LITTLE ROCK — The legislative committee that oversees the state lottery today approved a $165,000 annual salary for the program's new director.

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LITTLE ROCK — The Legislature formally ended its 2012 fiscal session today, and the House later elected Rep. Darrin Williams, D-Little Rock, as speaker-designate for the 89th General Assembly, which will convene in January.

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LITTLE ROCK — The office of Secretary of State Mark Martin today directed Crittenden County election officials to place Fred Smith’s name on the ballot as a state House candidate despite his conviction last year for felony the

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LITTLE ROCK — Improbably, the wrangling over budget cuts that marked the first two weeks of the fiscal session pitted the governor and House speaker, both in their 60s and both veterans of state government, against the Legislature’s youngest member.

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LITTLE ROCK — The House and Senate today cleared the way for legislators to consider a budget for the next fiscal year.

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LITTLE ROCK — Arkansas’ 2012 election season formally began today amid traditional pageantry and new expectations of a political sea change in perhaps the last Democratic bastion in the South.

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LITTLE ROCK — A Republican proposal to cut $21 million from Gov. Mike Beebe’s $4.7 billion proposed budget for the next fiscal year is mostly unacceptable, Beebe said today.

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The Joint Budget Committee today referred to a subcommittee an amendment to the state Department of Education’s budget that would increase from two years to five the time the department can maintain control over a fiscally distressed school districts taken over by the state.

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LITTLE ROCK — The Republican leader in the state House said today he expects a negative reaction from state agencies to the budget proposal he unveiled last week, but he insisted his plan is achievable without layoffs or reduced services.

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LITTLE ROCK — The co-chairmen of the legislative Joint Budget Committee said today that legislators have not given up on the idea of finding a way to provide a cost-of-living adjustment for state employees in the next fiscal year.

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