Plan on sessions is passed by panel

Legislators’ aim: Meet out of state

Legislative committees could hold meetings in Arkansas’ surrounding states between annual legislative sessions with the approval of the House speaker or Senate president pro tempore under a proposed policy that cleared a legislative committee Tuesday.

The Legislative Council’s Policy-Making Subcommittee recommended that the Legislative Council approve the policy proposed by Subcommittee co-Chairman Sen. Linda Chesterfield, D-Little Rock.

Lawmakers attending out-of-state legislative committee meetings between sessions would be paid from interim committee funds for per diem and mileage in the same manner as for in-state committee meetings under the proposed policy.

Afterward, Senate Transportation Committee Chairman Bill Sample, R-Hot Springs, said the proposed policy stemmed from Gene Higginbotham, executive director of the Arkansas Waterways Commission, asking him about the possibility of having the House and Senate Transportation committees meet at the port in Shreveport.

“This is just an idea that was brought up,” Sample said. “If [such a meeting] came to bear, there wasn’t a policy for it. We thought we would make a policy for it … We may never go.”

Many manufacturers and businesses in south Arkansas use the ports on the Ouachita River and Red River, “so we want to go see if there is anything we can do to help our businesses that have to ship out through there,” Sample said.

Higginbotham said he mentioned to Sample that he would like the House and Senate transportation committees to visit ports in Tulsa, Shreveport and/ or Memphis that are competing with Arkansas ports in order to learn what legislation they could develop and enact to make Arkansas’ ports more competitive.

Shreveport is only an hour from Texarkana, he said.

Higginbotham said he hasn’t suggested an agenda or date for such a meeting.

But he added, “The fall would be the best time to do it.”

Marty Garrity, director of the Legislative Research Bureau, said the per diem paid to lawmakers for an out-of-state meeting would depend on the city and state of the meeting. For example, she said the per diem

for a meeting in Shreveport would be $123 a day. In addition, lawmakers are reimbursed for mileage at a rate of 56.5 cents per mile.

During the Policy-Making Subcommittee meeting, Chesterfield said she initially thought the Legislative Council had a policy barring such out-of-state meetings by legislative committees.

But Garrity said the Legislative Council has no policy and state law doesn’t prohibit such meetings.

She said a legislative committee met in Smackover and then in Shreveport, and another committee met in Fort Smith and then Muskogee, Okla., in separate years more than a dozen years ago.

Garrity said each legislative committee is allotted funds for its meetings between sessions and, if the committee exceeds its allocation, it can seek more funds through the Legislative Council.

Chesterfield said legislative committees hold meetings in such places as El Dorado, Fort Smith and Jonesboro between legislative sessions to get input from Arkansans outside Little Rock and learn more about the state.

The amount of money that state lawmakers collected in per diem, mileage and expense reimbursements from the state was $1 million lower in 2012 than in 2010.

The expense payments totaled $3.87 million last year when the Legislature met in a fiscal session, down from $4.87 million in 2010 when lawmakers convened their first-ever fiscal session, according to state records. Legislators and state officials have given several possible reasons — including the settlement of a lawsuit challenging the Legislature’s system of reimbursing lawmakers for expenses — for the 20 percent drop in expense payments from 2010 to 2012.

Per diem (a daily allowance for lodging, meals and incidentals), mileage and expense payments are in addition to legislators’ salaries, which are $15,869 each except for the House speaker and Senate president pro tempore, who get $17,771 each.