Another Power Grab

A few days ago, I dedicated this column to explaining how the Arkansas State Legislature is trying to take power out of the hands of the people who elected them and give it to themselves by amending the state constitution to make it harder to submit and pass voter-led ballot initiatives.

Well, in case that wasn’t a blatant enough effort to give themselves more power, wait until you hear about yet another way they are trying it. And yes, it’s through another constitutional amendment proposal.

Issue No. 1 on the ballot this November is a constitutional amendment “to allow the General Assembly to Convene in Extraordinary Session Upon the Issuance of a Joint Written Proclamation of the Speaker of the House of Representatives and the President Pro Tempore of the Senate or Upon the Submission of aWritten Proclamation Containing the Signatures of At Least Two-Thirds (2/3) of the Members of the House of Representatives and At Least Two-Thirds of the Members of the Senate to the Speaker of the House of Representatives and the President Pro Tempore of the Senate Requesting that the General Assembly Convene in Extraordinary Session.

You see, the way this whole system of chacks and balances and separation of powers thing works is, different branches of the government are given specific powers so that no single branch of the government becomes too powerful. One of these powers belongs to the governor of the state and it is the sole power of the governor to call

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the state legislature into a special session. It falls to the governor to make this decision so as to keep the legislature from coming together to override the governor’s authority, to run up the taxpayers’ bill for supporting extraordinary legislative sessions, to keep the legislature in check and a whole host of other reasons… and the legislature would very much like to take that power away from the governor and… wait for it… give it to themselves.

Yes, the Republican-majority legislature think so much of themselves that they believe that they, not the governor, should be able to decide if they need to have a speciall session… that you and I will have to pat for. And they think this is such a great idea that they want you to vote for them to be able to do it.

This is just another misguided effort by our state lawmakers to introduce new laws that benefit themselves, their interests and pretty much no one else.

It’s like that time they wanted to ban plant-based meat substitutes or make it mandatory to teach cursive handwriting to all state third-graders or ban human cloning — pointless laws that nobody asked for and nobady needs.

Arkansas just turned 185 years old earlier this week.

She’s made it this far, often in spite or rather than because of the state legislature… the same state legislature that actually outlawed banks in the state for a while.

We’ve done just fine leaving the power to call a session with the governor so far. Let’s leave it there.