Other days

100 YEARS AGO March 12, 1921

■ Governor McRae yesterday announced that he will sign no further appropriation bills until after he has conferred with Comptroller Van B. Sims. Totals of all pending appropriation measures will be taken and the aggregate balanced against the estimated revenues for the next two years. Should the appropriations exceed the revenues, all appropriations for necessary governmental functioning and for the charitable institutions will be approved, and others cut to keep them within the revenues, the governor said.

50 YEARS AGO March 12, 1971

■ Members of the Pulaski County Grand Jury toured the County Jail for an hour January 28 and reacted with “utter disbelief” to the bad conditions they saw, Jury Foreman Edwin L. Baxley reported Thursday. Baxley said in a two-page report filed in Circuit Court that Jury members expressed disbelief that “in the 20th century, in the largest county in Arkansas, that human beings, even though they were accused of diverse crimes, and were prisoners, would be subjected to living conditions such as exist in this county institution.” It was the most condemning report of several made by Grand Juries in recent years criticizing conditions at the Jail.

25 YEARS AGO March 12, 1996

■ Torn between wanting to give school districts more flexibility and a need to ensure that schools offer quality programs, the state Board of Education delayed voting Monday on revised standards for school accreditation. The board is expected to call a special meeting later this month to once again consider the proposed standards. If adopted, the standards would take effect in the 1996-97 school year. Board members were divided over how career preparation skills should be incorporated into the overall curriculum. Other disagreements involved whether to require students to take an oral communications course to be eligible for graduation.

10 YEARS AGO March 12, 2011

■ More than 250 natural gas workers and landowners packed a Capitol committee room and the hallways outside Friday to testify on a bill aimed at increasing the amount of money the state receives from companies that extract natural gas from the Fayetteville Shale area. No opponent of the bill got to testify during the 40-minute meeting, which was largely taken up by a presentation by Dan Flowers, director of the state Highway and Transportation Department.