Monticello Live

State government is tightening its belt in almost every area, and during the current fiscal year has had to reduce its budget by $206 million.

However, during the fiscal session that formally concluded last week the legislature was able to maintain staffing increases in a vital program – the protection of abused and neglected children. Read the rest of this entry »

Although the fiscal session will be much shorter than regular legislative sessions, in some ways it promises to be very similar.

As is customary in regular sessions, most of the action during the first week of the fiscal session took place in committee. The full Senate did little more than pass a few resolutions and amend a few bills in preparation for this week, when the floodgates will open and bills will be approved by the dozen. By the end of this week the legislature will likely have passed a couple of hundred budget bills. Read the rest of this entry »

Legislators spent last week writing next year’s budget for state government, a process that will require serious belt tightening in state agencies, institutions of higher education and school districts.

The week began with grim news. The governor announced a new round of budget cuts of $106 million for the current fiscal year. Those spending reductions come on the heels of $100 million in budget cuts last October. The cuts reduced general revenue spending for the current fiscal year from $4.6 billion to $4.4 billion. Read the rest of this entry »

The state of Arkansas offers 21 different scholarships, and now students can apply for all of them in one single process.

The YOUniversal Arkansas Financial Aid System is designed to help students, parents and guidance counselors. Students can fill out the application process within minutes and the system will let them know the scholarships for which they qualify. Basically they provide their age, their grade point average, their standardized test scores and their family’s income.

As the governor said at the announcement of the system, the previous process of applying for all the available financial aid was as time-consuming and complex as filling out a tax return. It was necessary to fill out an application for each scholarship, whereas now just one application is required for all state sponsored scholarships. Read the rest of this entry »

Budgets and spending are expected to be the dominant issues in state government in 2010.

Some of the most important budget decisions legislators face in 2010 and in the next decade will affect public colleges and universities. Read the rest of this entry »

Senator Bud Canada of Hot Springs was best known as the moral force behind efforts to eliminate the sales tax on groceries.

Canada, who died on December 21, sponsored numerous other bills to lower taxes on middle income and low-income families. Some were enacted into law and some were not, which is typical of the career of any successful legislator. Read the rest of this entry »

Low income charter school—Poultry litter ruling

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Arkansas was among the first states to receive federal stimulus grants for expanding access to broadband Internet services.

Connect Arkansas is a private non-profit organization that has been officially designated by the state to receive stimulus funds for expansion of broadband. The organization received about $2.1 million in federal grants in October, which it will spend to map the regions in Arkansas where infrastructure is lacking for broadband access. Read the rest of this entry »

Last year Canada was Arkansas’s biggest international business partner. More than 21 percent of Arkansas exports, valued at $1.2 billion, were shipped to Canada in 2008.

Coming in second was Mexico, whose companies bought $796 million of products made in Arkansas. That represented almost 14 percent of Arkansas exports. Read the rest of this entry »

A lingering dispute over the teaching of Arkansas history has spilled over from academia to the halls of the state Capitol. Read the rest of this entry »

Athletic spending by Arkansas colleges and universities went up 4 percent last year, from about $100.6 million to $105 million.

A large majority of athletic expenditures were by the University of Arkansas at Fayetteville, which spent $59.8 million. Read the rest of this entry »

Beginning in January, high school guidance counselors in 58 Arkansas school districts will get a helping hand from career coaches.

Technically the career coaches will be employees of local two-year colleges. They will work at high schools in 21 Arkansas counties with high unemployment, or where relatively few high school graduates go on to college. Read the rest of this entry »

The state Board of Correction has imposed $6.3 million in spending cuts, which will postpone the opening of a unit for inmates with mental illnesses and developmental disabilities.

Construction of the special needs unit in Malvern is very close to completion, but the budget cuts will force the delay of its opening until the department has enough funding to pay salaries and continuing costs of operating it.

State prisons house more people with mental illnesses than any other institutions in Arkansas. When it opens the Malvern special needs unit will have beds for 360 inmates, although the Correction Department has plans to expand. Read the rest of this entry »

About 260,000 veterans of the Armed Forces live in Arkansas and 50,136 veterans or their spouses receive disability compensation or pension payments.

Veterans Day, a state holiday will be commemorated next week in numerous locations across the state as Arkansans gather to honor the men and women who have served their country. According to the American Legion, an organization of veterans created by Congress in 1919, fewer than 10 percent of Americans are veterans. Read the rest of this entry »

Arkansas students scored close to the national average in mathematics on a nationwide standardized test.

A randomly chosen group of about 10,000 fourth and eighth graders in Arkansas took the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP). The national average for fourth graders was a score of 240 out of 500. Arkansas fourth graders scored 238. The national average for eighth graders was 283 and those in Arkansas scored 276. Read the rest of this entry »

Last year the Arkansas Economic Development Commission signed incentive contracts with 95 companies that will create almost 7,000 jobs. Read the rest of this entry »

A three-judge panel of the Eighth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in St. Louis last week heard arguments for and against the constitutionality of methods used in Arkansas to execute inmates. Read the rest of this entry »

Retired teachers recently got an average increase of $51 a month in benefits, thanks to a resolution passed by the Board of Retired of the Arkansas Teacher Retirement System. Read the rest of this entry »

Consumers’ credit scores influence the premiums they pay for most of the insurance policies written in Arkansas for motor vehicles and homes.

In the past 12 months, almost half the people who bought car insurance got lower premiums because of their good credit scores. More than a third of those who bought homeowners insurance had lower premiums because of good credit. Read the rest of this entry »

Many farmers use sophisticated machinery to grow their crops and modern communications technology to market them.

In a sign of the times, a new Internet web site has gone on line whose purpose is to help Arkansans find locally grown products from Arkansas. The other benefit is to help Arkansas farmers tap into the market of Arkansas food shoppers. Read the rest of this entry »

The outcome of the Pulaski County school desegregation lawsuit is important to every school district in Arkansas for financial reasons.

This year more than $67 million in state funding is obligated to the three districts in Pulaski County. Since a 1989 settlement of the case, in which the state agreed to pay for desegregation efforts in the county, the state has provided $919 million to the three districts in Pulaski County. The amount will soon reach $1 billion. Read the rest of this entry »

Earlier this year the legislature approved additional resources for the state child welfare system. The governor ordered a top-to-bottom review of the agencies that provide services for children from broken families.

The review is now complete, and the state Division of Children and Family Services is hiring additional employees so that they will not have unmanageably large case loads. The Division will hire 113 new case workers this fiscal year and an another 50 next year. Read the rest of this entry »

Last year 28,295 seniors graduated from Arkansas high schools and 63.4 percent of them went on to attend an Arkansas college or university in the fall. Read the rest of this entry »

Since Arkansas voters in 2000 approved a plan for spending revenue from a legal settlement with tobacco companies, the state has received about $446 million. Read the rest of this entry »

Many new laws approved in the 2009 regular session took effect on July 31, the 91st day after the legislature adjourned.

Teenaged drivers with an intermediate license or a learner’s permit now must comply with a new set of restrictions, thanks to Act 394. They may not use a cell phone or wireless device, so they may not text or access the Internet while driving. They can have only one passenger in the car who is under the age of 21, unless the passengers are siblings or unless there is an adult in the front seat who is over 21 and has a driver’s license. Read the rest of this entry »

Serving on a blue ribbon panel is usually prestigious, but few people envy the 19 members of the Arkansas Blue Ribbon Commission on Highway Finance. Read the rest of this entry »

Tourism generated $5.6 billion in the sale of goods and services in Arkansas last year, accounting for 5.6 percent of the state’s gross domestic product.

Rising gasoline prices and uncertainty in the national economy slowed the growth of the state’s tourism industry, but it still managed to grow in comparison to other components of the Arkansas economy. Read the rest of this entry »

The state Health Department has confirmed the first case of West Nile virus in Arkansas this year.

Last year there were nine confirmed cases in Arkansas. The virus is spread by mosquitoes to humans, horses and other animals. The mosquitoes transmit it from birds, which are the host animals. Read the rest of this entry »

State government’s fiscal year for 2010 began July 1, and Arkansas is in relatively good financial shape compared to other states. Read the rest of this entry »

The federal government will pay a larger share of the cost of Medicaid in Arkansas, thanks to increased funding in the economic stimulus package.

Medicaid provides health coverage for people with disabilities, the elderly and the poor. Traditionally, the federal government has matched state Medicaid spending on a roughly 3-to-1 basis. Specifically, the federal government paid 72.81 percent of Arkansas Medicaid costs. Additional funding from the federal stimulus package has increased the federal share of Medicaid expenditures to 79.14 percent. Read the rest of this entry »

The state Criminal Justice Institute and nineteen state colleges and universities have joined in a program to lower the costs for Arkansas police officers earning degrees in law enforcement.

The Criminal Justice Institute in Little Rock offers courses in crime scene investigations and law enforcement administration. There will no longer be a charge for those credit hours when police officers take them through participating local colleges. Read the rest of this entry »

Economic development policy in Arkansas combines several strategies.

Tax incentives are important. The state offers grants and low-interest financing. It helps pay for job training and helps Arkansas companies tap markets in foreign countries. The state helps industries by building infrastructure such as roads, railroad spurs, utility lines and water and drainage projects. Read the rest of this entry »