You need money for that

With government not work- ing at all in Washington, the question in Little Rock for the legislative session beginning next week will be whether state government can work well.

People are saying it’s going to be a tough session. On the surface, it’s difficult to imagine why.

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How hard is it to cut folks’ income taxes while natural revenue growth seems sufficient for the moment to absorb at least the first phase of the cut?

Conservative Republicanism seems the easiest thing in the world.

So I thought the forecast toughness might have to do with the issue on which I tend to obsess—that, in the early spring, a federal judge in Washington may throw out the state’s firstin-the-nation cruel obstacle course for poor people to stay on Medicaid expansion. That development, in turn, would cause Republican legislators to abandon the human decency and fiscal responsibility of Medicaid expansion and throw poor people off health insurance and the state into chaos.

But I’ve talked with key legislators and they seem to think either the judge won’t do that or, if he does, the Legislature will approve the Arkansas Works program for another year on some sort of assurance the work requirement could be put back in a modified form.

I think they’re whistling “Dixie” on that, but if it gets us a year of human decency and fiscal responsibility, then let’s all put our lips together and blow.

If not that, then what?

After considerable discussion with affected parties and understanding that “tough session” usually denotes a condition by which spare money will be hard to come by, I’ve decided the stress and strain will center on a highway funding program.

There seems to be wide agreement that Arkansas needs to move past small highway funding measures and do something big and lasting this year, particularly for bridges and roadway widening, thus public safety.

There also is wide agreement that this major tax program cannot be passed directly by the Republican Legislature—since Republican legislators would never do such a thing—but merely punted as a referral to the voters for their decision.

That’s the end of any agreeing, and, to be precise, there’s not agreement even on referring the tax program to the voters.

There are a couple of noisemaking arch-conservative groups in the state that will target for defeat a Republican legislator who merely gives the voters a chance to raise their own taxes for highways.

As this arch-conservative thinking goes, it is the elected officials’ responsibility to decide such things and save the unsuspecting voters from the high-pressure sales tactics of outfits like the Highway Commission coming around saying everyone is going to die in a bridge collapse if they don’t vote “yes.”

So not even punting will be easy for legislators.

But, more than that, there are the particulars. In visiting last week with a couple of well-connected legislators, I heard myriad ideas—merely ideas— and none of them was easy.

One is that, before referring a big tax program to the people, legislators will be obliged to demonstrate their own efficiencies, probably by transferring to the highway fund some portion of the general fund made up of sales taxes paid for automotive parts and supplies.

That’s venturing into a toughness area—cutting income taxes to reduce the general fund, worrying to some extent about the future of Medicaid and its drain on the general fund, facing increasing prison costs that are paid from general revenue and then, on top of all that, slicing a further sum of millions out of the general fund to prime a highway pump.

Beyond that is the matter of what the big tax package would be. It could be as simple as a constitutional amendment for a sales tax on highways tied to a big bond issue.

Or there is the simmering view that maybe the new tax revenue should go entirely to pavement, not at all to debt service, and be spent on a pay-as-yougo basis.

Then there is the idea advanced by the recent tax reform task force to follow the example of other states and index for inflation the per-gallon rate of motor fuel taxation.

No significant segment of the Legislature is yet wedded to any of that, or to anything other than the acknowledgement that it’s time to do something.

Anybody wanting a little money for a good idea is likely to be told that, yes, the idea is good, but gosh, the time isn’t right because we simply must do this tax cut and we’re going to have to do something on highways that could affect general revenue.

In other words, the toughness of the session likely will be experienced most by good ideas needing a little money.

John Brummett, whose column appears regularly in the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, is a member of the Arkansas Writers’ Hall of Fame. Email him at jbrummett@arkansasonline.com. Read his @johnbrummett Twitter feed.