Local press groups had a pre-legislative session interview-fest just now over an extended lunch period, first jointly with Senate President Pro Tem Bob Johnson and House Speaker Robbie Wills and later with Gov. Mike Beebe.

Much will be written about what was said, including Johnson’s abstract attack on the Little Rock Zoo and his much more compelling and progressive thinking on a research corridor and how it was a mistake to send three-strike drug offenders to jail for life.

But I picked up a little something between the lines, and positioned myself after to catch Beebe at the door and make sure what I was picking up was right. He winked. He said I’d been around a while.

It’s this: We’re going to create three trauma centers and a statewide trauma system. It’ll cost $28 million. We’re going to raise the cigarette tax at least 50 cents a pack to do that. That’ll raise an estimated $71 million.

There’s a spare $43 million. We’re going to run that through the General Fund and appropriate it for Medicaid, for existing health programs and new ones, such as home health care and community mental health for kids.

Arkansas’ Medicaid money gets matched 3-to-1 by the federal government, even without special Medicaid money perhaps to flow from any federal economic stimulus.

In other words, Beebe wants to turn a 50-cent cigarette pack tax into a trauma system with $43 million left over that could be turned into nearly $170 million, which would plug our Medicaid holes, even expand Medicaid programs, and relieve pressure elsewhere on the budget in this time of uncertainty.

Swell. All we need is for a few people, anyway, to keep smoke, smoke, smoking those cigarettes. Alas, I suspect a few will.