Latest news with #ArkansasHouseofRepresentatives
Yahoo
13-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Otter Creek Elementary School teacher named 2025 Arkansas Fine Arts Teacher of the Year
LITTLE ROCK, Ark. – A teacher at an elementary school in Little Rock was surprised Monday morning with a major award. Otter Creek Elementary School teacher Karyna Johnson was honored as the 2025 Arkansas Fine Arts Teacher of the Year by Arkansans For The Arts. Two Little Rock students head for Broadway after winning awards for musical theatre The award comes with a $1,000 stipend and a citation from the Arkansas House of Representatives. Johnson said what keeps her motivated is a mission to make sure every child has the opportunity to succeed in the arts and beyond. 'Just making sure that where they're born and who they are isn't what holds them back from being the best version of themselves they can be,' Johnson said. Little Rock teachers go viral on TikTok for 'Not Like Us' remake motivating students for tests Nominations for next year's Fine Arts Teacher of the Year will open in December. Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
Yahoo
17-04-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Arkansas lawmakers approve $182.5 million state budget increase
Rep. Lane Jean, R-Magnolia, addresses the Arkansas House of Representatives on Wednesday, May 1, 2024. (Antoinette Grajeda/Arkansas Advocate) The Arkansas General Assembly on Wednesday approved legislation to increase the state's general revenue budget to $6.49 billion for fiscal year 2026, a nearly 3% increase from the previous year. As is typical, state lawmakers approved the Revenue Stabilization Act on the final day of the legislative session through two identical bills — Senate Bill 637 and House Bill 2003. The RSA is nearly identical to the budget Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders proposed in November. The largest portion of the $182.5 million increase to the state budget for the fiscal year that begins July 1 is an additional $90 million for the state's Educational Freedom Account program. Arkansas governor presents $6.49 billion budget proposal to state lawmakers The school voucher program, which permits state funds to be used for allowable expenses such as private school tuition, is expected to see an increase in participation during its third year, when eligibility opens up to all Arkansas students this fall. The legislation also increases county jail reimbursement by roughly $9 million to $34.8 million. The state reimburses county jails for holding state inmates when there's no room in Arkansas prisons. Expanding prison capacity has been a priority for Sanders, but lawmakers failed this session to approve a $750 million appropriation bill to support the full estimated cost of a planned prison in Franklin County. Sen. Jonathan Dismang, R-Searcy, sponsored that bill and told colleagues the estimated total cost of the proposed 3,000-bed penitentiary is $825 million, but several lawmakers said they believe the cost will top $1 billion and were unhappy that the administration couldn't provide more details on the project. Franklin County residents have also objected to the prison's location and to the state's purchase of the property without involving local officials. In the House Tuesday, Joint Budget Committee Chairman Rep. Lane Jean, R-Magnolia, highlighted a $13 million increase to the Department of Human Services Grants line item, which he said would support maternal health. Sanders in her proposed budget called for a $13 million increase for Medicaid to help support recommendations from the Strategic Committee for Maternal Health that she convened last year to address the state's poor maternal health outcomes. Arkansas has among the nation's highest maternal and infant mortality rates, according to the Arkansas Center for Health Improvement. Arkansas is the only state to have taken no action on a federal option to expand Medicaid postpartum benefits to 12 months from the current 60 days. Sanders has refused to expand coverage, saying to do so would be duplicative of other health insurance options for new mothers. The RSA also includes $3.15 million for a performance fund that Jean said would support the governor's new state employee pay plan, which is expected to cost a total of $139 million. Lawmakers last month approved legislation for the plan, which aims to clarify promotion ladders within state agencies and improve recruitment and retention by raising some salaries to labor market rates. State agency leaders should be able to accommodate the updated pay schedule within existing budgets, the governor said last fall. Jean told the House Tuesday that the RSA projects the state would be left with roughly $300,000 in surplus funds, though he noted that would likely be closer to $250,000 because $50,000 would be allocated for highways. That is significantly less than the record billion-dollar surpluses seen in recent years. The decrease in surplus funds could be contributed, in part, to several rounds of tax cuts by Arkansas' last two governors. Sanders and the Legislature cut taxes three times in 15 months, most recently last June. To further support the governor's proposed budget, lawmakers also approved Senate Bill 636 Wednesday, which would transfer $572.79 million in surplus money to various funds and set-aside accounts. 'It's spending a lot of money, I'm not debating that point, but I think it's all needs that the governor came up with. House got some needs that we asked for, Senate's got some needs,' Jean said Wednesday. SB 636 includes an additional $90 million for the EFA program and $100 million for the Medicaid Sustainability Set Aside Fund, among other things. When Sanders proposed these set-aside funds in November, State Budget Director Robert Brech noted they would only be used if necessary and are not part of the RSA, which prioritizes state government spending and balances the budget. 'It's not known at this time if those will be necessary,' Brech said then. 'In the event they are, those set-asides could be used and then built into the budget afterwards, but what we didn't want to do is put too much money in the RSA when it wasn't needed.' A worksheet for surplus funding and set-asides for the 2025-2027 biennium presented to the Joint Budget Committee Monday also proposed transferring $250 million to a correctional facilities fund through Senate Bill 633. That bill was pulled down Monday. SUBSCRIBE: GET THE MORNING HEADLINES DELIVERED TO YOUR INBOX
Yahoo
20-03-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Arkansas House rejects proposed ban on noncitizen voting, which is already illegal
Rep. Diana Gonzales Worthen, D-Springdale, expresses her opposition to the Only Citizens Vote Act before the bill's failure to pass the Arkansas House on Thursday, March 20, 2025. (Tess Vrbin/Arkansas Advocate) The Arkansas House of Representatives failed to pass a bill that would have placed restrictions on noncitizens attempting to vote or register to vote, something that is both federally illegal and not happening in Arkansas, according to immigrant advocates. The Only Citizens Vote Act, or House Bill 1422, would have changed both state law and the state Constitution. Changing the latter via legislative action requires a minimum two-thirds vote from lawmakers, or 67 votes in the House. Only 53 House members, all Republicans, supported the bill. Fourteen more Republicans did not vote. The constitutional change in question would have added references to the proposed new statute to Arkansas Constitutional Amendment 51, which lists the documents required for voter registration. Those documents include a Social Security card and a driver's license or state-issued identification card, both of which noncitizens are able to obtain, bill sponsor Rep. Wayne Long, R-Bradford, told a House committee that narrowly passed the bill Wednesday. HB 1422 would have required the Department of Finance and Administration to share 'names and identifying information of each' noncitizen with an Arkansas-issued ID or driver's license with the Secretary of State's office, which oversees elections. If a noncitizen was found to be registered to vote, the bill would have required the secretary of state to refer the individual to the Attorney General's office for prosecution, and the clerk of the noncitizen's county of residence would have been required to cancel the person's voter registration. The individual would have had the chance to provide proof of U.S. citizenship after being notified of the secretary of state's actions. Proposed ban on noncitizen voting, already illegal, passes Arkansas House committee However, there are 'no documented cases' of noncitizens voting in Arkansas, so HB 1422 addresses 'a non-issue,' said Democratic Rep. Diana Gonzales Worthen, the Legislature's first Latina who represents the state's first majority-Hispanic district in Springdale. 'Immigrants do not want to break the law, especially in this manner, because if they're in line for citizenship, this will totally erase that,' she said. Providing false information on a voter registration form, including about citizenship status, risks fines and/or imprisonment, according to the Secretary of State's office. HB 1422 would also have required the finance department to print noncitizen driver's licenses and state-issued IDs in a vertical format. Individuals from ages 16 to 20 already have vertically printed ID cards, which Gonzales Worthen said would 'cause confusion' and single out immigrants if HB 1422 became law. Mireya Reith, founder and executive director of Arkansas United, and Maricella Garcia, race equity director for Arkansas Advocates for Children and Families, made the same point Wednesday when speaking against HB 1422 before the House Committee on State Agencies and Governmental Affairs. Additionally, HB 1422 states that its noncitizen ID requirements would not be a valid federal ID. This would clash with the requirement for Arkansans to have a Real ID to enter a federal building or board a domestic flight from May 5 onward, said Rep. Nicole Clowney, D-Fayetteville. SUBSCRIBE: GET THE MORNING HEADLINES DELIVERED TO YOUR INBOX There are 71,648 noncitizens legally residing in Arkansas, and any of them 'could potentially be voting, but we don't really know,' Long said Wednesday. Clowney noted that altering tens of thousands of Arkansans' driver's licenses would cost $152,000, according to a fiscal impact statement from the state finance department. No member of the House spoke for HB 1422, and eight Republicans voted present. Six Republicans joined all 19 House Democrats in voting against the bill: Rep. Brandon Achor of Maumelle Rep. Julie Mayberry of Hensley Rep. Mark McElroy of Tillar Rep. Kendra Moore of Lincoln House Majority Whip Stetson Painter of Mountain Home Rep. Trey Steimel of Pocahontas Mayberry and McElroy also voted against the bill Wednesday in committee. U.S. House GOP targets noncitizen voting, even though it's rare Noncitizen voting is rare but has been legalized in a handful of cities nationwide, including in Washington, D.C., in 2023, leading to backlash from conservatives. Thirteen states — including Louisiana, Oklahoma and Missouri — have amended their constitutions since 2020 to specify that noncitizens cannot vote in those states. President Donald Trump pushed the false narrative of noncitizens voting often in federal elections while he was campaigning for reelection last year, and U.S. House Republicans introduced legislation that would have required states to verify proof of citizenship to prevent noncitizens from voting in federal elections. The bill stalled in the U.S. Senate, which was controlled by Democrats at the time. SUPPORT: YOU MAKE OUR WORK POSSIBLE
Yahoo
20-03-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Proposed maximum reading level for citizen-led ballot measures stumbles but passes Arkansas House
Rep. Ryan Rose, R-Van Buren, presents House Bill 1713 to the House Committee on State Agencies and Governmental Affairs on Wednesday, March 12, 2025. (Tess Vrbin/Arkansas Advocate) A proposal mandating citizen-led ballot measures be written at an 8th-grade or lower reading level cleared the Arkansas House of Representatives Wednesday after three attempts to pass its emergency clause. House Bill 1713 passed the House on Tuesday with 60 votes; a separate vote on the emergency clause received 63 votes. Emergency clauses require a two-thirds vote in each chamber, meaning at least 67 House votes, and allow laws to go into effect immediately upon the governor's signature. HB 1713's emergency clause received 70 votes Wednesday and will next be heard in the Senate Committee on State Agencies and Governmental Affairs. HB 1713 narrowly passed the equivalent House committee on March 12 after lawmakers and members of the public raised concerns that proposed ballot measures are too complex by default to be written at or below an 8th-grade reading level. Bill sponsor Rep. Ryan Rose, R-Van Buren, said the bill should help Arkansans 'make informed decisions when asked to sign a petition, without confusion, without legalese, without any deceptive wording.' Republican lawmakers this year have introduced a wide range of bills that would add regulations to Arkansas' direct democracy process. The 2024 election cycle saw a wide range of proposed citizen-led ballot measures, only one of which qualified for the November ballot, and supporters of the direct democracy regulations have made allegations of deceptive practices by supporters of last year's measures. Many of the bills have had emergency clauses, and some have required multiple votes in either chamber before meeting the two-thirds threshold. Several of those bills have been signed into law, and most were sponsored by Sen. Kim Hammer, R-Benton. Two bills to change citizen-led petition process pass Arkansas House, but without emergency clauses Hammer will run next year for Secretary of State, the office that oversees elections. He is a co-sponsor of HB 1713. Rep. Nicole Clowney, D-Fayetteville, voted against HB 1713 in committee and on the House floor. She said Wednesday that she supported 'a readability standard of some sort' for ballot measures but did not believe HB 1713 was the right mechanism for creating one. The bill mandates the Flesch-Kincaid Grade Level readability test as the determinant of compliance with the policy. 'It's just an algorithm that spits out a readability level based on sentence length and word length,' Clowney said. 'If a word has five syllables, a word like 'constitutional,' you are automatically penalized by the parameters of this test.' Committee chairman Rep. Jimmy Gazaway, R-Paragould, said the bill does not acknowledge that 'it can be difficult to convey complex ideas or concepts with small words.' His vote to pass the bill out of the committee was the deciding vote, but he voted present on the bill and the emergency clause Tuesday. He voted for the emergency clause Wednesday. HB 1713 would not apply the same readability standards to legislatively proposed constitutional amendments, which drew concerns from lawmakers and members of the public March 12. Voters approved an amendment last year that the Legislature placed on the ballot, allowing trade-school students to benefit from scholarship lottery funds. Clowney pointed out Wednesday that this amendment had a college graduate-level reading level, according to the Flesch-Kincaid readability test. Proposed amendments are required to begin with 'an amendment to the Arkansas Constitution.' House Minority Leader Andrew Collins, D-Little Rock, told the committee last week that this phrase is also deemed college-graduate level by the reading test. So is the title of HB 1713 itself, said Gail Choate, a political scientist and civics educator who spoke against the bill March 12. 'What I'm concerned [about] with this bill is that it does nothing to address civic education,' Choate said. 'It does nothing to address the ability of people to understand even what a ballot initiative is or what it works… It dumbs down the process, it lowers the standard under which we're presenting information under the guise that people aren't able to understand.' Jerry Cox, president of the conservative Family Council, spoke in favor of the bill before the committee, while attorney and direct democracy advocate J.P. Tribell spoke against it. HB 1713 is likely to be considered by senators after the Legislature's spring break next week.
