By Rob Moritz
Arkansas News Bureau

LITTLE ROCK — While the slowing economy and tight state budget will get much of the attention, a variety of other meaty issues from animal cruelty to immigration to abortion will fill legislators’ plates during the upcoming legislative session.

Attorney General Dustin McDaniel spent much of last year crafting legislation that could win support from animal advocates and agricultural interests alike to make torturing a dog, cat or horse a felony on first offense. The measure also would make cockfighting and dog fighting a felony in the state.

McDaniel’s efforts have Gov. Mike Beebe’s support and the Arkansas Farm Bureau, whose opposition doomed such legislation in past sessions, has been receptive. The farm lobby has indicated it will accept a measure with clear definitions and exemptions so the agricultural interests would not face charges for their ordinary practices.

Illegal immigration remains a major issues for many in the Legislature, which in 2007 made it illegal for state contractors to hire illegal immigrants but failed to pass legislation that would have made it illegal to harbor and transport illegal immigrants into the state.

Rep. Bill Sample, R-Hot Springs, said he would introduce a comprehensive immigration reform proposal to define the term illegal immigrant and specify the kinds of documents immigrants must possess to show they are in the state legally.

“Were going to take and define the documents that can be provided for an alien,” he said, adding there is some confusion about what documents can be used to enter public school or receive public health benefits.

“We’re taking and making definitions so that everybody will be on the same page.”

Sample said he also plans to file legislation to address a program under way in Malvern that allows immigrants to use a membership card of a nonprofit organization that works with Hispanic immigrants as a form of valid identification.

He said more than 3,000 people have purchased the cards and are using them to gain access important services.

“They’re selling those ID cards and they look very near like an Arkansas driver’s license, but they’re totally bogus,” Sample said. “I want to limit how the identifications are handled.”

Lawmakers also should look for a new push for a state ban on late-term abortions and interest in other social issues during the session. Jerry Cox, executive director of the conservative Family Council, said his group would press legislation to outlaw so-called partial birth abortions and to reform the state’s foster care and adoption procedures.

Arkansas banned late-term abortions in 1999, but the 8th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals in St. Louis later struck down the law as an undue burden on a woman’s right to an abortion.

In 2007, however, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled 5-4 that a federal law banning late-term abortions did not burden the right to an abortion.

“There’s an opportunity to come back now, I think, and probably pass something that would be constitutional,” Cox said.

The Family Council scored a victory in the November general election with voter approval of Initiated Act 1 to prohibit unmarried, cohabiting couples from adopting or foster parenting children in Arkansas. Cox said the group now wants to work with the Department of Human Services to streamline the adoption and foster parenting process so it will move faster and more efficiently.

Some Arkansans who wish to adopt find it easier to do so overseas than at home, Cox said.

“There must be something wrong with our system here if we’ve got willing parents and kids that need a home but somehow we can’t make it happen,” he said.

Cox said the Family Council likely will spend the majority of its time during the session on “the defensive side of things” — opposing any efforts to pass hate crime legislation, broadly structure a voter-approved state lottery, which the group opposed, or ratify the federal Equal Rights Amendment.

Rep. Lindsley Smith, D-Fayetteville, whose resolution for state ratification of the ERA narrowly failed to win a House committee’s approval in 2007, has said she would try again this year and expected a better result.

Congress passed the ERA in 1972, but to date only 35 states have ratified it. Approval in 38 states is required for the amendment to become a part of the U.S. Constitution.

Smith said she would address environmental concerns with legislation that would revise the state’s existing tax exemption on manufacturers’ packaging materials to make it apply only to materials that are biodegradable or recyclable.

“My perspective is, hey, if you’re going to get an exemption for not having to pay tax on something, it needs to go toward a public good,” she said.

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Reporter John Lyon contributed to this report