marijuana, and then another proposed constitutional amendment with education.

Yeah.

While we're on the subject of constitutional amendments for the freedom of information, that's in play as well.

So, yeah, they've raised some money to all from one person, but they have raised some money and so they'll be trying to get that out on the signatures for that.

And it would basically enshrine the state's Freedom Information Act in the Constitution and also Pass Initiate Act.

That would have all the details.

This is in response to the previous session where the governor and legislators limited FOIA, tried to limit it even more than they did.

But, you know, there was a backlash against it.

So this is an effort to put that in the Constitution and they're collecting signatures.

So we'll see what happens.

Yeah, well, we're on the matter of civic engagement, which is what this broadcast is all about in terms of the Learns act.

We're going to see we just may see high school students start to get more engaged, whether they want to be or not.

Yes, part of the Learns act is hopefully they do well.

The requirement, regardless of how they feel, is that students are going to have to complete 75 hours of community service to graduate.

The State Board of Education recently approved some draft rules that will be going out for public comment.

And there's still a process to get this all the way through to final.

But that's kind of the first time folks have gotten to see that.

There have been a lot of questions about what this will look like in practice.

And for many of them, it's what they've said is they're going to have a lot of flexibility for the local school districts to decide, you know, what you count as community service, how you track that, how you issue your exceptions, because exceptions are available in certain circumstances and things like that.

That's a story worth following and we intend to continue to do that.

Thanks very much, everybody, for coming in.

As always, we thank you for watching and see you next time.

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