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Special session ends with education, smoking bills adopted Saturday, Apr 8, 2006 By Aaron Sadler Arkansas News Bureau LITTLE ROCK - The Legislature concluded a week-long special session Friday after increasing public school funding to address a court order, adopting a statewide ban on smoking in the workplace and raising the state minimum wage. Legislators added nearly $200 million in public school academic and facilities aid for the current school year and the 2006-07 term, avoiding a potential stalemate over an increase in minimum teacher salaries. Lawmakers overwhelmingly approved legislation to prohibit smoking in most public places and Gov. Mike Huckabee signed the Clean Indoor Air Act into law in a public ceremony Friday. Separately, Huckabee also signed legislation to toughen penalties for child molesters and bar protests at funerals. The minimum wage bill, which Huckabee has said he would sign, increases the minimum pay rate from $5.15 per hour to $6.25, effective Oct. 1. The current federal minimum wage is $5.15. The House and Senate recessed Friday until May 1, when a skeleton group of lawmakers will return to formally end the special session after a review of legislative actions for errors. Huckabee praised the Legislature for its work. "This Legislature deserves to be remembered as, I think, the finest group of men and women that ever assembled in the name of the General Assembly," Huckabee said. "I really think they deserve that moniker." Before calling lawmakers into special session a week ago to address a state Supreme Court or to address school funding deficiencies, the governor said lawmakers had reached enough of a consensus to address majoring issues in a week. Disagreements over how much to increase the state minimum teacher salary schedule put the session's imminent end in jeopardy until senators Friday approved, 21-6, a House amendment to bump the scale by 1.6 percent for the 2005-06 school year. The Senate vote on the actual funding bill, Senate Bill 27, was 29-5. Senators reluctantly embraced the change as the only remaining school funding option as the Legislature closed. The original educational adequacy bill would have set the salary increase at 3.3 percent this school year and 3.5 percent for 2006-07. The Senate on Thursday adopted a 2.4 percent increase to the salary schedule for both years. The House refused to budge, though, and sent the bill back to the Senate with an amendment that lowered the percent raise to 1.6 percent this year and 2.4 percent next year. The current minimum teacher salary is $27,500. School administrators said a larger salary schedule adjustment would have left no room for some districts to cover additional increases in operating expenses. More than 60 school districts would actually lose discretionary revenue, even with a $94 million cost-of-living adjustment approved Friday, lobbyists for public school administrators said. Most of the districts that claim harm with a higher minimum salary hike are schools with declining enrollment or those with high student-to-teacher ratios. "Even though many of us disagree on what the salary increase should be, this addresses the issues identified in court," said Sen. Shane Broadway, D-Bryant. "We can walk out of here this week and say we've done what the court asked us to do." The state Supreme Court declared Arkansas' school funding system unconstitutional in December, criticizing lawmakers for failing to provide a cost-of-living adjustment to overall school budgets this year after dedicating nearly $400 million in additional revenue to public education in a 2004 special session. Justices ordered the Legislature to address school funding deficiencies by Dec. 1. Huckabee said Friday that the Legislature's actions this week should be enough to satisfy the court in the long-running Lake View school funding case. "If the Supreme Court comes back and says they're dissatisfied, I think we need to meet and say we're dissatisfied with them, because honestly I don't know what else we could do," Huckabee said. "We've poured hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of millions of dollars, we've rewritten the standards ... we've raised teacher salaries." The governor said he would support the funding bill approved Friday, despite some reservations about the teacher raise percentage. Specifically, the governor said the state seems to be rewarding schools for inefficiencies. For the same reason, he said he had problems with Senate Bill 24, approved by the House 83-8 on Friday. The bill appropriates $10 million to schools with declining enrollment and $3 million to isolated school districts. Earlier this week, both chambers voted to appropriated $50 million more for school facilities improvements. The extra education funding is to be taken from excess funding in education reserve accounts, as well as about $68 million in state surplus funds. Other education measures adopted as a result of House and Senate Education Committee recommendations included $38 million to offset schools' contribution increases to the teacher retirement system and a repeal of the retirement system board's decision to raise contribution rates from 14 percent to 15 percent of payroll. The House and Senate on Friday adopted a resolution that presented the official report on the Legislature's work to the Supreme Court. "It's a good job of making every possible effort to respond to what (the Supreme Court) said," said Rep. Jodie Mahony, D-El Dorado. |
