Nevada County Picayune and Gurdon Times Newspaper Archive

Legislature Override 8 Of 13 Bills Governor Huckabee Had Vetoed

IN THE SENATE

General Assembly reconvened April 17 to consider overriding vetoes of 13 bills, succeeding in eight.

The legislature overrode vetoes of these eight bills:

• House Bill 1316, section 20, which appropriates $5 million for building natural gas pipelines in rural areas.

• HB 1332, section 31, which provides a tax exemption for communications equipment installed on commercial trucks.

• HB 1809, sections 15, 16 and 22, to appropriate carryover funds to certain school districts.

• HB 1810, sections 37 and 50, which appropriate $65 million in equalization funding for schools.

• HB 1728, sections 93, 105, 109, 111, 119, and 122, which have funding for institutional care for the developmentally disabled, nursing homes, Medicaid reimbursements to pharmacists, mental health services, medical equipment and therapeutic child care.

• SB 286, section 15, which puts funding of the state Administrative Office of the Courts in the Central Services Fund.

• SB 676, which allocates money for construction projects and capital improvements from the state General Improvement Fund. The bill sets out which projects are to be funded and sets dates for the release of available money.

  This bill was one of the most controversial of the session, because control over more than $100 million was at stake.

• SB 696, which gives authority to the Senate president pro tem to make certain appoinments. The appointments had been made by the Senate Committee on Committees.

• SB 742, which levies fees charged for disposal of truck tires by solid waste districts;

• HB 2008, to allocate proceeds of taxes levied at the Southland Dog Track in West Memphis;

• HB 2107, which establishes a new agency called the Bureau of Juvenile Probation Research;

• SB 121, which separates the offices of sheriff and tax collector in Fulton County; and

• SB 454, to provide employee benefits when mental health centers convert to private entities.

Extracurricular Activities

The State Board of Education has formed a committee to study current poliies that require students to maintain a 2.0 grade point average to be eligible to participate in extracurricular activities.

The committee will include people who want to change the minimum standard and people who want to leave it intact. In the recent session, some legislators worked to change the requirement, saying that it was too stringent and kept too many students out of activities. A 2.0 grade point average is a C average.

The board also removed five school districts from its list of districts in academic distress, which is determined by pupil scores on standardized tests. One district was added to the list, bringing to seven the number of schools in academic distress. If the school continues failing in academic areas, the state could take over some of its operations.

IN THE HOUSE

State representatives briefly reconvened the regular session of the 81st General Assembly and voted to override eight vetoes or line-item vetoes by the governor of legislation previously approved.

Legislators returned to Little Rock on Thursday, April 17, for the purpose of considering the governor's disaproval of all or part of 13 proposed laws adopted during the regular session, which had recessed 12 days earlier.

All 13 vetoes were presented for consideration by the House. Eight were overridden and five were sustained, including one on which the override attempt failed and four on which votes were not taken.

Among the vetoes overriden was that of legislation for distributing more than $130 million in state funds for construction spending over the next two years. The legislation governing General Improvement Fund allocations provides for the General Assembly and the governor to share distribution responsibility.

Majority votes of the membership of the House and Senate are necessary to override a governor's veto. When the general assembly recessed the regular session on April 5, provisions were made for the Speaker of the house, Bobby L. Hogue of Jonesboro, and the President Pro Tempore of the Senate, Sen. Wayne Dowd of Texarkana, to call legislators back to the capitol to take other actions, including the consideration of gubernatiorial votes, before formally adjourning the session. If no additional actions are necessary, the regular session is to formally adjourn on Friday, May 2.

Legislators on April 17 considered both the veto of complete bills and the line-item of portions of bills. The vetoes of complete bills overridden included that of the General Improvement Fund legislation and that of a bill granting authority to the President Pro Tempore of the Senate to make certain appointments.

The legislative override of line-item vetoes would enact into law specific provisions of six proposals appropriating funds for the state Department of Education, the Department of Human Services, the Department of Finance and Administration and the Administrative Office of the Courts.

One provision of the Department of Education appropriation bills would guarantee potentially higher levels of financial support to equalize funding among Arkansas's 311 school districts over the next two years. Another provision sets prioroities for funding certain education projects and programs.

Override of the line-item veto of the Department of Finance and Administratiion disbursing officer's appropriation would enact an appropriation of $5 million for grants or loans to support the construction of natural gas lines.

Enacted provisions in the Department of Human Services' appropriation would establish specific funding levels to support a residential program for the mentally retarded and to maintain Medicaid reimbursement levels for nursing homes and establish reimbursement rates in response or to higher minimum wage scales.

The override also would implement a model program to provide durable medical equipment to adult medical services recipients and would set specific funding levels for therapeutic child care.

Another provision would prohibit reduction of dispensing fees paid to Arkansas pharmacists for filling prescriptions for Medicaid recipents until a survey of actual dispensing costs is conducted.

By voting down a motion to override, representatives sustained the governor's veto of a bill that would have changed the allocationn of funds