Convicted ex-state senator denied prison release

FORT SMITH — A federal judge has denied a former Arkansas state senator’s request to be released from a federal prison in Oklahoma where he has served just more than one year of an 18-month prison term for fraud and money laundering.

Republican Jake Files of Fort Smith filed the request last Friday, one year after reporting to

the prison in El Reno, Oklahoma, to serve his sentence.

U.S. District Judge P.K. Holmes in Fort Smith denied the motion Wednesday in a ruling first reported by the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette. Holmes wrote that Files failed to show he has “exhausted administrative remedies” with the Bureau of Prisons.

Files resigned from the state Senate Jan. 30, 2018, a day after pleading guilty to falsifying bids and pocketing thousands of dollars in state funds intended for construction of a sports complex.

Governor not expecting Medicaid plan approval

LITTLE ROCK — Arkansas’ governor says he doesn’t expect federal officials to approve the state’s plan to lower the eligibility cap for its Medicaid expansion program anytime soon after a similar proposal was rejected last month.

Gov. Asa Hutchinson told reporters Wednesday that the state hasn’t received a formal denial of its proposal, which would have lowered the eligibility cap for Medicaid expansion from 138% of the federal poverty level to 100%. President Donald Trump’s administration has rejected a similar partial expansion proposal from Utah.

Arkansas’ proposal would have moved 60,000 people off its Medicaid expansion program.

Hutchinson says his focus has been on the state’s Medicaid expansion work requirement, which has been blocked by a federal judge. That decision has been appealed.