Nevada County Picayune and Gurdon Times Newspaper Archive

Final Session Good For Ross

Term limits have taken their toll in the Arkansas General Assembly.

This past session was the final one for State Sen. Mike Ross, who completed his 10th year in office.

When elections roll around for the November 2000 general elections a full third of the senate will be up for grabs, while there were 57 new members on the House side this session because of term limits.

Because of this, Ross worked to make his final session a good one, including helping Prescott get a $1 million grant for a new library project.

Other important laws passed include Act 769 concerning the Arkansas Department of Education.

Under this new law, school districts will be given report cards just like the students. These report cards will be sent home to parents showing how the district rates in areas such as safety, discipline, standardized test results, the percentage of students who pass to the next grade level, certified staff qualifications and per pupil expenditures among others.

High schools must also report student attendance, the drop out rate and college remediation rate as well.

Ross said the first report is to be issued by Sept. 15, 2000.

Another educational bill passed was act 855, doing away with summer school for students in kindergarten through the third grade.

Instead, districts must offer remedial classes, and Ross said, these will most likely be taught during the regular school day.

Ross spent most of the session working as chairman of the children and youth committee. In this capacity, he worked to help revise the Division of Youth Services.

Basically, he said, the Division of Youth Services operates what amounts to a jail for children. "If any prisoner can be rehabilitated it should be children. We have failed as a state.

"All we've been doing is turning these children into hardened criminals by allowing all the abuse occurring."

This abuse, including physical, mental and sexual, was uncovered last summer before the session began, Ross said.

A committee was formed to investigate and make findings, with these findings becoming recommendations for the assembly.

Legislation was passed to reform this division. It also resulted in the director resigning, and others on staff either being fired or turning in their resignations as well.

The state's prison system, Ross said, is accredited, as are the schools in Arkansas. However, until this session, the Division of Youth Services was not, but this has since been corrected.

Under the new laws, the Arkansas Department of Health will make sanitation inspections, while the Arkansas Department of Corrections handles the security audits.

Ross said some children were being punished at the facility by being forced to stay in rooms in their own filth, while others were forced to stay naked in bare, cold rooms for days at a time.

The new law, he said, includes more funding for training and education of the workers and guards, while new standards of training are established.

Children at the center will also be separated by age and severity of the crime they were convicted of committing.

In addition, a juvenile ombudsman program will be instituted to help deal with abuse, Ross said.

Children in the system will be assigned an ombudsman independent of the Division of Youth Services, who will hear their complaints and look into the matter.

The ombudsman, Ross said, will not be an employee of the service or housed on-site. The program will be operated through the public defender program giving the children in the system a non-biased third party to report problems to.

"I think this will reduce the abuse and improve the living conditions,"Ross said.

The ombudsman program was funded with $900,000, while the assembly added $8 million more to the budget of the Department of Youth Services and another $5 million for capital improvements of the center.

In the area of juvenile justice, Ross said, the existing laws state anyone under 14 must be tried as a juvenile regardless of the crime. When the culprit turns 18, their record is expunged and they begin their adult life with a clean slate.

However, a law was passed allowing blended sentencing. Now when a 14-year-old commits a serious crime, such as murder, the court can add up to 40 years to their sentence when they turn 18.

But, this can't be done indiscriminately, Ross said. The court must look to see if the offender has worked to rehabilitate themselves, with the decision to be made at a hearing six months before the offender turns 18.

In addition, for youthful offenders under the age of 12, it will be up to the prosecution to prove they could distinguish right and wrong, while those 13 and older will have the defense proving they are incompetent.

Ross said once the court determines the offender has not been rehabilitated, the offender does have the right to a jury trial for the extended sentence.

Senate Bill 791 creates competition in the electric utility industry by the year 2000, he said.

This industry is one of the last major segments of the economy under monopoly franchising and regulation.

When the session began, Ross said, the utility companies and electric cooperatives had bills they presented before the body. However, these bills did little or nothing to help protect the residential customer and small business owners.

Arkansas Attorney General Mark Prior, Ross said, had the courage to step in and stand up to the utility companies, working to insure the people of the state are protected under deregulation.

Ross battled for the measure, working to make sure the Arkansas Public Service Commission could protect rural customers, making sure they would have electricity as well.

Arkansas' highway system was not neglected either.

Ross said the Arkansas has one of the largest state highway systems in the nation, rivaling California's, and this is a rural state.

Gasoline is taxes on a per gallon basis, but today's cars get better gas mileage than in years past. While the tax has gone up accordingly, Ross said, inflation was not taken into consideration.

This has resulted in the deterioration of the state's highways. It costs about $1 million to build a mile of road, he said.

Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee came up with a program to allow the state to float a bond issue in a special election in June to help alleviate the problem.

The state, Ross said, must operate under a balanced budget and has been doing road work on a pay-as-you-go basis. This method doesn't allow the state to keep up with the damage being done to the highways.

Under Huckabee's plan, he said, the state could issue $575 million in bonds to upgrade the highways and interstates. Part of the bond issue will be pa