Change gonna come

Lawmakers push constitutional amendments

Last week’s deadline for lawmakers to file proposed constitutional amendments brought a flood of possible ballot offerings for 2020.

Dozens of proposals came in on the final day, raising the total number submitted by Arkansas lawmakers this year to 46. In all, 17 were filed in the state Senate, another 29 in the House of Representatives. Some address the same issues, many of them familiar to Arkansas voters.

Lawmakers must pare that list to no more than three to refer to voters in the next general election.

They’ve got a lot of work to do, given the wide range of amendments proposed for the Arkansas Constitution.

The truth is that a couple of issues already seem to have legislative favor, such as one for highway funding.

Highway funding is a priority for lawmakers and for Gov. Asa Hutchinson, who has proposed a package that includes a tax that will need voter approval.

Mind you, the ballot proposals for highway funding are nothing more than “shell” bills now. Details will be amended into the legislation later.

Lawmakers also seem bound and determined to try again for tort reform. Several options are being offered.

The issue, you may recall, was supposed to have been on the ballot last year; but the state Supreme Court knocked the legislatively referred amendment off the ballot because the court found the amendment packed with unrelated elements. This year’s offerings are supposed to be simpler.

One, for example, would set caps on noneconomic and punitive damages arising from lawsuits but leave out those elements the court found unrelated, including the extension of judicial rule-making authority to the Legislature.

Other proposals may not get much of a hearing, since lawmakers may refer only three.

Nevertheless, there are some interesting offerings.

Among them is one to abolish the practice of working inmates in the state’s correctional system for no pay. Arkansas and Alabama are the only states that utilize such “slave” labor, according to the sponsor.

There are also new attempts to address term limits, change the process for amending the constitution, make elections for appellate judges partisan and alter the meeting schedule for the Legislature.

There are also other shell proposals in the list, which may or may not be pursued by their sponsors.

For the record, the state’s charter was adopted in 1874 and has been amended 100 times already, sometimes as a result of legislative referrals and other times by voter initiative.

Just last year, voters approved two more amendments, one to require voters to present photo IDs at the polls and the other to allow full-fledged casinos in four Arkansas counties. The first came from lawmakers and the other from petitioners.

Among this year’s proposals in the Legislature is a shell bill that would amend the casino gaming amendment.

What happens now is that separate committees in each chamber will haggle over which proposals each will submit to a joint meeting of both panels later in the session.

For now, most of the wrangling will go on outside the chambers, as those with interest in particular issues seek to influence what the Legislature will eventually refer to voters.

Eventually, the committees will buckle down and narrow the list to what voters will see in 2020.

Meanwhile, all of the proposed amendments can be reviewed on the Legislature’s website.

For those new to searching it, go to www. arkleg.state.ar.us, click on “search bills by range” under the heading, “bills and resolutions.” Proposed constitutional amendments are submitted as joint resolutions, so search both House and Senate joint resolutions to see the full list.

—–––––❖–––––—