The 2017 legislative session
More like Texas, less like Arkansas
With the signature of Gov. Asa Hutchinson fresh on an act to give low wage earners in Arkansas a $50 million tax break starting on their 2020 state incomes taxes, more and more bills coming down the legislative pike are looking less and less like Arkansas-styled laws.
These new-styled cookie-cutter type bills of social influence are being introduced, debated and voted on by the 135 elected legislators down in Little Rock.
Many of these social issue bills seem to be all coming from some sort of cookie-cutter pre-legislative seminars put on by national advocates of one ilk or another. All these seminars, retreats, meetings and junkets attended by our lawmakers — are to, well, seek to influence the Arkansas legislature to influence Arkansans. Is that sort of puzzling? Now, just stay with me. Or better yet, are these think-tank types trying to influence Arkansas’ lawmakers and thus the Arkansas citizenry on some sort of a social issue?
Are these issues really a problem in Arkansas? Will they ever be an issue in our largely rural and socially conservative state?
Take, for instance. the 150-day legislative session currently underway down in the Lone Star state of Texas.
In Arkansas it was once considered political suicide for a lawmaker to introduce a bill by sitting at the polished committee tables in the House or state Senate and to blab out loud that the aforementioned bill down in Texas did thus and so.
No self-respecting lawmaker would admit that any legislation in Texas was worthy of one’s time in Arkansas.
But, oh no, not anymore.
Here are five issues Texans are watching out of their legislature this month:
• Whether to have a “bathroom” bill for transgender use like the one in North Carolina.
• Do Texans want a property tax cut? (They have no state income taxes in the Lone Star state). And can the state on a tight budget afford more tax cuts?
• Texas has problems with its foster care system. Too many children and not enough homes to care for them.
• How are Texans going to pay for public education and do it fairly for all?
• The all-encompassing debate over undocumented immigrants and sanctuary polices. Sound familiar? Sure it does. That’s a pretty similar pattern to bills being filed here in Arkansas — with two exceptions.
Texas has not voted in Medical Marijuana, as Arkansans did in the recent November election.
And, perhaps, thankfully for Texas’ colleges and universities, there is, at present, no State Rep. Charlie Collins, R-Fayetteville, in the Lone Star state.
But when Collins’ bill is passed, if it is passed, there will emerge a Charlie Collins down in Texas.
All in all, there is little original legislation left to draft.
Some of the better legislation in Arkansas — like the Arkansas Private Option, now dubbed Arkansas Works, which is health insurance to offset Obamacare — took some re-working of a federal act to fit the state’s unique shape and form.
Somehow in these days of scary legislation being
spread to each state by national influencers, such diverse groups as the Koch Brothers and the ACLU, I hope and dream of a local legislator finding solutions
— Arkansas-style solutions — to our state’s real problems.
A columnist can dream, can’t he?
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Maylon Rice is a former journalist who worked for several northwest Arkansas publications. He can be reached via email at maylontrice@yahoo.com. The opinions expressed are those of the author.