April 2024

The 2024 Fiscal Session is now underway. The House and Senate convened for a Joint Session on Wednesday, April 10, to hear an address from Governor Sanders.

Make for an Interesting Universe I have been privy to extensive conversation recently between many different people from many different life paths. Some of these people are fairly simplistic in their thinking, conservative in their actions.

LITTLE ROCK – The legislature convened the fiscal session and will spend the next month working on a $6.3 billion budget for the fiscal year that begins July 1. The legislature has always approved conservative budgets, and the balanced budget proposed by the governor is very conservative even by traditional standards.

(Note: I wrote this section Monday morning, April 15 prior to the release of the lectern report.) The 94th General Assembly kicked off the 2024 Fiscal Session at noon last Wednesday. That afternoon, Governor Sarah Huckabee Sanders delivered her first State of the State address before a joint session of the House and Senate in the House chamber. The governor’s address, a mere half hour long, focused mostly on LEARNS and public safety. On Thursday, April 11, the Senate considered eight resolutions seeking the introduction of eight pieces of legislation related to crypto mining— one by Senator Joshua Bryant (R-Rogers), one from Senator Missy Irvin (R-Mountain View), and six from Senator Bryan King (R-Green Forest). In last year’s regular session, Senator Bryant was the lead Senate sponsor of a law that opened the door to crypto mining in Arkansas. The facilities, which can be very noisy and which place a huge demand on local utilities, have become a nuisance in some rural communities. Lawmakers are looking to address some of Arkansans’ concerns regarding these facil-ities. Since this issue falls outside the scope of a fiscal session, the Senate first had to vote whether to allow their introduction. Each bill requires that at least two-thirds of the body approve a resolution allowing its introduction. The Senate has so far approved seven of the eight crypto bills—Senator Bryant’s, Senator Irvin’s, and five of Senator King’s—but Senator King might try a second time to introduce his sixth later today. Most Democrats avoided voting for these resolutions. Personally, while I do believe the legislature to work to fix the problem it helped create, I believe it’s important we keep the fiscal session limited to fiscal matters. There are any number of pressing issues we could choose to take up now, but if we open fiscal sessions to other matters, we could quickly wind up with mini-regular sessions. (And while I think there’s a good case to be made for annua