The Arkansas House of Representatives on Monday choose Speaker Jeremy Gillam, R-Judsonia, to serve again in that post for the next General Assembly.
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Also Monday, the House and Senate adjourned the state's fourth fiscal session, which started April 13 and lasted 27 days.
Gillam, who has served in the House since 2011 and been the chamber's speaker since January 2015, is in line to be speaker again for the 91st General Assembly, from 2017-2019.
The 39-year-old farmer was elected House speaker-designate by acclamation Monday; the voice vote had no audible dissenters. Formal election would come in 2017.
"Many of you -- almost all of you -- have really had the chance to get to know me and I hope that we will continue to be able to build on the friendships that we have established so far," Gillam told the House after the vote.
"I think of us as a family and like all families we're sometimes going to have disagreements on things, but I am very, very proud of what we've been able to accomplish so far together," he said.
In March 2014, the 100-member House elected Gillam as speaker-designate with 57 votes, beating three other candidates. He was formally elected in January 2015.
Then-Rep. Bobby Hogue, D-Jonesboro, was the last speaker to serve two consecutive terms, from 1995-1999, according to the House's website. Three others served two terms.
Also Monday, the House Republican Caucus elected Rep. Mat Pitsch of Fort Smith as its leader, John Payton of Wilbur as its whip and Rep. Robin Lundstrum of Springdale as its secretary. Pitsch succeeds Rep. Ken Bragg of Sheridan, Payton takes over for Rep. Jim Dotson of Bentonville and Lundstrum succeeds Rep. Charlotte Douglas of Alma.
The House includes 64 Republicans, 35 Democrats and independent Rep. Nate Bell of Mena.
The Senate and House quietly ended the fiscal session on Monday by banging their gavels, after completing action on the state's Revenue Stabilization Act on Thursday and then recessing for a three-day weekend.
Fiscal sessions exist because in 2008 voters adopted Amendment 86 authorizing the sessions in even-numbered years. Previously, the Legislature met in odd-numbered years in "regular" sessions, during which it enacted the state budget for two fiscal years. Now, during a regular session, a budget for only one year is enacted.
A fiscal session is limited to 30 days with one possible extension of no more than 15 days. This year's fiscal session was longer than the 25-day 2010 fiscal session and the 26-day 2012 fiscal session but shorter than the 2014 session, which lasted 38 days, according to the Bureau of Legislative Research records.
This year's special session was preceded by a three-day special session on Arkansas Medicaid's expansion that was renamed as Arkansas Works. Gov. Asa Hutchinson has said that a special session on highway funding and other matters will begin May 19.
In this year's fiscal session, the Legislature and Governor Hutchinson enacted the state's Revenue Stabilization Act that will distribute $5.33 billion in state general revenue in fiscal 2017 -- up from $5.19 billion in fiscal 2016 -- with most of the general-revenue increase of $142.7 million targeted for the state Department of Human Services and public schools.
A linchpin in Hutchinson's budget blueprint was the the Legislature's reauthorization of using federal Medicaid dollars to buy private health insurance for low-income people -- Arkansas' version of Medicaid expansion. The program covers 267,000 Arkansans, mostly under the "private option."
Information for this article was contributed by Spencer Willems of the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette.
A Section on 05/10/2016