Ex-speaker put on road commission

Gov. Mike Beebe named Robert S. Moore Jr. (center) of Arkansas City to the Arkansas Highway Commission on Thursday. Moore was speaker of the House in the previous Legislature.
Gov. Mike Beebe named Robert S. Moore Jr. (center) of Arkansas City to the Arkansas Highway Commission on Thursday. Moore was speaker of the House in the previous Legislature.

— Robert S. Moore Jr., a longtime Arkansas political figure who most recently was the speaker of the state House of Representatives, was tapped Thursday by Gov. Mike Beebe for a seat on the five-member state Highway Commission.

Moore replaces R. Madison Murphy of El Dorado, whose term expired this month.

Beebe cited Moore’s advocacy in the 2011 regular legislative session that led to Issue No. 1, the constitutional amendment establishing a 10-year half-percentage point increase in the sales tax that voters approved in November to help finance a $1.8 billion road-construction program.

“He was obviously a champion of highways because you saw that when he was speaker of the House and while he was in the House, he led efforts legislatively to give voters the opportunity to make the choices that they’ve made,” Beebe said at a morning news conference announcing the appointment in a crowded conference room on the second floor of the state Capitol. “He’s always been an infrastructure/transportation person.”

The governor said Moore’s track record extended “way back even before he was in charge of beer,” a reference to Moore’s 20-year tenure as state Alcoholic Beverage Control director.

Moore was chairman of the old Arkansas Transportation Commission and served as special assistant for transportation and regulatory affairs under then-Gov. Bill Clinton.

His political ties run deep. His late father was the longtime sheriff of Desha County; his late mother, Dorothy, filled out the remainder of his father’s term after he died in a traffic crash in 1973. She later became the governor’s receptionist under Clinton.

Moore, a lawyer and farmer, also worked for then-Attorney General Jim Guy Tucker and ran unsuccessfully for Little Rock traffic judge.

More recently, Moore, a 68-year-old Democrat, served three terms in the House from Arkansas City, a Desha County town of 366 that is separated by a levee from the Mississippi River in southeast Arkansas. The town also is near the site of the proposed Great River Bridge, which would carry future I-69 across the Mississippi River.

He remembers frequent trips as a child to Little Rock for orthodontic work, a journey that took a “hair-raising” four hours. Now, thanks to wider and safer highways, Moore said, he can make the trip in about two hours on “cruise control.”

His hometown required the governor’s staff to do some research before Moore’s appointment, rumored for months, was made official.

Moore’s town is in the 1st Congressional District. But under a 1979 law governing appointments to the commission, Beebe had to appoint someone from the 4th Congressional District, the same district from which Murphy hailed.

But Beebe said Moore’s appointment was within the law. Arkansas Code Ann. 27-65-104 says that “all appointments to the State Highway Commission shall be based upon the four congressional districts as defined on July 20, 1979.

“Appointments to the commission shall be made so as to assure that, at the earliest possible date, the commission shall be composed of one member from each of the four congressional districts and one member from the state at large.”

On that date in 1979, Moore’s hometown was in the 4th Congressional District, the governor said.

“We went through all that,” Beebe said. “This wasn’t done lightly or without regard to what that law says.”

A provision in the same law says each member of the commission “shall receive [$100] per diem and their actual expenses while engaged in” commission work.

Moore’s appointment came in spite of a significant point of disagreement between Moore and Beebe over future road funding.

Moore trod lightly over the subject but appears at least open to a proposal that would transfer a portion of the new revenue growth collected from the state’s general revenue portion of state and use taxes levied on the sale of new and used motor vehicles, trailers and semitrailers and devote it to highway construction.The stream also would consist of the state general revenue portion of the sales and use taxes collected on vehicle repair, vehicle parts and retail tire and battery sales.

Under the proposal, the transfer would be phased in gradually over as much as 10 years.

It is the only recommendation from the Arkansas Blue Ribbon Committee on Highway Finance that hasn’t been adopted, which Murphy liked to point out. A push to see it enacted into state law could come as soon as the regular legislative session that opened this week.

In referring to the matter, Moore touched on a problem that Murphy and other highway advocates repeatedly raise.

“I think the biggest challenge we have ... is meeting our ability to fund the future needs we have just to maintain the highway system in at least as good as condition as we have,” Moore said. “It’s ... pretty common knowledge, with the increasing efficiency of our vehicles, less miles traveled, our excise tax based on consumption, that going down, our revenues are naturally coming down. Our biggest challenge is going to look for those innovative ways to meet our future funding needs.”

Asked specifically about the committee’s recommendation, Beebe quickly interjected, “I can answer that,” and then turned to Moore and said, “You go ahead and answer it and then I’ll answer it.”

Moore recalled discussing that recommendation with the governor during the 2011 session and coming away “adamantly aware of the governor’s position.”

While he said state policy officials must “look beyond” those recommendations, they remain “on the table.”

Not as far as Beebe is concerned.

“The speaker has consistently, even in his prior role, been an advocate for those ideas that you just mentioned,” the governor said. “I’ve never been a proponent of those ideas and I’m still not a proponent. But he’ll have eight years after I’m gone.”

Moore will join a commission that has three members whom Beebe, a Democrat, has appointed. They are Dick Trammel of Rogers and Tom Schueck and John Burkhalter, both of Little Rock. The other commission member, Chairman John Ed Regenold of Armorel, was appointed by former Gov. Mike Huckabee, a Republican.

Front Section, Pages 1 on 01/18/2013

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