Lawmakers file varied proposals for amendments

After failing in the past two elections to have Arkansans vote on a constitutional amendment limiting lawsuit damages, lawmakers will consider making a third attempt in 2020.

A “tort reform” proposal, filed Tuesday in the Senate, joined a half-dozen other proposed amendments put forward by lawmakers in the two days leading up to today’s deadline for filing constitutional amendments. Other proposals were filed earlier. The amendments are in the form of joint resolutions both chambers must approve but require no action by the governor. The Legislature, when meeting in regular session, can place up to three proposals on the ballot of the next general election.

The filing deadline is the close of business today.

Other proposals filed Monday and Tuesday concern highways; annual sessions of the Legislature; partisan judicial elections; and the amendment and ballot initiative process itself. Residents use the initiative process to place proposals for amendments and acts on the ballot.

Senate Joint Resolution 8, which proposes to allow the Legislature to set caps on noneconomic and punitive damages arising from lawsuits, bears the same number as an amendment put forward by lawmakers in 2017.

That 2017 resolution would have set similar caps, as well as limits on attorneys’ fees and a proposed reworking of the court rule-making process. The 2017 resolution, placed on the ballot as Issue 4, was struck down by the Arkansas Supreme Court before the 2018 election. The court also struck down a proposal to limit noneconomic damages in medical lawsuits ahead of the 2016 election.

The latest proposed version, SJR8, is stripped of much of the provisions proving the most controversial in the past.

The proposed amendment doesn’t include a cap on attorneys’ fees, which many lawyers oppose, and doesn’t propose to give the Legislature authority of the courts’ rules, which had drawn ire from judges and attorneys alike.

Also absent from the amendment is an amount for caps on certain damages. Instead, the amendment simply gives the authority to the Legislature to set limits on damages.

SJR8 is sponsored by Sen. Bart Hester, R-Cave Springs, and Rep. John Eubanks, R-Paris. Neither could be reached for comment Tuesday.

PARTISAN JUDGES

An amendment filed Tuesday afternoon would return Arkansas’ judicial elections to a partisan footing.

The proposal, by Rep. Robin Lundstrum, R-Elm Springs, and Sen. Gary Stubblefield, R-Branch, would make candidates for the Supreme Court, Court of Appeals and circuit court run with a party label.

Judicial candidates are now nonpartisan. Nonpartisan elections started in 2002.

Eight states elect Supreme Court judges on a partisan basis, and seven states use partisan elections for all trial judges, according to the elections-reference website Ballotpedia.

YEARLY SESSIONS

The Legislature would meet twice as often — every year — to take up matters of general concern under an amendment offered by Sen. Trent Garner, R-El Dorado.

The Legislature meets for biennial regular sessions in odd-numbered years. In even years, lawmakers meet for shorter fiscal sessions for the purpose of approving budgets.

Garner’s amendment, Senate Joint Resolution 7, would eliminate the fiscal session and have lawmakers meet every year for a regular session. Those sessions would be limited to 60 days.

“I think we’ll get quicker, more efficient general sessions,” Garner said of his proposal. “And it will allow us to make changes every year instead of having to wait two years.”

An amendment filed earlier in the session by President Pro Tempore Jim Hendren, R-Sulphur Springs, proposed to make sessions less frequent, by eliminating the fiscal session and reducing the length of the general sessions.

AMENDING THE PROCESS

Sen. Breanne Davis, R-Russellville, on Tuesday filed a proposed constitutional amendment prohibiting future changes to the constitution from granting special privileges to counties and cities.

A proposed constitutional amendment or initiated act shall not refer to counties or cities by name “if the intent of the reference is to grant one or more of those counties [or cities] powers, privileges, opportunities, or benefits that are not available” to all other localities, Senate Joint Resolution 6 states.

Davis’ proposal comes after voters approved Amendment 100 to the Arkansas Constitution last year to expand casino gaming in the Natural State. The amendment named Jefferson and Pope counties as the specific places where the state could license two new casinos. It also allowed Oaklawn Racing and Gaming in Hot Springs and Southland Gaming and Racing in West Memphis to expand into full-fledged casinos.