By Rob Moritz and John Lyon
Arkansas News Bureau
LITTLE ROCK — Bills to place limits on lobbyists, reduce the cost of hunting and fishing licenses and ban domestic partnership registries were among the measures filed in the Legislature on Monday, the final day for lawmakers to file bills this session.
By 5 p.m., 388 bills — 246 in the House and 142 in the Senate — had been filed, along with 18 resolutions.
Senate Bill 883 by Sen. Gilbert Baker, R-Conway, would create a one-year cooling off period for legislators, constitutional officers and agency heads from lobbying the Legislature after they leave office.
SB 867 by Sen. Steve Faris, D-Malvern, would ban the practice of “absentee lobbying,” wherein lobbyists pick up the meal tab for legislators and other public officials without being present to lobby the officials in person. The bill also would address lobbyist reporting and the use of campaign funds.
The ethics bills are part of Attorney General Dustin McDaniel’s legislative package. Last week, McDaniel said he had been told by House leadership not to expect the bills to get a single vote in the House Rules Committee, though House Speaker Robbie Wills, D-Conway, and House Rules Committee Chairman Robert Moore, D-Arkansas City, have said the bills will get a fair hearing.
Faris said his goal is to make sure that both bills are endorsed by the Senate State Agencies and Governmental Affairs Committee, of which he is chairman and Baker is vice-chairman, and then by the full Senate.
He said he and Baker planned to present the bills before the House committee their merits.
SB 874 by Sen. Terry Smith, D-Hot Springs, would reduce each of the fees hunters and anglers in Arkansas pay for hunting and fishing licenses to $1.50. Smith has titled the measure the “Sportsman Stimulus Bill.”
“Maybe we’ll get more people hunting and fishing,” the senator said Monday.
Smith said Game and Fish Commission officials have said several times recently that their budget is tight because fewer people are hunting and fishing, yet they collect millions of dollars from the severance tax on natural gas drilling on lands in the state.
“Maybe this will give them a stimulus,” he said, referencing the federal stimulus package approved by Congress in an effort jump-start the economy.
Smith recently filed Senate Joint Resolution 11, which would repeal Amendment 35 to the state constitution. The 1945 amendment created the Game and Fish Commission as an autonomous agency over wildlife regulation.
Nancy Ledbetter, spokeswoman for the commission, did not return a telephone call seeking comment Monday.
House Minority Leader Rep. Bryan King, R-Berryville, filed HB 2176, which would prohibit any county or city in the state from creating a registry that “recognizes a domestic partner relationship not recognized by the Arkansas Constitution, Amendment 83.”
Amendment 83, approved by voters in 2004, states that a marriage consists only between one man and one woman. It also prohibits civil unions.
The Eureka Springs City Council approved a domestic partnership registry in May 2007.
Sen. Joyce Elliott, D-Little Rock, filed SB 942, which would create an 18-member task force to study the state’s criminal justice system.
The task force would review cases involving capital punishment, Class Y felonies, Class A felonies and drug charges diverted to drug court and would note of any correlation between the outcomes of those cases and factors such as age, gender, race, ethnicity and socioeconomic status.
The task force also would look at issues such as the average cost to the state prosecute and defend the cases, the average cost to incarcerate people convicted of the offenses and the effectiveness of current criminal penalties in deterring crime.
