Pay glitch resolved, lawmakers told

LITTLE ROCK — The Arkansas auditor’s office overpaid a former Senate president pro tempore while underpaying his successor for a year and a half, lawmakers learned Tuesday.

The agency did not record salary changes for Sen. Jim Hendren, an Independent from Sulphur Springs who was elected president pro tempore in January 2019, and Sen. Jonathan Dismang, R-Searcy, whom he replaced.

The Senate president pro tempore and the speaker of the House, the top legislators in each chamber, are paid slightly higher salaries than the rest of the members of the Arkansas General Assembly.

As a result, Dismang was overpaid and Hendren was underpaid for 18 months by an amount totaling $ 9,189, legislative auditors found.

The agency discovered the error and implemented a plan to correct the over-payment and underpayment with a bimonthly payment plan, beginning in August 2020, to recoup $6,447 of the over-payment, according to the report presented Tuesday.

oth Dismang and Hendren agreed to waive the salary discrepancy of $2,742 from fiscal 2019, the report states.

The Senate president pro tempore and the speaker of the House are elected by their respective bodies.

“Historically, our office has relied on information from internal elections to be provided by the Secretary of the Senate and House of Representative’s Chief of Staff. That information was not provided to our office for the January 2019 internal election,” the auditor’s office said in the report.

The Legislative Joint Auditing Committee’s Standing Committee on State Agencies approved the findings at its meeting Tuesday.