Support for Arkansas Week provided by the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette.

The Arkansas Times and Little Rock Public Radio.

And hello again, everyone, and thanks for joining us.

It is not final adjournment sine die and the Latin but close regular session of the 95th Arkansas General Assembly entered a recess on Wednesday.

Its work is essentially completed, if not necessarily to the total satisfaction of either legislative or executive branches.

Such, of course, is usually the case.

Still, the governor said she was more than pleased.

This session has reinforced that Arkansas's conservative majority is delivering on our promises to the people of this state.

We started big with Arkansas Access our plan to improve opportunities for all students post-high school.

We knew we needed heavyweight support, so we went to two of the biggest legislative leaders.

There are Jonathan Dismaying and Matthew Shepard.

Thank you for your leadership to get that across the line.

We reduced complexity, increased scholarships, expanded resources and got woke nonsense off of our college campuses.

The result is going to be more Arkansans getting more education and taking more of the jobs we know will grow our economy in the 21st century.

Later in the broadcast, some views from leaders of the loyal opposition up front and from the majority party.

We are joined by the man who steered the session on the north end of the Capitol, Speaker Brian Evans.

Thanks very much, Mr. Speaker, for coming in.

Thank you, Steve.

Thank you for having me back on, everyone.

Well, the governor, everyone in your party pronounced it a success.

So by what standard was it a success for me and for the house?

It was making sure that every one of our members, as they left the Capitol yesterday to drive home that they felt like to themselves it was a success.

That's how I would define it.

I can't define what success means to them.

It could be just one bill that was constituent led for them.

Or it may be something monumental, like some of the things that the governor mentioned.

But as I watched members leave, I believe there was a united feeling of success amongst the chamber on both sides of the aisle that they were able to accomplish things for their districts.

Well, from your perspective, those of the House leader, a representative from from Cabinet.

What was the high point in your estimation or what were the big successes?

What did you look back on?

Well, certainly the work that we did on maternal health was monumental for the state of Arkansas.

This session, being able to provide additional health access to those expectant mothers in some of our areas where health care is is falling very short.

That's a generation or change for our state that we will reap rewards for for years to come.

And then things just like the improvements that we're doing at the school of the deaf, in the School of the Blind.

Governor Sanders has made it well known that we are going to be the education state.

She will be the education governor.

I believe the House and Senate are a joined with that in making sure that all populations in Arkansas have a strong sense of education.

The school to maternal health for just as like a when you were with us on this broadcast.

I think at the start of the session you were I believe it's fair to say you were optimistic that Mr. Pilkington's Bill, that would extend Medicaid for a full year for postpartum mothers would perhaps succeed in this session.

Again, it did not.

It did not have the governor's support.

What you did do for maternal health.

Will that are you satisfied that that will fill the gap?

Will that accomplish what?

I don't know that it will completely fill that gap.

But there was a large commitment from the executive branch and the legislature to includes funding in that balanced budget and with some one time funding that's going to help provide some additional services, maybe not all the way up to the full 12 months as Representative Pilkington was trying to accomplish.

But we have moved that needle a lot closer to that in terms of education.

The you've got a well, let me start with a budget first, because everything goes back to that.

It's about six and a half billion dollars in general revenue.

Well, the state will spend three times that amount, I guess, all things considered, highway and Medicaid and everything else.

But the margins seem to be a little smaller with each legislative session with owing to tax cuts.

If you got enough breathing room, should I believe that we do?

I know the margins at all of our households are a lot smaller than they used to be, but I'm very optimistic at what we're seeing in the state.

I read a report just yesterday entitled Rich States, Poor States.

We have moved in the last four years.

Arkansas has gone from 23rd in the nation to 10th in the nation in tax policy.

That's putting more money into the pocketbooks of our constituent back home.

And it's making Arkansas very attractive to people who want to move here to retire and people who want to move here to establish business.

That will be the next economic driver for our state that will make up that difference.

Well, you've probably also read, too, that there's some admonitions, if you want to call them that, from the chairman of the Fed, warning of a possible downturn and in the economy, that could have a profound effect on Arkansas, could it not?

Are we ready for that?

I think with any time you go through a period of inflation like we did in just the most recent previous years, the market in the economy has to correct itself.

We're always in four and five year cycles.

You just have to be in it for the long run.

And I believe that we are positioned to make a really strong move forward in the next coming years.

Yeah, a part of that.

You mentioned education.

A part of that six and a half billion is a several million more in in voucher funds.

Is this going to is this going to cap ever?

I believe it will.

I believe the market will cap itself.

There's only so many seats available right now.

And we're seeing all across the state with some of the private schools that were already at maximum seats.

There's not they're not going to go out and just start building a lot of new private schools.

I think this is meeting a niche of students that were looking for these opportunities.

But I think we're very close to that cap.

Well, you've also got the home schoolers and is it going to be eventually is it going to demonstrate a disadvantage be to the disadvantage anyway of those communities, which simply because of scale, can't afford a private academy?

Isn't feasible?

We've certainly seen an uptick in the number of students families who are choosing for their children to do some type of homeschool cooperative or whether it's just some type of complete online virtual learning, and that's meeting their needs and that's okay.

But what we have also seen and I saw the ten years that I served on the school board and cabinet, we would see students that would leave to either be homeschooled, maybe go to a private school, a parochial school, and typically within 18 months.

So throughout the year or into the next school year, they were coming back to the public school.

And I think we'll see that as well.

A reversal of sorts.

I think it will be a balance.

I think there's been somewhat of a little bit of an early onset run on other opportunities.

But when it comes down to it, 90% of the families in the state of Arkansas are going to take advantage of the traditional public school setting.

It worked for for me and it's worked for hundreds of thousands of students across the state of Arkansas.

But what one of the key administration objective, governor senators objected was that prison over in Franklin County repeated attempts to get it through the upper chamber anyway failed.

There was an enormous pushback on that.

Have you spoken with the governor about that?

And where is this thing headed?

Well, Senator Hester and I speak daily with the governor in regards to all of these key public policy issues.

Right.

Currently, the executive branch, Department of Corrections, they have $75 million parked in, I call it parking cash that has already been appropriated and funded.

That's going to allow them now to start the process, get with the architects, get with the general contractors, start looking at site preparation, doing additional data testing that will suffice from now until we get to fiscal session in 2026.

The process has started.

Members were asking for kind of a slow down in the time frame and to get a better idea hard line item looks at some of these numbers.

This will allow time for that data to be put together.

We'll be back in fiscal session in 26 and should be able to move forward.

Some of your members were asking for more than a slowdown.

They wanted a flat stop.

Is this thing got enough momentum in, say, the next session?

I believe that it does.

Some of the members that I spoke with personally that had been hard, no votes to move forward.

They're not opposed to the prison.

They're not soft on crime.

They just wanted some more finite data to be able to look at to be able to justify moving forward at this time.

I believe that data is being supplied to them.

We saw several of those who went from no votes to yes votes.

Commitments from those that maybe had been voting present to start moving to a yes vote.

I think that they were very close on the vote at this point.

But it was time for session to wind down.

And I think there's a good plan going forward.

Do you have an estimate, sir?

You started out with under 400 million and the last I heard was 825 from any official source.

And of course, some of your members excuse me, of the House or Senate think it could easily go over a billion.

Well, timing is everything.

The budget that is in place now is for 825 million.

And we have been assured that that will can and will be built for $825 million.

Building one is one thing, but you keep paying for it every year.

And opponents of the prison say we've got to find other alternatives to incarceration because this is not sustainable.

Your thought?

Well, I think what we have seen is in some of our existing facilities have had significant shortages in workforce.

And so the principle of saying we will just add another wing on at this facility or add another wing on it, that facility, that's not realistic because there already is a workforce shortage in those areas.

So finding a location that is closer to a population center makes sense.

Having enough acreage so that you've got a lot of green space around and you're not crowding a neighborhood or a city.

Population is important.

And I think that that's why that location outside the Charleston community was chosen.

Well, Speaker, run us.

Thanks very much for coming aboard.

Yes, sir.

Thank you for having me on.

It's always a pleasure.

I think you'll be back.

Yes, sir.

Thank you.

All right.

And we'll be back in just a moment.

Yes, sir.

And we are back with a different perspective now on the session just concluded.

Representative Tippi McCullough, Democrat of Little Rock, thanks for coming aboard.

Thank you.

From Happy to be here.

Well, we will start where we did with the speaker just a moment ago.

And that's six and a half billion dollar general revenue budget with over the years, the margins or the surpluses are diminishing.

Understandable, given the tax cuts.

Are you cutting it too thin?

I believe so.

I think we think we are between tax cuts, the learns act, new prisons.

I mean, the list goes on and on.

Yeah, I mean, I believe that this is going to slowly drain our our budget to where that surplus is almost has to dwindle.

Well, the in terms of the new prisons, let's go there first.

Repeated attempts by the administration and her advocates, the governors advocates in the General Assembly were unavailing, as they say.

But the speaker seems to indicate that it's just a matter of time.

Do you concur?

I mean, that's the word that we get.

Also, you know, most of this battle during session was kept on the Senate end, some of it in joint budget, which I am a member of, but a lot of it was kept on the Senate in.

So the battle never really made it to the House.

But that is from what I hear and understand.

Yes.

That it's it it will happen.

It's a matter of time.

And your thoughts?

Well, I'm against it.

I think there's so many other things we can be doing.

There's lots of ideas about we passed a couple of recidivism bills, but there's also so much work that could be gone, gone into the front end of this kind of work, working against crime that could help people, whether it's recidivism or whether it's let's help people not commit crimes in the first place.

There's just so much work and so many good ideas that are out there that I think that if we would spend a quarter of that money, maybe not even that, if we would spend that money on the front end, we could we could make it to where we're closing prisons instead of opening them.

Well, the administration has a point, though, does it not, Miss McCauley, in the sense that in the near term, in anyway, overcrowding continues to be in city and county jails?

It is it is a problem.

There's no doubt about that.

But once again, I believe these programs especially I mean, I know I'm saying it over and over, but with recidivism, when people get done that we don't send them back, then slowly.

That should ease some of those problems.

But it has been for another session pronounced a success by the governing Republican Party and, of course, the administration.

Your thoughts?

Well, a little less than that.

Of course, it's a success in that it's over.

We I feel like in a lot of ways, Arkansans can exhale and not be worried about what's going to happen down there.

I mean, there were certainly some successes.

There were certainly some bipartisan successes, I think where we all were.

I mean, I I'll just start with breakfast for Universal Breakfast for children across the state.

That's that's a huge thing that was done, you know, with everybody, especially to an old educator.

That's right.

That's right.

I've certainly experienced a lot of hungry kids in class.

And I know what this will mean to starting their day off and the right way, the things that were done to help maternal health outcomes, that's that has to we've got to do something.

And there's a beginning to that I wish we would have passed the 60 day thing with Representative Pilkington.

That didn't happen, but that happened.

I was for banning cell phones in schools.

I think that our kids have become addicted in a lot of ways to that, as have we.

But we need to help help them, you know, do what we can.

I can remember a time when I didn't have a cell phone.

Our kids don't remember that time and don't know how to act without one.

And as a teacher, once again, that was a huge problem that we had in the classroom, just trying to get kids to concentrate on what was going on in the classroom and not constantly be trying to check that phone to see what was going on, you know, with friends or and the they're greater with or greater groups.

All right.

Yeah.

To Mr. Pilkington, on the matter of maternal health, Mr. Bennett tried again to get Medicaid extended for a full year for postpartum mothers and did not succeed.

The administration again argued that it was duplicative and that you did put the session, did put additional money into maternal care enough.

Are you satisfied with that?

No, no, I'm not satisfied.

I think that's a great step.

I know that they've had, you know, commissions, they've had working groups.

They've done all kinds of things to study the problem.

DHS, of course, been deeply involved.

I know it's something the governor cares about.

And I do think that these are things that will make a difference, I think.

And when when you have a problem this big and it's gone, this far, for us to pull it back and get out of that, you know, bottom of the states, you know, as far as what we're doing for for maternal outcomes, I think for us to do that, we need to be doing use.

I'm not going to say using every tool in the toolbox because I'm so tired of that phrase after going through session.

But I think we need to use everything that we can and do everything we can, especially if it's proven, if it's data driven.

It's happened in other states and it's working.

I think that that's a reason for us to to take those up.

And I wish that Representative into the bill had gone through the Medicaid budget, went through.

It's woven into the fabric now, I think, of Arkansas governors.

But there are some warnings signs about the economy, including from the chairman of the Fed, that there may be a significant slowdown.

Indeed, even the R-word and with a budget with a surplus, is this narrow?

Are you concerned about where this economy in Arkansas, farmers are already reeling from this?

Yeah, I think Arkansas farmers, you know, we worry about SNAP benefits.

We tried to pass Representative Eubanks and they tried to, at least on the house and tried to pass the asset limits bill.

I think there are a lot of people that are going to suffer.

Once again, we're having food insecurity here in Arkansas.

So I think that there, you know, you lose SNAP benefits.

We didn't fix the asset limits to help people.

Farmers are starting to struggle.

Grocery prices have already been high and continue to be high.

And yeah, I definitely think that this is all going to trickle down and hurt a lot of people.

Well, there is a great deal of concern, I know, in the clinical community about what Washington might do with Medicaid in the near term to achieve the savings that the Trump administration says it is resolve to effect if it falls below that 90% funding level, the state would be in a bind, would it not?

It would.

And, you know, coming out of COVID, we had so many issues trying to make sure that people, needy people, had what they needed, especially for their children and for health care for their kids.

And like I said, to be able to eat.

But now it's definitely going to to be a big deal.

Well, the session once again, for the second or third session in a row, a social issue bills, cultural bills were a big part of the session, to the dismay, I think it's fair to say, of your conference.

Yes, absolutely.

Because like I've said before, I think we're there to help people and that we shouldn't be doing things that harm people.

We have plenty of religious rights laws.

We have plenty of.

If people are afraid to go into bathrooms, we already have those laws that we have so many laws.

And now we're starting to layer laws on top of laws.

And, you know, for example, this latest bathroom bill that passed now just for there being the member of the opposite sex in the bathroom with you, you can have a cause of action and that could be a trans person or that could just be a person of the opposite sex.

I keep thinking I keep getting this question every time.

What can be done?

What more can be done?

And every time there are people who find bills that do just a little more to discriminate.

Right.

And make people fearful, especially small minority populations that have heart hard time fighting back anyway.

And I'm thinking, what's next?

Are we going to limit who can be in elevators together?

I mean, I don't know.

I don't know where we go from here.

We aren't running bills in any way on these issues.

All of our fight comes from just push back and it's common sense pushback.

It's not crazy, wild liberal left.

It's none of that kind of stuff.

It's just simply to push back on people who are being on issues that aren't happening here, but that these bills are causing real harm to Arkansans who are here, that you are part of a decided minority and that you are a Democrat in the General Assembly and these cultural.

But I one suspects if you put them to a vote, they would pass over a popular vote.

They would pass overwhelmingly.

Is that not indicative of the situation that you and your of the Democratic conference in both chambers are confronting?

You don't have a great deal of leverage?

No, we do not.

All we have all we have to leverage is to talk about commonsense Arkansas values and how there are some unintended consequences in these bills.

That's what we have.

We think that when we make this argument to our Republican colleagues, we think that they're they're starting to to see some of this in terms of back to education for a second.

A lot of things, but $90 million more into the voucher program, if my recollection is correct, as a former educator yourself, in both public and private settings, parochial setting, is that a cause for concern to you?

I think it is.

And you're right, I've been in public, private, rural and urban, big and small.

I've been in nearly every type of school, coed and same sex.

I've been in all those types of schools.

And yeah, I think it's a concern.

It's concern for a public schools.

I still believe that teacher having taught in a private school that I thought did an incredible job and that I loved working there.

I believe that their parents that that that's what they decide to do, sacrifice to send their kids to school there.

There are some parents that struggle to do that.

There's some parents that have the means to do that.

And I, I just feel like we did we ran a bill to to lower that, you know, who could use the vouchers?

If you made a certain amount of money, then you couldn't use the vouchers.

I mean, that's just one more of those common sense ways to I don't agree with the vouchers, but if they're going to be out there, they should use people.

I mean, there should be a limit to who can use them for sure.

Yeah, Well, it was also a limit on on the how the money was spent.

The voucher money is fair.

That's right.

Yeah.

What what are the long term do you see a a larger long term implication or impact of a voucher program on the, on the general educate K-12 population.

Yeah.

No public school but yes absolutely No I think I think it will continue to hurt the public school population.

It's hurting it.

Now.

In your estimation?

In my estimation it is.

But I think as we open the vouchers up more broadly, I think that's when the real harm is is going to start coming in because we've already seen there has been a move to some of those vouchers.

And I believe is that if that happens, I believe that then as you're pulling kids out of public schools, public schools just start to lose some of the some of the services they start to lose.

You did kick up per pupil funding this session.

We did.

We did.

And and that's that's a good thing.

I mean, that's a good thing.

We needed that.

But I still believe that when you look at that voucher system, it hasn't worked anywhere.

It's caused chaos, especially with public schools in any state that it's ever happened in.

And we're just not following those lessons at all here in Arkansas.

We're going I believe parents should have a choice of what they should do, what's best for their children.

I do believe that.

But we already have a system where parents can do that, and I think we should stick with that system.

Traditionally, public schools from the beginning of the United States, public schools have been important.

It's been our goal to educate every child to the best of our ability and to make it within the constitutional constitutional reality of it.

And I think this just blows up a big American ideal.

Representative Terry McAuliffe, Little Rock, thanks very much for coming in today.

It's always an honor.

Well, the constant viewer will recognize that we are not in our customary digs for Arkansas week.

There's a reason for that.

Coming up.

We're happy to be assigned just a corner of our usual studio, which is being prepared for the 40th anniversary broadcast of the Governor's Quiz Bowl.

High School students from across the state, the best and the brightest will be on this on this set, on this program, which will be seen on April 26.

Good viewing, as always.

Thanks to you for watching.

See you next week.

Support for Arkansas Week provided by the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette at the Arkansas Times and Little Rock Public Radio.