Two departing state lawmakers Thursday unveiled draft legislation to strip reporters of their rent-free office in the state Capitol.
State Reps. Buddy Lovell, D-Marked Tree, and Larry Cowling, D-Foreman, want to repeal a 49-year-old state law designating a room on the first floor as a permanent pressroom for use by newspaper, radio and television employees covering the statehouse.
Instead, the room would be designated as a permanent state Capitol “welcome center” where visitors could learn about state government, pick up tourism brochures and buy souvenirs.
“We have got one of the top eight Capitols in the United States, and it would be a wonderful location for the information center and a tour-guide station and the gift shop in that room,” Lovell said.
The draft bill would require the secretary of state to find other space and lease it to reporters, if at least two media outlets are willing to pay.
It also would require the Capitol Parking Control Committee to lease Capitol parking spaces to media organizations.
Currently, at least some media organizations receive free reserved parking spaces.
Lovell told lawmakers that Cowling’s purpose inproposing this legislation isn’t to make the news media pay for leasing space in the state Capitol, although the bill requires that. A law enacted in 1963 doesn’t specify a fee for the news media use of the pressroom.
The proposed legislation is aimed at better using the first-floor space so people don’t have to go through security near the entrance to the Capitol building to get to the visitors center, he said.
“Additionally, that room does not provide enough space for all of the newspapers, all of the TV [stations], all of the radio [stations],” Lovell told the House and Senate State Agencies and Governmental Affairs Committee.
An available room in the basement of the Capitol has six private offices, five cubicles, a reception area, a breakroom and a bathroom to provide space for any newspaper, television and radio reporters, he said.
The proposed legislation would let the secretary of state decide “what’s best and where best people are located and, if anybody other than a state agency or state people are located in a Capitol building, they should be paying the same amount of money,” he told lawmakers.
The two legislators’ terms expire on Dec. 31, but they’re hoping that other lawmakers will take up the cause.
Lovell said he has talked to a few returning lawmakers who are interested in introducing the legislation in the session that starts Jan. 14. He said he didn’t draft the legislation because he was dissatisfied with news coverage of the Legislature.
Secretary of State Mark Martin, a Republican, doesn’t support or oppose the proposed legislation, said Martin’s spokesman Alex Reed.
“It is totally up to the Legislature in this matter. We will comply with what laws the Legislature passes,” Reed said.
State Rep. and Sen.-elect Bryan King, R-Green Forest, wondered why Cowling and Lovell didn’t raise this issue during their previous six years in the House of Representatives.
“I don’t see where there is a problem,” he said.
“If people come in and have questions, the state Capitol police are some of the best people to answer questions for them,” he said of the officers near the Capitol’s entrance. Sen. Johnny Key, R-Mountain Home, said he doesn’t know why it would be necessary “to move the media around” the Capitol.
“You guys don’t have a whole lot of room anyway,” he said.
The pressroom is about 400 square feet, said Marjorie Greenberg, director of the secretary of state’s business office. Reporters for the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, The Associated Press, Stephens Media and other news organizations use the room.
Northwest Arkansas, Pages 9 on 12/21/2012