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Medicaid and Private Option

Under the new federal health care reform act, next year everyone will have to purchase health insurance.  Companies would have to offer health insurance if they employ more than 50 workers, or else pay a fine.  Large employers that don’t offer health insurance benefits may have to pay a fine of up to $2,000 for each employee who gets a tax credit to buy coverage on the exchange.  The first 30 employees would not be counted against them.

Gov. Beebe met with Kathleen Sebelius, the Secretary of Health and Human Services, and got a concession from the federal government.  It allows Arkansas to use its Medicaid expansion dollars to help people buy coverage through health exchanges, if their income is too much to make them Medicaid-eligible but less than 138 percent of the federal poverty level.

A major reason that businesses supported the private option is that they won’t be penalized if their employees qualify for the private option and use it to purchase health insurance through the new health care exchanges that will be set up under the Affordable Care Act (ACA).

Tax cuts

Attached is a spread sheet prepared by Richard Wilson’s office in the Bureau:

Fire Protection

Act 1391 by Sen. Sample, to raise a forestry protection fee from 15 to 20 cents an acre and raise $700,000 a year, has been sent to the governor.

Cell Phone Fees

Act 442 by Sen. Dismang raises an estimated $20 million with fees on cell phone usage to pay for broadband access and 911 emergency service in rural areas.  It creates a coordinated and uniform statewide plan to make sure all areas are covered by 911 services.

$17 million will go to expanding broadband, such as to rural schools.

$3 million will go to improving 911 services.

It could raise cell phone bills by 40 cents a month, but the increased fee won’t be collected unless communications companies make the investment to install the necessary equipment to provide broadband.

Education

School Choice

Act 1227 by Sen. Key allows student transfers with the restriction that transfers may not violate a federal desegregation order that is still being enforced.  Under Act 1227 the transferring student is responsible for transportation.

The lawsuit that sparked last year's court decision was filed by a group of white parents who sought to transfer their children from Malvern, which is 60 percent white, to Magnet Cove, which is 95 percent white. Under previous law, they were not allowed to transfer.  They sued, and in a surprise ruling a federal judge struck the Arkansas school choice law in its entirety.  His decision has been stayed while the ruling is being appealed.

Charter Schools

Act 1255 by Sen. Key creates a revolving loan fund for charter school facilities.

Fiscal Distress

Act 600 by Rep. Mark Perry changes the maximum amount of time that a school or school district can be in fiscal distress, academic distress or facilities distress from two years to five years.

Lottery Scholarships

Act 234 by Sen. Key and Rep. Gillam changes scholarship amounts, so that Academic Challenge Scholarships are graduated. 

Freshmen at a four-year university who qualify would receive $2,000.  As sophomores they would get $3,000, then $4,000 as juniors and $5,000 as seniors, starting in the 2013-14 school year.

Students at two-year colleges would get $2,000 a year for both years.

Now, students who were first awarded scholarships in the 2010-11 school year receive $5,000 a year to attend universities and $2,500 a year for community and technical colleges. Students who were first awarded the scholarships in the 2011-12 or 2012-13 school years get $4,500 a year and $2,250, respectively. Those amounts would not change under the bill if the students remain eligible.

Higher Education Department officials estimate that the lottery scholarship program will have enough funding for scholarships through fiscal 2018 if the bill passes, if lottery sales were enough to generate $90 million a year for scholarships.

Teacher Health Insurance

Act 517 by Sen. Key requires that school districts contribute at least $150 a month per participating employee, has passed both chambers.  The current minimum is $131 a month. 

School Report Cards

Act 696 by Sen. Hendren simplifies school report cards, so that they are given grades from A to F.  This prevents schools from hiding their failures behind a curtain of complex language.

Police Powers on Campus

Act 227 by Rep. Biviano, Sen. Dismang and others, grants police powers to private colleges in Arkansas, so they can set up their own security office.  Their officers can attend the Law Enforcement Training Academy.

Pro Life

Act 171 by Rep. Andy Mayberry bans physicians from doing abortions 20 weeks after conception  The original bill only had an exception to save the life of the mother or to prevent serious and irreversible physical impairment of the mother.  Exceptions for rape and incest were added in the Senate.

Act 301 by Senator Rapert, prohibits abortions if the physician can detect a heartbeat in the baby.  After the original bill was passed by the Senate, it was amended in the House to include exceptions for medical emergencies and fetal anomalies, and to lessen criminal penalties for doctors. 

Act 301 has received national publicity for being the strictest anti-abortion law in the country. 

Acts 171 and 301 are the bills on which the Senate and House voted to override the governor’s vetoes.

Act 72 by Rep. Butch Wilkins bans health care exchanges from offering coverage for abortions.  The exchanges will be created next year when federal health care reform requires everyone to buy health insurance.

2^nd Amendment

Act 67 by Sen. Bryan King allows churches and places of worship to decide whether they want to allow concealed carry permit holders on the premises.  Especially for churches in rural areas that are far from police stations, it gives churches more leeway in managing their security.

Act 145 by Sen. Bruce Holland protects the privacy of concealed carry permit holders, by exempting their names and zip codes from FOI requests.

Act 226 Rep. Collins allows trained and licensed staff of colleges and universities to carry concealed firearms onto campuses, if the institution’s board of trustees votes to allow it. 

Act 419 by Sen. Irvin and Rep. Neal allows concealed carry permit holders to carry an electronic image of the permit on their cell phone, instead of a paper copy, as long as the electronic image shows all the information that is on the paper license.

Act 989 by Rep. Wardlaw waives the 90-day residency requirement to get a concealed carry permit, for active duty military and their spouses. Current law says you have to be a resident of Arkansas for 90 days before you can apply for a concealed carry license. The act exempts active military personnel and their spouses from this residency requirement.

Act 320 authorizes parole board members, parole board investigators and parole revocation judges to carry their concealed firearms into a building that a law enforcement officer is allowed to carry a gun into.  The parole officers have to have a concealed carry permit and be on official business.

Act 507 by Senator Irvin and Rep. Harris makes it a Class D felony to provide false information to a licensed gun dealer in order to buy a gun or ammunition. It also makes it unlawful procurement of a firearm to solicit, entice or persuade a licensed gun dealer to unlawfully transfer a firearm.

Act 547 by Rep. Douglas repeals language in current law that allows the governor to suspend sales of firearms during a disaster emergency. The governor would still be able to suspend sales of alcoholic beverages, explosives and combustibles.

Lethal injection, sex offenders and criminal justice

Act 136 by Sen. Dismang gives the Parole Board discretion to deny parole to convicted sex offenders. 

Now, some sex offenders are eligible for parole if they serve a sufficient amount of their sentence and comply with good behavior rules.  The Parole Board may not deny their release from prison because they are eligible for mandatory parole.  If the inmates are required to register as sex offenders, due to the nature of their offense, Act 136 would give the Parole Board authority to deny their parole.

The bill was prompted by a case in which a sex offender was released from prison over the objections of the victims’ families and law enforcement, because he had legally earned the right to leave under mandatory parole statutes. 

Act 485 by Sen. Sanders is similar to Act 136, in that it adds several serious offenses to the list of crimes for which the Parole Board can deny an inmate mandatory parole.

Act 132 by Sen. Irvin strengthens laws against human trafficking.

Act 144 by Sen. Hickey removes sex crimes against children from the statue of limitations..

Act 139 by Sen. Bart Hester outlines procedures for lethal injection of inmates sentenced to die.  The attorney general supports the bill and tells lawmakers it will be constitutional.  A legal challenge of previous lethal injection laws was successful last year and Act 139 will replace the statute that was struck down.

Act 156 by Sen. Stubblefield expands the rights of pregnant women to use physical force to protect themselves and their unborn babies. 

Act 361 by Sen. Jake Files authorizes law enforcement officers to test a driver’s saliva to determine whether the driver is under the influence of drugs.

Act 404 by Rep. Lenderman requires pawn shops and pawn brokers to electronically upload records of their transactions to a database accessible to law enforcement agencies.  Sen. Rapert  presented the bill on the Senate floor and said it would help police investigations. 

Big River Steel Mill

Act 1084 by Sen. Burnett authorizes the state to issue $125 million in Amendment 82 superproject bonds.

Compressed Natural Gas 

Act 152 by Sen. Pierce and others provides tax incentives for converting diesel and gas fired motor vehicles so they can burn compressed natural gas or propane. 

Constitutional Amendments

----- SJR 16 by Sen. Sample would change the procedures of referendums and initiated acts.  If an organization did not turn in 75 percent of the number of required signatures, it would not be granted an extension.

----HJR 1009 by Rep. Sabin would impose ethics standards for elected officials, create a commission to set legislative salaries and slightly change term limits to allow an individual to serve 16 years in a single body.

It would limit corporate donations to a candidate, and gift giving by lobbyists.  Legislators would not be able to register as lobbyists for two years after they leave office.

 ----SJR 7 by Sen. Dismang to empower the legislature to approve new regulations proposed by executive branch agencies.

Ethics

Act 312 prohibits the use of public funds to influence the passage or denial of a ballot measure.  Current law requires agencies and commissions to report expenditures to the Legislative Council.  Act 312 repeals that language and replaces it with an outright prohibition.

The bill allows governmental bodies to pass resolutions expressing opinions on ballot measures.  Also, it allows public employees to travel and speak on ballot measures if the measures affect the employees’  official duties.

Act 486 requires constitutional officers, state agency heads and judges to wait at least a year after leaving office before they register as a lobbyist.  The act includes employees of the Public Service Commission, which regulates utilities. 

Elections

Act  1110  by Rep. Perry makes the office of prosecuting attorney non-partisan.

Act 595 by Sen. King requires voters to show a government-issued photo ID in order to get a ballot.  The legislature overrode the governor’s veto to enact this bill.

Act 1211 limits the size of precincts to 3,000 registered voters.  It also requires absentee ballots and early voting ballots to be counted before the closing of the polls on election day.  Results of absentee voting and early voting must be reported to the Secretary of State no later than 30 minutes after the polls close.

The governor vetoed three other election bills sponsored by Sen. King. They are :

SB 719 to create an election integrity unit within the Secretary of State’s Office to investigate voter fraud.

SB 721 would add two members to the Board of Election Commissioners, which now has seven members.  The new members would both be county clerks, one each appointed by the Republican and the Democratic Party.  It has passed both chambers.

SB 720 would authorize the state Board of Election Commissioners to investigate county election boards, and to remove members of county boards of election commissioners. It has passed both chambers.

Referendums, Ballot Issues and Petitions

Act 1085 by Sen. Ingram requires organizations that contribute to referendum campaigns to file financial disclosure reports, listing donors and listing how dollars are spent.

Act 1413 by Sen. Ingram strengthens regulations governing canvassers and organizations that gather signatures to get referenda on the ballot. It sets penalties for canvassers who knowingly sign the names of other people.

Canvassers must provide an address, and paid canvassers must disclose their names.  They must sign a form stating that they have read and understood the laws on collecting signatures.  Also, they must submit a recent photo.

Oversight in Treasurer’s Office

Act 1088 by Sen. Rapert expands the Board of Finance and requires that certain positions within the Treasurer’s Office be filled by people with financial training.  It’s in Senate Insurance and Commerce.

Circuit clerks foreclosure fees

Act 291 by Rep. Hammer ends the practice of circuit clerks making personal profits from acting as commissioner of foreclosure auctions.The percentage of the sale that they used to keep must not go into a circuit clerk’s commissioner’s fund, which is then used to pay administrative costs of the auction and operational expenses of the circuit clerk’s office.

APRIL 19, 2013

at OMNI, 3274 Lee Ave., Fayetteville,  7:00 pm

Dick Bennett, Christianity

Make your reservations now for Nobel Laureate Leymah Gbowee, part of the Frank and Kula Kumpuris Distinguished Lecture Series Tuesday, April 23, 2013 at 6:00 p.m. (Great Hall) *In partnership with the Clinton Foundation and AT&T

- The 2011 Nobel Peace Laureate, Gbowee is a Liberian peace activist, trained social worker and women’s rights advocate. Her leadership of the Women of Liberia Mass Action for Peace – which brought together Christian and Muslim women in a nonviolent movement that played a pivotal role in ending Liberia’s civil war in 2003 – is chronicled in her memoir, “Mighty Be Our Powers,” and in the documentary, “Pray the Devil Back to Hell.”

*Reserve your seats by emailing publicprograms@clintonschool.uasys.edu, or calling  501-683-5239 

You are also invited to attend a celebration Reception for Ms. Gbowee on Wednesday April 24th 6pm at Philander Smith College!
****please rsvp to Arkansas WAND <arkansaswand@gmail.com>  if you plan to attend****

Hatebase tracks speech predicting violence

http://www.hatebase.org/about

About The Sentinel Project for Genocide Prevention

Formed in 2008, The Sentinel Project for Genocide Prevention is a non-profit organization based in Canada with members in several countries worldwide. The Sentinel Project's mission is to prevent the crime of genocide worldwide through effective early warning and cooperation with victimized peoples to carry out non-violent prevention initiatives.

About Hatebase

Hatebase was developed in partnership between Mobiocracy and The Sentinel Project for Genocide Prevention, and remains in active development (roadmap).

Please contact us if you'd like to join the Hatebase team or support our mission. We're primarily looking for application ambassadors and external developers rather than developers to work on the plaform itself: basically people who can spread the word about Hatebase and encourage others to build on top of our data.

http://thesentinelproject.org/introducing-hatebase-the-worlds-largest-online-database-of-hate-speech/

Hatebase is available to casual users through a Wikipedia-like web interface, and to developers through an authenticating API. Although the core of Hatebase is its community-edited vocabulary of multilingual hate speech, a critical concept in Hatebase is regionality: users can associate hate speech with geography, thus building a parallel dataset of “sightings” which can be monitored for frequency, localization, migration, and transformation.

 Imagine coming home to this: Oil oozing down your driveway, pooling in your back yard, and filling up your local waterways. Sounds like a nightmare, right?

This is the reality that families in Mayflower, Arkansas, have had to deal with since more than 500,000 gallons of dirty tar sands oil and water spilled out of a ruptured Exxon Mobil pipeline this past Friday.

This spill is terrible and our hearts go out to the community in Mayflower affected by this disaster. This shouldn’t have happened. That’s why it’s critical that President Obama and Secretary Kerry reject the construction of a much bigger pipeline, Keystone XL, which could cause even more devastating spills of tar sands crude in waterways and lands across America.

We need you to raise your voice now. Tell the State Department to keep us safe from more tar sands spills by rejecting the dangerous Keystone XL pipeline!

Unfortunately, the spill in Arkansas repeats a story we know too well. In 2010, an Enbridge Energy pipeline in Michigan broke and spilled more than 800,000 gallons of toxic tar sands crude into the Kalamazoo River -- and it still hasn’t been fully cleaned up. That same year, TransCanada, the company that wants to build the Keystone XL pipeline now, built a pipeline that experienced 12 separate spills in a single year. In 2011, one of Exxon Mobil’s pipelines in Montana ruptured and contaminated the Yellowstone River. And even just last week, a train derailed in Minnesota and spilled 30,000 gallons of tar sands crude.

If these stories make your stomach churn, I know how you feel. It’s absolutely infuriating that we keep allowing Big Oil to put our lands, water, and wildlife at risk, when we have seen over and over how it ends.

The Keystone XL tar sands pipeline would be a monster -- carrying 20 times more oil than the Exxon pipeline that burst in the Yellowstone River two years ago. If we have any hope of stopping it, we need you to tell Secretary of State John Kerry that this dirty pipeline is all risk and no reward. Send a message asking him to reject it here >>

Right now, the State Department is accepting comments on its review of the potential environmental impacts of the Keystone XL pipeline. The initial draft of this review was completely off-base, downplaying the risks of spills and the devastating impact that this dirty oil would have in fueling climate change. Luckily, we have the chance to weigh in on this draft and push them to change it to recommend what many scientists have attested to -- that this pipeline is too dangerous to build and the tar sands oil needs to stay in the ground.

So we’re joining with groups across the environmental movement to gather one million comments opposing the dirty Keystone XL pipeline by the end of the comment period on April 22. With only 20 days to go, we need you to send a message now.

Thanks to contributions from more than 3,000 LCV members, we hit our goal in our fundraising drive for this campaign and now we’ve got all the resources we need to win this fight.

But we can’t do it without your help. So thanks for taking a moment to make your voice heard today.

Let’s do this,

Vanessa Kritzer

Online Campaigns Manager
League of Conservation Voters

Challenge to Friends of the Buffalo National River...
Can you make a video blog or VLOG and post them to your Facebook wall today, tomorrow, or really soon? What if we stand together in solidarity to alert Walmart about how their vendor is threatening NWA and the Buffalo National River?

Sample letter to read aloud on a vlog post:

Dear Mrs. Andrea B. Thomas,

As the Senior Vice President of Sustainability for Walmart we wanted to make sure you heard about the C&H Farm, which is actually a 6,500 head swine CAFO, being built on the headwaters of the Buffalo National River. This CAFO is going to produce pork products to be sold to Walmart and we don’t think this fits with the values of the Walmart Corporation.

The Waltons grandchildren are avid outdoors people and bike on the trails in the Ozarks, how do they feel about Walmart benefiting from this flawed project? The Buffalo National River is a national treasure, worthy of protection for environmental reasons alone. However, the Buffalo National River reports bringing $151 million dollars in economic benefit to the area. (http://www.nps.gov/buff/parknews/national-park-tourism-in-arkansas.htm)

Please, Andrea we are BEGGING you to STOP selling Cargill products in Walmart stores unless they stop their assault on the economy and environment in Northwest Arkansas Area. America is watching and wants to know how Walmart will stand up to protect the Buffalo National River, the economic benefits to the Northwest Arkansas area, and the community where Walmart was founded.

Sincerely, You
____________
National Park Tourism in Arkansas Creates $151 Million in Economic Benefit - Buffalo National River
www.nps.gov

VLOGS can be sent to:
http://www.youtube.com/user/CleanBuffH2O

How they can send it, (Click on Share ----> Email ----> fill in [CleanBuffH20] ----> hit Send Email), but only if they have a youtube channel.
________________

Huge hog operation on Buffalo – from Rya Morgan 3-31-13

National Park Tourism in Arkansas Creates $151 Million in Economic Benefit - Buffalo National River
www.nps.gov

More Detailed Information:
https://www.dropbox.com/sh/epadhx9j6axllnb/QnQC7edrrf

VLOGS can be sent to:
http://www.youtube.com/user/CleanBuffH2O
How they can send it, (Click on Share ----> Email ----> fill in [CleanBuffH20] ----> hit Send Email), but only if they have a youtube channel.

Keep The Buffalo National River Clean and Pristine

https://www.facebook.com/KeepTheBuffaloNationalRiverCrapFree

Keep The Buffalo National River Clean and Pristine

I heard back from the Socially Responsible Agriculture Project. They are sending a representative to meet with us in Harrison on April 17th. Will you put some feelers out and see if anyone wants to be present from OMNI? There might be ways we can help each other. I see my role as organizing the organizers.

http://youtu.be/RxO24n9N62Y

Message to Andrea B. Thomas, Senior Vice President of Sustainability for Walmart

• 7:00 am - Meet at Arkansas Public Policy Panel and walk over to breakfast
  1308 W 2nd St, Little Rock

• 7:30-9:00 am - Breakfast w/ Legislators at Capitol Hill Apartments

• 9:00-12:00am - Attend Committee Meetings and talk with Legislators

--
Ryan Denham -  870-466-4367 

Imagine, Fayetteville with its own community radio station. A commercial free station where you can hear great music from local musicians and DJs, along with poets and storytellers. A station with locally produced shows featuring diverse points of view not heard on commercial radio. A station that presents non-mainstream news and perspectives like Free Speech Radio News and Democracy Now.

Good News!

Fayetteville Community Radio is about to become a reality. With nearly all radio stations now owned by a handful of mega media corporations, the FCC is finally making Low Power FM (LPFM) station licenses available this fall.

Unlike large commercially licensed, automated stations with no community roots, these 100 watt frequencies will be offered to community non-profits in order to actually serve and represent the communities they are in.

Fayetteville’s Omni Center for Peace, Justice & Ecology has agreed to serve as an applicant and graciously offered the station a space in its building – Rent Free!

Our radio volunteers have already put together an audio production studio to be used for the “Teaching Radio” component of our project. This will be an on-going part of our mission: To teach folks how to “Be the Media”, to produce their own programs, record them for podcast and broadcast. And, when we actually go on the air, Fayetteville Community Radio’s signal should cover all of Fayetteville with the possibility of later adding boosters that could expand our coverage area. In addition to serving our local community, our station can be part of a network of community radio stations all across the country that can serve as a grass roots voice for justice and equality in our society.

But we have to be ready and we need your help!

In the fall there will be a short 1 week window of time for applications to be submitted. A crucial part of this procedure is to have an engineering survey in hand.

The engineering survey will require $3000 - $5000 and another $3000 will be required to finish purchasing the rest of the studio equipment necessary for broadcast.

Our total initial fund raising goal of $8000 will enable us to apply for the frequency license and have a studio that is equipped and ready to operate.

More Good News!!

An anonymous donor in our community has generously come forward with a $3000 matching grant.

Can we count you in?

Please join us to help make this dream come true! Please make your contribution.