Steve Brawner: When will it end? Not April 7

Lawmakers have already voted to extend this session and to recess April 7 – in other words, go home except to return briefly to clean up things and adjourn. That’s less than four weeks from now. They also were scheduled to take off for spring break Thursday and not return until March 27.

To make the April 7 end date, they would have only two weeks to finish whatever doesn’t get done this week, which will be a lot of things.

Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders and lawmakers came into the session with three big agenda items: reforming the state’s education system, adding prison space and enacting other criminal justice reforms and cutting taxes.

The education reforms were so big, took so long to be introduced and sucked so much air out of the session that everything else has fallen behind.

That includes the prison package, where the arguments will be over details, not the concept. Arkansas’s prisons are full and spilling over into the county jails, so there’s not much debate about the need for more space. The big question is, how many beds should be added? There’s also been a lot of talk, led in part by Attorney General Tim Griffin, about convicts serving more of their sentences.

Making it all work affordably is still a challenge. Now the bill won’t even be introduced until after that spring break, the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette reported Sunday.

That leaves the tax cuts. Sanders said during the campaign that she wanted to phase out the state’s income tax. That’s harder to do when you’re raising teacher salaries to a minimum of $50,000 and building prison space. The size of the tax cut will depend on how much this all costs.

At the end of the session, lawmakers will pass this year’s version of the state’s Revenue Stabilization Act. Originally enacted in 1945, it’s how Arkansas balances its budget. Essential services are guaranteed to receive funding while lesser priorities are funded if money is available. It’s an involved process where the session’s early drama gives way to responsible, boring lawmaking. It’s a shame we don’t have one for Congress.

The other remaining big items include the constitutional amendments that the Legislature could refer to voters next November. Lawmakers can refer up to three and typically do refer that many.

Maybe there will be fewer this time. Legislators in the past two elections have asked voters to pass amendments making it harder to amend the Constitution. Voters said no both times. After the two failures, legislators recently passed a legally questionable bill themselves that would achieve that same goal.

If they insist on making it harder to change the Constitution because there’s just too many amendments, then they should be consistent and refer fewer than three – or none at all. There’s not really an outside push as there was for proposed amendments enacting tort reform and making permanent a highway tax, so we’ll see how many lawmakers’ pet projects make the ballot.

Aside from all that, regular bills are still working their way through the process, but time is running out for those. Lawmakers are paid much better than they were in the past, but they still have jobs, businesses and families. There comes a point when everyone is ready to go home. Once the Revenue Stabilization Act is passed, they soon do.

When exactly will that be? I don’t know, but later than April 7.

Steve Brawner is a syndicated columnist published in 18 outlets in Arkansas. Email him at brawnersteve@mac.com. Follow him on Twitter at @stevebrawner.