On your marks … .

The state Legislature assembled Monday for a “fiscal” session, meaning for budgets only. But much of the anticipation had to do not with appropriations, but with anti-abortion law and alleged deal-making thereon. That calls for a little background explanation.

It starts with one of the strangest things a strange people ever did.

In November 2008, 69.5 percent of Arkansas voters approved a constitutional amendment providing that the state Legislature would meet every year instead of every two years.

A cussedly independent population noted for populist conservatism and distrust of government—those being the very tenets of Arkansas’ settling and heritage—chose more active government by more than two to one. The very people who derided government voted to double down on government.

The amendment provided that the Legislature would continue to hold regular sessions doing all-comer policymaking every odd-numbered year, but that it would reassemble in even-numbered years for fiscal-only sessions to make state-government budgets annually rather than biennially.

It was a financially sound and policy-wise notion to spend money only a year at a time rather than for two years at a time. All the serious policy people agreed on that, just as all the smart political people agreed that, yes, of course, you’re right, but it’ll never fly.

The politics gurus lamented that Arkansas would forever remain among the few states—six at the time—with legislatures meeting only every two years.

My only explanation is that the voters had no idea what they were doing.

I theorize they took a wrong turn after reading the first sentence of the proposal’s popular name, which said the Legislature could no longer make appropriations to spend money for more than a year at a time. That was a necessary predicate for saying the Legislature henceforth would meet every year to do the appropriating a year at a time.

But I figure the ol’ boys read that first sentence and said danged straight; they were tired of government just spending and spending year after year, and they’d welcome the chance to make government spend for a shorter duration.

People say that explanation is insulting to Arkansas voters. I have no comment on that.

The new system fueled warnings that it opened a slippery slope to fullon annual sessions. The amendment provided that the fiscal-only session could be extended for non-fiscal matters by a two-thirds vote of both the House and Senate.

We are perhaps seeing that warning start to come to pass.

State Sen. Jason Rapert intends to try to extend the session to pass his bill imposing a Texas-style abortion law in the state. Most other pro-life legislators, meaning four-fifths of them, do not want to oblige either him or his proposal. They find the bill a grandstand play bearing none at all on the real opportunity to restrict or overturn Roe v. Wade in a case from Mississippi already pending before the U.S. Supreme Court.

Weeks ago, state Rep. Jeff Wardlaw, who’d had some sort of set-to with Rapert, told me Rapert’s motion to extend would not pass but that anti-abortion legislators might choose to pass some other anti-abortion measure. He did not specifically say the point would be for conservative Republican legislators to cover their behinds.

But it’s a plain fact: One cannot easily remain a rural Arkansas state legislator and be susceptible to Rapert’s going around the state telling local audiences he tried to save babies but the local Republican hypocrite wouldn’t let him.

Meanwhile, a plan has emerged to put $1 million at the Finance and Administration Department to fund grants to pregnancy centers, which seek to replace abortion by guiding women through unwanted pregnancy into motherhood. The evangelical Family Council has said it favors these first-time state grants for pregnancy centers and will not lobby in favor of Rapert’s proposal.

Everyone involved says this is a coincidence of unrelated factors, not a deal.

Meantime, the session almost certainly will extend to take up eight bills to reform the governance and processes of the troubled health insurance systems for state employees and teachers. The bills would set up new commissions and provide that, if system reserves got below a certain amount, the Legislature would have to replenish those funds or the systems would have to raise premiums.

That’s a matter of structural policy, not spending, and thus a matter for a regular session. But legislative leaders want to move now to have things in place for the new enrollment period starting in October. Some retirees on Medicare use their state plans for supplemental insurance.

There are one or two other matters for which the session might be extended. What normally takes two weeks could go into a third or, conceivably, beyond.

So, the faint aroma of full-on annual sessions might waft through the Capitol’s marble corridors in the coming days. If so, it will be at the voters’ direction—unknowing, surely.