It tells you all you need to know that rising legislative leaders Robbie Willis, the coming House speaker, and Death Star Bob Johnson, the coming Senate pro tem, voted FOR annual legislative sessions.
A veteran legislator of my acquaintance was lamenting the vote yesterday. It will add exponentially to legislative power in a system already tilted toward the legislative. It will mean annual jerking around of state agency heads for petty offenses to legislators and their favored constituents. It will produce an even-year barrage of election-oriented resolutions and nonsense. It will cost a lot more money, insignificant perhaps against the larger budget, but very real. Legislators are already talking abut their need for a major pay raise. Smaller government? This isn’t it. Strange vote by voters, if not by Wills and Johnson.
(My legislative friend adds that Arkansas may never have had a governor better equipped to do battle with the legislature in this new time. “Battle” isn’t perhaps the best word to apply to Mike Beebe’s considerable negotiation and persuasion skills. But he fears the future.)