Ready or Not Here They Come

This was made in a hurry so please excuse any typos, on the road and trying to keep up~




Yesterday was the last day for legislators to file bills and nearly 500 bills were filed leaving the total at close to 2400 for the session. 


I saw a great point made on twitter yesterday~ 
"Are we under-governed, or were previous #arleg's so inept that we need 300 bills filed in one day?" This was made at 3pm, so as you can see they used every last minute.




On the Healthcare Front


Stay tuned today for major news on Arkansas Healthcare- Check my facebook -Laurie Lee Masterson or follow on Twitter @LaurieMasterson #ARLeg
 
Senator Missy Irvin has authored a SB709 that concerns Federal Mandates on the Obama Healthcare bill. This bill would make it mandatory for the Feds to disclose how your money is being spent, where it is being spent and where the monies came from. This bill will be heard on Wednesday- You need to be there


Senator Dismang filed SB593 is on the Senate Public Health Committee agenda could be heard today. This would allow an employer you could benefit from modifying the rules for unemployment insurance. 








Legislative Odds and Ends from Talk Business:

Monday was one of the busiest days of the 88th Arkansas General Assembly as 304 House bills were filed and 192 Senate bills met the deadline. In total, there are 2,234 bills being debated this session and that doesn't include any resolutions, which do eat up committee and floor time.

Today, the Governor's prison bill cleared a Senate Judiciary Committee with ease. As indicated in a previous post, this bill may be signed into law by next week. FYI, Kelly MacNeil with our content partner, KUAR-FM 89 News, highlights a prisoner who could have been helped at some point if the changes under consideration were enacted. (read more...)

News on Unemployment  If you didn't know Arkansas' unemployment trust fund drowning in debt, we have borrowed as much as $400 million in the short term and our unemployment woes are not going away any time soon. Senator Dismang and Representative Carter have filed bills restructure unemployment benefits for Arkansans (HB1728 and SB593). According to the Rogers Chamber, "it is widely anticipated that the federal government will increase the federal wage base on employers. Therefore, passage of state legislation would be the first step in reducing outflows from the fund. The legislation removes indexing of benefits, restricts qualifications, and slightly reduces the length of benefits paid by the state. Current projections estimate that employers will have to pay $21 per employee more in 2012 and $42 more in 2013 to repay the debt to the federal government. This outlay might be reduced with passage of these two bills.