Between The Lines: Lawmakers Get Call To Action

The special session is on.

State lawmakers said early this week they would convene in special session next week but Gov. Mike Beebe didn't make it official until Tuesday.

He will convene the session Monday.

Lawmakers will consider two issues, the most urgent of which is health insurance premium relief for tens of thousands of public school employees. The session is scheduled to last the minimum three days necessary to pass legislation.

Beebe conditioned the call on assurances from lawmakers that they were agreed enough to gather, pass the necessary legislation and be gone quickly.

The two items on which lawmakers said they have a consensus are temporary fixes for rising teacher health insurance premiums and for prison overcrowding.

Leaders in the House of Representatives and Senate say they have the votes to pass both measures.

Actually, they probably would not be meeting at all but for the urgent need to address the health insurance question before the school year starts in August.

That's when 47,000 public school employees participating in the state-offered health insurance plan face a 35 percent premium increase.

This won't be the first fix the Legislature has made to the program. Nor will it likely be the last as the state tries to get program costs under control.

What is being proposed as an immediate step is to transfer $4.6 million that is now going to school districts into the insurance plan. Lawmakers would also make part-time employees ineligible for the insurance and require that spouses who can get insurance from their own work do so. They plan, too, to limit access to weight-loss surgery.

Obviously, there are objections from some quarters, including those spouses of school employees who might not be able to get similar coverage elsewhere and the part-time workers who would be dropped altogether.

Some school districts are also objecting to the transfer of funds they have been receiving, arguing that the transfer may just mean that individual school districts won't be able to contribute as much to their employees' health insurance. The employees will still pay more.

Nor does this plan address another question that lingers. Shouldn't the school plan be merged with a plan that covers state employees to achieve better stability for all?

That's just too heady a question for a special session, although it won't be going away anytime soon. There is a fairness issue involved and lawmakers will likely continue to debate this one.

They'll settle for the temporary fix now and take the opportunity, too, to help county sheriffs with serious jail problems.

Lawmakers say they have consensus on a plan to relieve prison overcrowding, or, more specifically, to ease the backup of state prisoners into county jails.

Beebe has said he has found $6.3 million in the budget to fund up to 600 additional prison beds. He's talking about opening more than 300 beds in the state prison system and still more in the Pulaski County jail that the county hasn't been able to afford to open.

Even that many more beds won't take care of the 2,700 or so state prisoners being held in the counties. But it would relieve a situation state sheriffs have said is at a crisis stage.

Counties have long jailed state prisoners who are awaiting transfer to the Arkansas Department of Correction. They build into their jail budgets the revenue the state pays them for holding those prisoners, although the amount doesn't quite equal what counties say it costs to hold them.

But the numbers of prisoners being held now are stretching too many jails past their capacity, creating added security issues as well as economic challenges.

The sheriffs saw the opportunity to get help in a special session and asked the governor to include the issue in the call.

One last note: House members will meet in the Old State House, the historic structure that served as the Capitol until 1911, instead of the current Capitol.

The move is necessitated by ongoing renovations to the House chamber. Communication between the House and Senate, which will be in its usual quarters, may be challenged a bit, but this is a special session in which the action is orchestrated.

So, the gathering offers Arkansans a welcome glimpse into the stately Old State House.

BRENDA BLAGG IS A FREELANCE COLUMNIST AND LONGTIME JOURNALIST IN NORTHWEST ARKANSAS.

Commentary on 06/25/2014

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