{"id":33,"date":"2013-02-08T23:24:00","date_gmt":"2013-02-08T23:24:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/impactpossible.com\/voice\/index.php\/2013\/02\/08\/89th-general-assembly-4th-week\/"},"modified":"2017-06-20T16:16:16","modified_gmt":"2017-06-20T16:16:16","slug":"89th-general-assembly-4th-week","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/impactpossible.com\/voice\/index.php\/2013\/02\/08\/89th-general-assembly-4th-week\/","title":{"rendered":"89th General Assembly &#8211; 4th Week"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>We<br \/>\nare essentially a month into the legislative session and much of the major<br \/>\nbusiness-related issues remains sidelined. The Revenue and Tax committees in<br \/>\nthe House and Senate are not even holding meetings because they don&#8217;t have anything<br \/>\nto consider despite the fact that they are four weeks into the session. That is<br \/>\na telling sign that the 89th General Assembly is taking things very<br \/>\nmethodically.<\/p>\n<p>My<br \/>\nassumption is that leadership in the House and Senate have agreed to focus on<br \/>\nsocial issues in the first month before turning their attention to taxes,<br \/>\nMedicaid and other business-related legislation. The past two weeks have seen a<br \/>\nlot of committee time spent debating abortion and guns. Next week should see<br \/>\nthe final resolution to many of these issues. <\/p>\n<div _mce_style=\"margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; color: #000000;\">\nOn<br \/>\nTuesday (February 12), the House Education committee will consider<br \/>\nRepresentative Charlie Collins&#8217; (R, Washington County) bill to authorize<br \/>\ncollege staff and faculty to carry concealed weapons on campus. Many<br \/>\nuniversities oppose this measure and the Education committee will no doubt hear<br \/>\nfrom them that allowing concealed weapons on their campuses will not make them<br \/>\nsafer and will result in higher liability insurance for academic institutions.<\/div>\n<p><\/p>\n<div _mce_style=\"margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; color: #000000;\">\nThere<br \/>\nare also two abortion bills that are moving through the House and Senate and<br \/>\ntheir final form should be decided in the next week as well. Once those are<br \/>\ndone it seems more likely that the General Assembly&#8217;s energy will focus on<br \/>\ntaxes, Medicaid, funding the Big River Steel plant and a host of other issues.<\/div>\n<p><\/p>\n<div _mce_style=\"margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; color: #000000;\">\nLeadership<br \/>\nhas hinted that all tax cut related legislation will be considered at the same<br \/>\ntime and after spending levels are more certain. So, instead of passing<br \/>\nindividual tax cuts they will weigh the merits of each and then decide which<br \/>\nthey can afford. In 2011, the House passed four tax cuts fairly early in the<br \/>\nsession that then got held up in the Senate and used as a negotiating piece for<br \/>\nother legislation. One might guess that House members may want to hang on to<br \/>\nsome leverage by working jointly with the Senate to ensure their main<br \/>\npriorities are enacted. If so, it will be March before Revenue and Tax has<br \/>\nanything to vote on.<\/div>\n<p><\/p>\n<div _mce_style=\"margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; color: #000000;\">\nIf<br \/>\nthe General Assembly is focused on social issues, it raises the question what<br \/>\ntypes of bills are being filed and is there a backlog waiting to be heard.<br \/>\nWhile clearly not a scientific analysis, keyword searches of filed legislation<br \/>\nproduces the following insight:<\/div>\n<p><\/p>\n<div _mce_style=\"margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; color: #000000;\">\n219<br \/>\nbills are related to revenue (out of approximately 580 total bills filed)<\/div>\n<p>72 bills<br \/>\nare related to tax<\/p>\n<p>24 bills<br \/>\nare related to Medicaid<\/p>\n<p>20 bills<br \/>\nare related to economic development<\/p>\n<p>8 bills<br \/>\nare related to concealed weapons<\/p>\n<p>6 bills<br \/>\nare related to abortion<\/p>\n<div _mce_style=\"margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; color: #000000;\">\nSo<br \/>\nthe issues with the fewest number of bills are generating the most debate!<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>We are essentially a month into the legislative session and much of the major business-related issues remains sidelined. The Revenue and Tax committees in the House and Senate are not even holding meetings because they don&#8217;t have anything to consider despite the fact that they are four weeks into the session. That is a telling [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[31,32,37],"class_list":["post-33","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-chambernews","tag-89th-general-assembly","tag-arkansas-general-assembly","tag-state-legislature"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p8RhO8-x","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/impactpossible.com\/voice\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/impactpossible.com\/voice\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/impactpossible.com\/voice\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/impactpossible.com\/voice\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/impactpossible.com\/voice\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=33"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/impactpossible.com\/voice\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":138,"href":"http:\/\/impactpossible.com\/voice\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33\/revisions\/138"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/impactpossible.com\/voice\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=33"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/impactpossible.com\/voice\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=33"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/impactpossible.com\/voice\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=33"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}