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

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

They are formally designated extraordinary sessions of the Arkansas General Assembly, and each one is extraordinary in its own way.

The one that began and ended this week was foreordained when earlier this year the customary budget session of the legislature adjourned without approving a budget for the State Game and Fish Commission, which would have run out of money.

July one can't have that.

But along with that, were some other fiscal matters.

Still some more cuts in personal and corporate income taxes.

Second round of reductions in less than a year.

No sooner did the legislature approve the package than did the governor who requested them add her signature.

We've cut taxes three times in the past 18 months.

At the same time, we have balanced our budget and grew spending this past year by only 1.76%, far below the 3% average.

These are the numbers every individual making over $25,000 will receive a tax cut and their rate will be moved to 3.9%.

Anybody making less than $25,000 is already paying a lower tax rate at 3.4%.

This will impact 1.1 million Arkansans.

Our goal should never be to look at the minimum, but how do we move those people in that bottom area to to make more money?

That's why we focus so much on education, workforce development, and we're going to continue to look to responsibly phase out the state income tax as a whole.

Well, the votes for tax reduction were overwhelming, but not unanimous.

And they broke along party lines.

A sample of the arguments now on the House floor.

Proponents argue that we have a large surplus, but much of that has largely been due to temporary federal dollars.

DFA reports Our annual revenue is down 5.5% and our newest budget only increased 1.67, while inflation is up 3.3%.

Which means, in effect, we cut or certainly underfunded essential programs.

Arkansas has the highest mortality maternal mortality rate in the nation, the second highest teen pregnancy, and we're third highest in infant mortality.

We still have years long delays for services for those with disabilities.

Many Arkansans lack basic medical care.

They have limited or no access to mental health resources.

The entire state is lacking in quality early child care, and we have no idea about the cost of the Education Freedom Accounts.

When offered to all Arkansans students next year.

Now is not the time to be underfunding the programs that deal with these problems.

Colleagues, I'm excited to vote for this historic bill, and it is truly a historic tax cut for our state by reducing our personal income tax rate to 3.9% on the personal side.

We will have the lowest income tax rate in the history of our state since the inception of our state.

Income tax in 1923, which was 101 years ago.

Let me tell you why I'm voting for this historic bill.

First of all, Arkansas taxpayers deserve to be able to keep more of their hard earned income by cutting this income tax to 3.9%.

We are going to give workers a raise by letting them keep more of each and every paycheck.

That's especially important in our current economic climate because of the disastrous economic policies of President Biden.

Inflation is eating away at the paychecks of hardworking Arkansans.

And while lowering our tax burden will not get rid of inflation, it will help Arkansans cope with the damaging effects of the tax bills.

Game and fish are other major news of the week now with Joseph Lenore, a government and politics reporter for Little Rock Public Radio.

Andrew DeMello, capital bureau chief of the Associated Press and Test urban reporter of the Arkansas Advocate.

Thanks to everybody, as always, for coming in.

Andrew, in the aggregate, in the current administration than we have, could we the administration, the General Assembly has slashed the revenue stream by about a better than $1,000,000,000.

Yeah, you know, this is this latest round at a two Yeah.

Yeah.

And you know and this is this is part of a series of tax cuts have been going back to you know under Isa Hutchinson this has been a big push by Republicans to eventually phase out the state income tax.

There have been three tax cuts under governor under Governor Sanders, and this one will now you know, cut that and cut things down to, you know, 3.9% for the individual income rate and 4.3% for for the corporate rate.

And you know, Sanders has said she wants to phase this out.

So, you know, this kind of continuation of the argument that we've seen about whether the state can afford this, you proponents of these of these cuts have pointed to the surpluses that Arkansas continually builds up.

But opponents and advocacy groups are, you know, saying that this is coming at the expense of programs that are being underfunded, essentially, especially when you look at inflation and look at the state's budget increases, not keeping up with inflation.

Yeah, well, I mean, they range from pre-K and other mostly on the human services side and education to.

JOSEY.

Well, you heard there Denise Gardner talking about how she feels like this money could have gone to something else.

And that's a big argument you hear a lot when you talk about taxes.

David said this about how there's these same arguments you hear over and over again in the tax cuts.

And that's the big thing that Democrats focus on, is we could give this money to services.

Even, Greg, letting the Senate minority leader admitted that these tax cuts are popular.

And we did see a couple of Democrats vote for it and westmeath as we saw the Democrats there, voted for it.

So, you know, it was a very small minority of people that stood up and said, no, I can't remember.

I can't remember anybody losing their seat because they voted for a tax cut anyway.

Yeah, I'm Tess.

Yeah, like Senator letting said that this is an election year and and it would be a popular thing to do and yeah another thing that that senator letting mention was on the very long list of potential programs that Democrats and advocacy groups have been suggesting funding instead of cutting taxes.

He mentioned the Arkansas Housing Trust Fund, which has existed for several years, but it doesn't have any money in it.

Yeah, well, you look overall, you look at the balances, Andrew, that state government is caring like that and they are pretty substantial and indeed they were augmented by the special session by a few hundred million bucks.

The argument of the counter argument is you can get a surplus any time you really anytime you want one just by spending less and holding tax rates at somewhere near where they were.

Yeah, and Arkansas, I think is forecast this year to end the current fiscal year with a round of $700 million surplus.

There.

You know, they're forecasting another surplus of several hundred dollars million in the in the coming fiscal year as well.

And part of this legislation included moving about $290 million into a reserve fund that can be used in case of an economic downturn.

This has been part of the part of the argument for this is that they're you know, they have some protections in place.

But, you know, it's kind of like like we said, you know, you know, the opponents of this are saying that there are other things this go toward.

And also part of the argument against this, too, is they think these cuts are too skewed toward higher income earners.

Yeah, that's always typically an argument anyway that that that arises whenever you're talking about cutting income taxes in Arkansas or for that.

Well, personal income taxes in a way not so much the corporate yeah this does cut the top tax rate.

It's going to affect a lot of different families, but it primarily does affect the top tax rate.

And I don't think anyone's denying that Jonathan deserving when he presented the bill, talked about how it would help higher income people and he said that in the past they have tried to phase out the income tax for lower income people.

The argument there is that it makes us a more competitive state.

Taxes in Tennessee don't have the income tax.

And so the argument there is that corporations and people are more likely to move here if they see that we have a lower income tax.

And we need to mention the homestead exemption to was augmented in this session.

Yeah you know this this increases the homestead exemption, I think, from $425 to $500.

You know, there was not as much that really was an opposition to this.

There was a lot more bite bipartisan support because of the funding stream for that for this.

And you didn't really see the debate.

Most of the debate on this was over the the income tax cuts, the all the matter excuse me, on the matter of personal income tax cuts, though, there was the feeling earlier this year that there would not be a second round of cuts until perhaps much later, maybe even in the next fiscal year, next calendar year anyway.

Well, then DFA came out with a with that basically a triple the revenue surplus estimate back in what may I think.

Well that was all the administration needed.

Yeah but this this was also accelerated somewhat by the game and fish Commission not getting a budget at the end at the end of the fiscal session.

You know, the original plan, I think everyone was expecting to come back in for a special session in July or August to take up some kind of tax cuts.

But the threat of Game and Fish Commission, you know, hunting and fishing programs getting shut down in July kind of accelerated that.

And created a little more urgency for taking this up.

Yeah, Tess, we got a budget, a game, and Fish got its money after all.

Yes.

It's important to note the fiscal year changes July 1st.

So the Game of Fish Commission not having the authority to spend its money would have prevented people from getting their hunting and fishing licenses renewed, which would have not gone over well with a lot of Arkansans.

And it is an election year.

A minority of House members back in back in April in May took issue with an amendment that was added to the game and fish appropriation, not the original version, but an amendment added to it that raised the maximum salary for the game and fish Commission director Austin Booth.

And they said that it had been kind of snuck into the bill.

Some other members disputed that claim, though.

And so another thing is that it was a minority of House members.

You need a three fourths vote in both chambers to pass an appropriation bill, and they didn't get to three fourths even though they did get a majority.

Yeah, we have one senses that there some egos are in play here as well as just the fiscal aspect of it.

Just Austin Booth makes a little over $150,000 a year and the salary cap and that's not necessarily what would have made it just the potential he would have at the potential to make 190,000.

And there was some pushback from people who pointed out that that, you know, I think it's like the top nine secretaries don't even make that much money.

Again, he wouldn't have necessarily made that much money.

And he didn't want to speculate on what Senator Terry Rice put forth, an amendment to raise his salary.

You want to comment on that?

When I asked him about it, but that was the reason why they didn't fund game and fish was over frustration over his salary.

It's interesting because if they hadn't funded Game and Fish, they have 700 employees, they wouldn't have necessarily gotten their health insurance.

They would have necessarily not necessarily gotten their paycheck.

And what's even weirder is they would have had to euthanize almost 9 million fish in their hatcheries.

Yeah, they were always going to have a game and fish budget.

I mean, just how messy was the prognosis going to be?

Andrew Yeah, and you know, especially for a state like Arkansas where, you know, you've got a large number of people who, you know, who are avid hunters, who are avid fishers.

The idea of the agency that oversees that, as well as all these wildlife conservation programs getting shut down would have been an embarrassing prospect.

And you really had, you know, you had some members, even though this is kind of presented as a compromise, you had some members saying they did.

They still didn't like the way this turned out.

They don't like the idea of setting this precedent that you can, you know, essentially hold up an agency's budget and hope that there'll be a special session to, you know, to get some kind of agreement.

Well, we had some tensions, too, between House and Senate and some of the ranking members that made the clouded the situation still further, I think.

Yeah.

And it's still you know, there's, you know, part of this in here.

You know, the legislature will have some say about increases.

You know, any increase above 5% for the directors salary will have to go before the legislature or legislative council but is still kind of hard to see.

You know, what what the benefit was, what the what the you know, what the compromise really got out of this horse game.

And Fish and Highway two independent agencies.

Tess and about the only other than just gentle persuasion the hammer is the budget.

You know their budgets still have to be approved and it is about the ultimate weapon that the General Assembly can have to shape policy within highway or gaming fish.

And and during the last three days, the gaming fish appropriation really moved very quickly and smoothly and with bipartisan support.

There was not a lot of discussion.

The the impression we got was that they really want to get this done in a timely manner and not not push this all the way up until June 30th.

A couple of senators had said, including Jonathan Dismay, who is co-chair of the Joint Budget Committee, and he was sponsoring the appropriation bill.

He said that let's not get to this point again.

And he and Senator Gilmore, also a Republican, were both saying that the legislature in the game, the fish commission, just need to communicate with each other better.

And and that that applies to both and that they weren't singling either entity out.

Yeah the discussions the real discussions were earlier and elsewhere General Assembly to work this thing out.

There were other some other issues too.

Well, two resolutions before the General Assembly which in my experience anyway, were unprecedented.

And one finally got well, we'll discover both of them.

The first was the abortion that went through.

Yes, it did.

And this was just on the House side.

House Management Committee had to approve these two resolutions before they went to the House floor.

This was on Tuesday that they passed and drew a lot of public opposition in committee.

Now, resolutions are just recommendations and expressions of opinion.

They are not binding policy.

But the House wanted to this.

The super majority of Republicans in the House wanted to communicate that they disapprove of two proposed ballot measures that would amend the Constitution.

And these have not been made official yet.

We don't know yet if these are even going to be on the ballot.

The signature collecting deadline is July 5th, and then all those signatures have to be verified.

But the abortion amendment, to recap that would create a limited right to abortion up to 18 weeks and with some exceptions and the members of of the House on the floor yesterday, several Republicans expressed further support after it had gotten through committee, and some members of the public had said that they felt like this was a little bit of a form of legislative interference in the direct democracy process.

A couple of House Democrats said that as well, because, like you said, this is kind of unprecedented.

Yeah, still a polarizing issue.

Julie gave a pretty impassioned speech talking about how she has a special needs daughter and why she's pro-life.

And then the debates kind of played out the way you would exactly expect them to eventually.

Erin Pilkington on the House floor, he cut off debate on the abortion resolution because, again, it doesn't actually do anything.

It just is just a resolution asking people not to sign the petition.

So it's sort of symbolic.

Yes.

Of the House.

Yeah, it's a symbolic resolution.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Andrew, I can't recall it.

Anything like that.

No, I can't either.

You know, legislators, you know, they hold press conferences about initiatives.

They they put out statements they post on Twitter.

That's not unusual.

The idea of using the legislative process even for something that's non-binding, you know, this is basically a symbolic gesture is is still very rare, if not completely unprecedented.

And that's where I think you got a lot of the pushback.

And I think you got some concern that this may have kind of had the unintended consequence of actually, you know, giving giving more attention to these and giving some free publicity to both of these initiatives.

Yeah, they're still gathering signatures for this thing.

Yeah, exactly.

And so, you know, the the abortion one went through for some reason they did not run the one on the education funding initiative.

But you had this debate that kind of just you know, it was kind of free, you know, free publicity for both sides on this.

Yeah.

So the education related resolution was to express opposition to the amendment that would hold private schools that get public funding to the same standards as public schools.

And that's a response to the Learns Act and the Education Freedom Account voucher program that it created, which is not available to all students yet it's being phased into effect.

The sponsor of the resolution, Representative Bret McKenzie, had in the resolution called it misleadingly titled and members of the public pointed out during the House Management Committee meeting that in order for the attorney general, who is also a Republican to approve ballot language for signature collection, it has to not be misleading it.

It took a few tries for this language to get approved, but it did.

And signature collection has been underway for months now.

But folks pointed out it's it's been said by the attorney general this is actually not misleading and and then the resolution wasn't considered on the floor.

Yeah.

And in pulling it, I think, as Andrew noted, one of the sponsors anyway, the primary sponsor, said, you know, we're giving this thing more inadvertently.

You know, we're we're we're getting behind this thing that we that we oppose.

We're giving them the the attention, you know, the it might otherwise not receive or augmenting the attention anyway.

Yeah.

You know, because I think the way these were worded, they weren't worded as do not sign.

I think they were worded as as oppose these as the as though they're already approved for the ballot.

Yeah there were learns and the Little Rock school.

Well the learns act you know there's still litigation pending on that there's still pending litigation over the legality of the vouchers.

There's a small group that's arguing that the vouchers are unconstitutional and they violate the parts.

The Arkansas Constitution that allow for private school or allowed for public schools.

It'll be interesting to see there's a pretty wealthy group that's backing the opposition to that lawsuit.

So I listen to see what happens.

There's two different sides here, but that's our Segway.

Under the Little Rock School district.

I still have to get to school district.

One of the provisions under the learned law is that a school that's in financial distress can get taken over by a charter school company.

So the lyrics will district right now is having a lot of financial problems.

And they spent the past year trying to cut $16 million.

And it's been a pretty interesting thing to watch.

They had to close several schools.

They reworked the public or the middle school public schools scheduled to be seven classes a day, so that way would save money and they've had to lay off a bunch of teachers, I should say layoff.

They had to non-renewal, bunch of teachers.

So where's this thing going?

We just going to more fiscal constriction.

Yeah.

And their hope and they're looking forward it about there's like a program ignite reading which is a phonics based program that they're using to help that it's been actually pretty successful in bringing up literacy rates and it's but it's $5 million so that's something that that's on the chopping block or could potentially be on the chopping block.

And now they're having all these hearings about whether or not they should rehire certain employees.

So in total about it's a little over 190 employees were non renewed or terminated.

And they're looking next year to see if they can rehire some of them, but a lot of them won't make it back.

So the district itself considers it a very real threat.

They wouldn't necessarily say at that.

I don't think it's a very real threat, but I think are definitely very concerned about these $60 million.

They have to.

I mean, it's a lot of money.

Yeah.

And this has played out over the decades.

Yeah.

You know, this is you know, you have to put in the context of just, you know, over the decade, over the decades, just the uncertainty that law schools have faced, especially in recent years, over, you know, state to state control of the district, we we saw how much of a pushback there was from residents, you know, about just the you know, the optics of of that of the state taking taking over law school district, giving it given all the history there.

And this kind of feels like kind of an echo of that now.

And do we have a sense at all where this charter school movement that it began really during the the first iterations of it anyway, were during the Bill Clinton gubernatorial administration.

But it has not lost any momentum.

If anything, it has gained it.

Yeah.

And we see a lot of people are putting their kids in charter schools and there is this concept called sunk cost because charter schools, they get charter schools get money from the state, but they're lazy.

But those students don't go to public school.

So it does rearrange the finances for a lot of schools.

And so there is a theory that the charter school movement over time is the reason why we have these budget cuts.

So I don't see a diminishing in America.

No, I think I don't think so, especially given where things are headed with with Lauren's act and just with the push for the, you know, things like vouchers and for more school choice.

Yeah.

On the matter of a very controversial matter involving the director Jose of the state's largest airport, some video footage was released today of the ATF raid in which the director of the airport was fatally wounded after he wounded an ATF agent.

Federal agent?

Yeah.

And even his lawyer, Bud Thomas, who I've talked to, admitted that he shot at the agent.

The big argument is basically, should they have been in the house at that time?

The search warrant does give them the permission, the ATF, to go into the house at 6 a.m.. His lawyer would argue that they should give him more time to come to the door because he wasn't a person who had a history of violence.

And they also argue that maybe 6 a.m. wasn't a good time to go.

It technically was legal what they were doing.

And Bud Cummins did shoot the ATF agent.

And that debate there is did he know it was an ATF agent?

Did he not?

You know, the prosecutor would argue that, you know, the fact that he shot an ATF agent is enough to say that charges are not going to be brought against the ATF for excessive force?

Well, if a wounding of an agent, I mean, that that seemed almost foreordained, that there would be no charges against the agent who fired or into the agency.

But this doesn't in the political aspects of it, it's still very much alive.

Andrew Test Yeah, I think so.

You know, you've seen, you've seen several Republicans both at the state and federal level raising questions about this.

I don't think the prosecutors decision not to charge is going to change that because you've got Bud Cummins who's been speaking out on this.

You you're raising the issue of the time between the knock on the door and when the door was bet battered down.

And this kind of fits in with kind of a larger, you know, theme or discussion about about law enforcement, especially on the federal level.

So I think you're still going to see some of those questions kind of focusing more on, you know, just the way the way that raid was conducted.

Still, even despite the prosecutor's decision.

Yeah.

And it carries the photo of the ATF has been a lightning rod, you know, for agencies, for firearms advocates for, you know, decades.

Yeah.

You know, this goes back to, you know, you know, look at the Clinton era, you know, discussions about the about ATF.

And, you know, at the same time that you're seeing fights over enforcement of gun regulations on the federal on the federal level.

And so this kind of fits in with that larger discussion.

So this is still you know, it's still a law enforcement story, but also very much has a lot of political elements to it.

Yeah.

And we'll continue to follow it.

Tess, Andrew, Jose, thanks as always for coming in.

As always, we thank you for watching.

See you next week.

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