By John Brummett
Here are the biennial Bubba Awards for notable achievement in the legislative session.
The Rainbow Award goes to freshman Rep. Richard Carroll of North Little Rock, a white man from the Green Party who got turned down by the Black Caucus.
The Governor-In-Waiting Trophy cannot be presented at this time because Dustin McDaniel and Bill Halter ripped it in half by simultaneously pulling it in opposite directions. And we’d only recently managed to recover it from some of Lu Hardin’s old materials at UCA.
The Steady Income Award goes to Gov. Mike Beebe, who signed the general appropriations bill giving himself a raise, then turned around and said he wouldn’t take the raise he’d just given himself because a few critical telephone calls had come into his office.
So then he signed another bill giving himself a smaller raise because it turned out that the previous bill had bestowed larger raises for him and other constitutional officers than allowed by constitutional law. Then he said he wouldn’t take the second and smaller raise either.
But then he got told formally by the attorney general that he had to take it when it was duly appropriated but could always give it to charity. That is what Bill Halter, who bugs the living heck out of Beebe, had said all along that he was going to do with his.
The Who Cares What the Attorney General Says Award to Dustin McDaniel, who is, in fact, the attorney general, and who told me Arkansas didn’t allow a line item veto on appropriation bills, as I had written, though our state constitution most certainly does allow it. No big deal. He has a good staff of lawyers to keep up with the mundane stuff, like the law.
What he does well is the very essence of the attorney general’s office, which is run for higher office, usually, as in his case, governor. Mark Pryor was an innovator as attorney general, running for the U.S. Senate instead.
The Press Accessibility Award goes to Bill Halter because nobody other than reporters would talk to him. Why, they actually ran him off the House floor.
The More is Less Award goes to Sen. Steve Faris of Malvern, who sponsored, by my count, 57 bills rife with changes in retirement laws and election laws and to spend surplus money, and all but a half-dozen or so altogether superfluous. He’ll waste our time in November 2010 with a wholly meaningless proposed constitutional amendment bestowing a “right to hunt” that expressly preserves the Game and Fish Commission’s authority to deny a right to hunt.
The Road to Damascus Award goes to Sen. Bob Johnson of Bigelow, who, just four years before, was Public Enemy No. 1 of Little Rock’s water supply. At that time he was Deltic Timber’s point man for legislative authority to override local water regulators and develop homes at will on the shores of Lake Maumelle.
This time, as president pro tem of the Senate, Johnson set aside $4 million to buy land along the Maumelle River to save it from development. And he would have passed that bill to ban surface wastewater from watersheds if Rep. John Edwards of Little Rock could have shepherded it through the House. But they like wastewater in their drinking water in the House.
The Church of England Award goes to Rep. Donna Hutchinson of Bella Vista, who said she couldn’t vote for a Thomas Paine Day because, although he was a great man who played a vital role in the nation’s valiant and triumphant quest for freedom and independence, ol’ Tom had religious views that were out of the mainstream. Actually, she didn’t say either “valiant” or “triumphant.”
The Music Appreciation Award goes to Sen. Stephen Bryles of Blytheville. In a previous session he’d tapped General Improvement Fund money to build a roadside monument in northeastern Arkansas to blues legend B.B. King’s guitar, named Lucille. This time he steered GIF money to planning a Johnny Cash heritage museum in Dyess.
The New Media Award goes to Robbie Wills, the House speaker, who kept us informed on Twitter of his plantar fasciitis, which is a fancy name by which the bottom of your foot feels like someone is sticking a knife into it. Rep. Steve Harrelson, on his blog, bored us with things like a list of the pork barrel spending in the General Improvement Fund.
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John Brummett is a columnist for the Arkansas News Bureau in Little Rock. His e-mail address is jbrummett@arkansasnews.com; his telephone number is (501) 374-0699.
