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Benny Petrus and poor people Sunday, Mar 23, 2008 By John Brummett I get a kick out of Benny Petrus, the speaker of the state House of Representatives. He's a bit of a caricature, but lovable. An East Arkansas farmer and car dealer, he's got a subsidy in one pocket and heck of a deal in the other. He talks fast and sometimes doesn't say quite the right word. Trying once to praise a Republican, Benny said his "hands" were off to the gentleman. Most people would have stopped the accolade short of self-amputation, perhaps merely by tipping their hat. Like the rest of us, Benny wants to be important. He'd like to get a little dadburned respect around here every once in a while. He may have come in on a turnip truck, but he didn't fall off it. He stepped down. Being short-legged, he may have lost his footing and rolled a time or two, but that ain't the same. Indeed he did matter in the regular session last year. He held out on Gov. Mike Beebe's halving of the sales tax on groceries until Beebe agreed to a portion of his idea for a little targeted income tax relief on the poorest taxpayers. Some really poor people don't have to pay quite as much income tax anymore, thanks to Benny. That's no trivial matter. My hands are off to him. By the end of the session, Beebe had called in the favor by leaning on Benny to send the gay foster care ban to a House committee that would table it and keep Beebe from having to take any action on it. Benny Petrus standing tall for gay people - now that was something you wouldn't necessarily have predicted. I'm never quite sure if Benny is sincere about his populist and progressive policies or just looking for a little positive treatment in the press. He preened during the last session about how he was going to pass real ethics reform legislation. And he did, in the House. But then the bill went to the Senate for what everyone, including Benny, knew would be sudden death. I remember that day he called me on his cell phone, breathing heavily. He was on his way down to the Senate to find out what in tarnation was the holdup on his ethics bill. Yeah, good luck with that. But one could doubt the genuineness of just about anyone in politics or any other field - journalism, maybe. If sheer posturing and demagoguery were his things, Benny probably would be better off applying them on the right-wing side instead of as a champion of poor people and ethics. But then Marion Berry won't be in Congress forever, and there are a lot of poor folks in the 1st Congressional District. So, anyway, all this is to set up that Benny called about 10 days ago, shortly after Beebe announced he was going to try to round up three-fourths legislative majorities to enact in a special session the severance tax deal he'd worked out with the natural gas exploration industry. Dadburnit, Benny said, we didn't really do all that much for poor people by taking away half that grocery tax. Retailers could finesse that. But what if we took some of this higher severance tax on gas and used it not for roads, as Beebe proposes, but to offset a reduction in the sales tax on residential natural gas utility bills? Then, by golly, we'd have done something for the poor man. At least the utilities would have to go to the Public Service Commission to seek a rate increase. He said he was going to bring this up with Beebe. But he said wasn't going to be an "obstacle," which was a good-enough word, though I suspect he was reaching for "obstructionist." Benny said he'd most likely end up doing whatever Beebe wanted. But he wondered: What if Beebe was low-balling what this severance tax would raise? "How about giving me a trigger?" he asked, meaning a portion of the severance tax coming in over a certain level, to be used to offset reductions in the residential sales tax on natural gas. That's Benny ... always working a deal. ------- John Brummett is a columnist for the Arkansas News Bureau in Little Rock. His e-mail address is jbrummett@arkansasnews.com; his telephone number is (501) 374-0699. |
