Arkansas becomes 45th Legislature to meet annually

Backers of a constitutional amendment requiring Arkansas lawmakers to meet and budget annually say annual sessions will help the Legislature respond more quickly to changes in the state’s economy.

Their theory will be put to the test Monday, as Arkansas becomes the 45th Legislature to meet annually. The Legislature’s 135 members will gather at the state Capitol on Monday for the first day of what’s expected to be a month-long session dealing primarily with the state’s budget.

The session comes after a drop in Arkansas’ tax revenues prompted Gov. Mike Beebe to cut $206 million from state agencies’ budgets over the past year. Beebe, who had opposed moving to annual sessions, says he now sees some benefit to allowing the Legislature to meet and budget every year.

“I might like it now if it’s going to be that disciplined,” Beebe told The Associated Press in an interview last week. “Frankly, it comes at a good time, if you think about it because we’ve gone through some pretty rocky economic times. ... The opportunity to be able to relook at all this stuff is coming at an opportune time.”

Beebe says he thinks the Legislature has a chance to set an example with the session by keeping the focus on the budget and not getting distracted by other issues. If he had a second chance to vote on the amendment, Beebe said he might consider voting for it.

“I think it can be a precedent that we don’t try to do things that it wasn’t intended to do,” Beebe said.

Voters approved the move to annual sessions in 2008, surprising many given the lack of a formal campaign for the amendment and the state’s past support of strict term limits legislation.

Attempts to repeal the amendment failed during last year’s session, and legislative leaders have said they’re trying to limit the scope of the session as much as possible.

Under the amendment, the session can last no longer than 45 days, but legislative leaders have said they hope to wrap up business in less than a month. It will also take a two-thirds vote in each chamber for lawmakers to consider any non-budget legislation.

Sen. Bill Pritchard, one of the chief backers of the annual sessions amendment, said he thinks the first fiscal session will help win over skeptics and prove that it’s not a move to a full-time Legislature.

“So many decisions were being made not by the Legislature who should be making them,” said Pritchard, R-Elkins. “That’s why we thought it was necessary to make our budget process more reasonable and allow us to tweak it as necessary.”

Arkansas was part of a shrinking minority of states that meet every other year. Forty-five state Legislatures meet annually and the previous state to change from biennial to annual sessions was Kentucky in 2001, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures.

The remaining states that meet every other year are Montana, Nevada, North Dakota, Oregon and Texas.

Aside from Beebe, the annual sessions proposal faced opposition from some of the state’s largest powerful lobbies, including the Arkansas Municipal League.

State Sen. Kim Hendren, who regularly appeared before public forums to oppose the amendment during the 2008 campaign, said he’s still not convinced meeting every year will improve the state’s budgeting process. Hendren said he believed the state has fared well under Arkansas’ revenue stabilization law, which sets priorities for funding state programs based on expected revenue.

Hendren, a Republican running for his party’s United States Senate nomination, said he believed the annual sessions goes against the idea of a part-time Legislature that can still focus on other work.

“I still believe our founding fathers believed in a citizens’ legislature than people who do it full time,” Hendren said. “I think that the ship would have sailed right on through without this.”