Nevada County Picayune and Gurdon Times Newspaper Archive

Rodgers Gets Down To Business In '97 Session

With term limits in place, freshman State Representative Sandra Rodgers wasted no time during the 81st General Assembly.

So, she jumped into the foray and battled for the 28th district.

"I learned a lot," she said. "I sponsored several bills and co-sponsored others."

In discussing the school funding formula, Rodgers said there may be only 10 people in the entire state who actually understand it. However, she added, this district came out fairly well under the new plan. During the time between sessions, Rodgers plans on studying the funding formula to better understand it.

During the session, she said, three school funding formulas were presented. Two ended up being combined into the one passed, while the other died in committee.

When the tornadoes hit on March 1, Rodgers co-sponsored a disaster relief bill to help those affected by the storms recover.

She also worked on the welfare reform bills, helping move a proposal for new hires from the Office of Child Support and Services to the Employment Security Division. This bill, she said, will help make it easier to find deadbeat parents and protect employment records. But, this bill has not been signed by Gov. Mike Huckabee as yet.

One of the most important bills Rodgers helped get passed was a raise for nursing home residents. She said those living in nursing homes can currently have $30 spending money per month. Under the bill she helped get passed, they could have $40 per month. While the $10 doesn't sound like much to most people, it means a lot to those residents, she said. This bill hasn't been signed yet either.

Another bill Rodgers helped pass dealt with immunity for employers telling about their employees to future employers. Under this piece of legislation, she said, employees will be asked to sign a consent form separate from a job application, but which would allow their employers to talk about them with prospective future employers if asked.

This bill was originally established to have the consent form with the job application, but Rodgers fought this, saying people have the right to know what they're signing and have it explained to them.

Rodgers also worked on the legislation to split the Eighth Judicial District into two districts, the 8th North and 8th South.

The original concept had been to merge the Eighth and Ninth districts, but officials in the Ninth District were opposed to the idea. The end result was a split of the 8th District into to judicial districts.

Miller and Lafayette counties will make up the 8th South, while Hempstead and Nevada counties will be the 8th North.

Each of these new districts will have its own judges elected by the people. Rodgers said their salaries will be paid by the state.

Part of the reason for the split, she said, is the Judiciary Committee passed several bills which would increase the workload on the judges and prosecutors in the districts. This, she added, could have added to the backlog of cases in the system, slowing the wheels of justice even more.

But, with the split district, the 8th North will have two judges, one circuit-chancery and one juvenile judge, who would hears other cases as well.

The prosecuting attorney's office will be set up much like the public defender system, she continued, with a prosecuting attorney and assistant. The prosecuting attorney would be appointed for two-year terms and not elected, as they currently are.

According to Rodgers, there will be two judges and one prosecuting attorney for the 8th North, while the 8th South will have three judges and one prosecutor. The new judge for the 8th North will be a juvenile judge.

Talking about juveniles and the law, Rodgers said she introduced a bill which would lower the age at which a child could be charged as an adult to 13. However, this bill never made it out of committee.

The opposition's arguments was the legislation could then see the possibility of eight-year-old children being charged as juvenile delinquents.

In the meantime, Rodgers plans on studying this issue further.

Rodgers said one of the best things which may come from the district split could be with juvenile offenders. She said with more localized judges, they will know the youngsters better and may be able to help them turn their lives around before becoming serious offenders.

One of the bills Rodgers co-sponsored would allow venue changes when school districts are involved. She said the bill would allow the venue to be changed from Pulaski County to the district's local chancery court.

This would keep local school officials from always having to travel to Little Rock for hearings when their district has been sued or is involved in litigation. Instead, the hearings would be held in the district where the challenge was issued.

In discussing child support, Rodgers said legislation was introduced stating if a parent leaves the state owing more than $5,000 in child support, and are gone more than 30 days, they must prove they didn't leave to avoid prosecution for the child support owed.

These deadbeat parents could be extradited back to Arkansas under the measure, where they would be tried and could face jail time for not paying child support.

"I'm tired," Rodgers said of the session being over for now. "We fought a lot of battles and worked hard, but it's all about compromise. You have to agree to disagree.

"I loved it. It was great."

Rodgers said a special session is likely because there were many issues left unresolved, primarily the welfare reform situation.

In addition, she said, Huckabee may want the session to examine the state's highway program. During the session, three bills on taxes for the highway program were introduced. One bill was a half-cent sales tax for highways, another was a penny tax on wholesale gasoline distributors, which was amended to a half-cent tax on all gasoline. The third measure called for a 1.5 cent tax, but was changed to a percentage of tax from the sale of tires and oil products to be used for the highway program. All three failed.

"The highway program," Rodgers said, "needs to be under the leadership of the Governor." She said this is an area where Huckabee needs to take charge with the legislative process.

This session was different, she said, because of term limits. "All the rules changed. There was more to learn in less time. The hardest part for me was trying to read all the bills and amendments and keep them straight."

Still, Rodgers said, she wouldn't trade the experience for anything.

Rodgers serves on the Judiciary Committee, the Committee for Aging, Youth and Children, the Military Affairs Committee, where she chairs the subcommittee, and the Joint Retirement Committee.

She will also be vice-chairperson at Boys State this year.