Roby Brock / Talk Business & Politics

Gov. Asa Hutchinson anticipates a lot of negotiation over taxes in the upcoming legislative session. With an expected $240 million surplus,

Hutchinson has laid out proposals to:

• Reduce the top individual income tax rate for new residents to 4.9% for five years. Doing so would attract tech and manufacturing talent and retirees, he said.
• Lower the sales tax on used vehicles from 6.5% to 3.5% for those with sale prices between $4,000 and $10,000. There is no tax for cars sold for less than $4,000.
• Place $100 million in the state’s long-term reserve account.
  

Hendrix College has received a $15 million gift from the Windgate Foundation, the largest outright gift in Hendrix’s history.

“We are grateful for the support of the Windgate Foundation,” said Hendrix President W. Ellis Arnold III. “More than ever, it is critical that we continue moving forward, to meet today’s challenges and to continue to be a leader in higher education in the future.”

A $50 million grant program for hospitality and service sector businesses impacted by the coronavirus pandemic launches and state government leaders expect to make grant awards in late December.

Stacy Hurst, Arkansas Secretary for Parks, Heritage and Tourism, said the grants will hopefully help those hard-hit businesses stay alive until COVID-19 is under control.

An Arkansas Supreme Court ruling on Thursday (Oct. 29) declared that an existing half-cent sales tax for state highways could not be spent on a $1 billion widening project on Interstate 30 known as 30 Crossing.

The state’s high court ruled that a sales tax approved by voters in 2012, Amendment 91, could not be used on highways with more than four lanes. 30 Crossing proposed to add six lanes of surface highway to ease congestion around downtown Little Rock. A lawsuit brought by a number of environmentalists has been opposing the massive infrastructure project.

A lawsuit was filed Tuesday by the League of Women Voters of Arkansas to alter the process for accounting for absentee ballots this fall. The lawsuit claims the state's requirements for accepting absentee ballots is unconstitutional, and seeks a court-ordered change before the Nov. 3 general election.

The lawsuit – League of Women Voter of Arkansas v. Thurston – was filed in federal court against Secretary of State John Thurston and several members of the State Board of Election Commissioners.

The Arkansas Supreme Court ruled Thursday that a proposed initiated act to overturn a state law expanding optometric procedures does not qualify for the November ballot. The measure would have overturned Act 579 of 2019, which permitted optometrists to perform limited eye surgeries.

Safe Surgery Arkansas, which was supported by the state’s ophthalmologists, is the group that was pushing to overturn Act 579. Arkansans for Healthy Eyes, a group led by optometrists, had challenged the ballot initiative.

U.S. Rep. French Hill, R-Little Rock, launched a new ad in his Second Congressional District re-election campaign that raps Sen. Joyce Elliott, D-Little Rock, for her votes on taxes, particularly a cell phone fee that partially funds 911 calls.

University of Central Arkansas President Dr. Houston Davis credits an early start on planning for COVID-19 as well as a rapid response in testing turnaround for controlling the coronavirus on his college campus in Conway.

Davis, who was installed as UCA President in 2017, said this challenge is unlike anything he’s ever dealt with in his decades in higher education.

“We’re roughly three weeks into residential operation at this point, and the top two things that we expect of students are to wear their face coverings and keep distance,” Davis said. “We have 3 million square feet of facilities on the UCA campus, and every square foot of those facilities have been reset with social distancing in mind. That’s from classrooms all the way through a mechanical room.

U.S. Rep. French Hill, R-Little Rock, debuted his first TV ad of his 2020 re-election bid on Tuesday.

The ad, “Together,” is an on-camera appeal from Hill discussing COVID-19 and his efforts to bring funding to Arkansas families and businesses for relief.

“I’m so proud to call Arkansas home and that feeling runs deep throughout Arkansas’s Second District,” Hill said in a press release for the ad. “When disaster strikes, like the global pandemic, that’s when the spirit of Arkansas is on full display. We have a resilient work ethic unlike any other.”

Hospitality, travel, and tourism have been the hardest hit industries during COVID-19. Think restaurants, hotels, caterers, meeting facilities, trade shows and the cottage industries that support those businesses ranging from florists to event planners to lighting and banquet logistics companies.

Gretchen Hall, CEO of the Little Rock Convention & Visitors Bureau, views it as the business challenge of a lifetime and the end is nowhere in sight.

Arkansas state Sen. Joyce Elliott (D-Little Rock), the Democratic nominee for the state's Second Congressional District, released her first TV ad of the campaign cycle in her bid to unseat incumbent U.S. Rep. French Hill (R-Little Rock).

A 225-year old Italian company with a large North American presence is expanding manufacturing operations in Central Arkansas.

Fiocchi of America, the U.S. subsidiary of Italy-based Fiocchi Group, announced plans Wednesday to establish a new manufacturing facility in Little Rock. It will invest $15 million in a new facility and hire 85 skilled employees with plans to further increase its workforce as the facility reaches its full potential.

The Arkansas Education Association’s survey of members finds that a supermajority of respondents are concerned about reopening schools this fall in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic.

The survey, released Wednesday, fielded more than 6,100 responses from members with more than 88% being from teachers. Of those teachers, roughly 44% are from the elementary level, 20% teach middle school, 27% cover high school grades, and 9% were classified as other.

The November election is less than four months away. In Arkansas, the marquee match up is for the second district congressional seat between incumbent U.S. Rep. French Hill, R-Little Rock and State Sen. Joyce Elliott, D-Little Rock.  The seat continues to be one Democrats, despite falling short over the last decade, hope to reclaim.

UAMS Chancellor Dr. Cam Patterson has been through a health crisis before. When he was entering the medical field in the late 80’s, the country was awakening to the HIV epidemic. Today, the COVID-19 pandemic is moving more rapidly and affecting many more people in Arkansas and across the globe.

With the state recording its highest one-day number of COVID-19 cases – 1,061 on Saturday – Patterson said it’s time for a statewide mask mandate.

Amazon announced Tuesday plans to open its first fulfillment center at the Port of Little Rock. The new fulfillment center, which is anticipated to launch in 2021, will create over 1,000 new full-time jobs.

The 825,000 square-foot distribution facility will be located on 80 acres at the port and will benefit from yesterday’s announcement of upgrades to road infrastructure.

Gov. Asa Hutchinson’s Secretary of Corrections, Wendy Kelley, will retire at the end of July, it was announced at a Board of Corrections meeting on Monday.

Kelley has served as leader of the Department of Corrections, which employs more than 6,000 people, since 2015. Arkansas’ correction system had 18,181 inmates at the end of February, up from 17,846 at the same period in 2019. She was the first female leader of the agency.

Gov. Asa Hutchinson on Tuesday declared a state of emergency in Arkansas stating that recent assemblies and protests across the state “have been overtaken by destructive and violent individuals, creating conditions of distress for the citizens and businesses of the state.”

A day of peaceful protests in Little Rock grew more intense and eventually turned to violence on Saturday. The scene played out in more than two dozen cities across the nation as people gathered to protest the May 25th death of George Floyd in Minnesota and the larger issue of police brutality.

Floyd, who was black, was choked to death on camera by white Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin, who knelt on Floyd’s neck for more than eight minutes.

Stacy Hurst, Secretary of the Arkansas Department of Parks, Heritage and Tourism, says the plans that are in motion to re-open casinos, restaurants, parks and large venues are  moving cautiously forward.

Appearing on this week’s edition of Talk Business & Politics, Hurst said the state’s three casinos have outlined new protocols to keep gamblers safe as Arkansas eases restrictions on businesses in the wake of COVID-19.

One of the obvious outcomes of the COVID-19 pandemic is that telemedicine and telehealth will no longer be a wave of the future. They’re here and here to stay.

Gov. Asa Hutchinson loosened regulations on the use of telehealth due to the coronavirus outbreak that had previously limited the ability of doctors, nurses and patients to see one another in person to start a relationship. In an executive order issued in late March, Hutchinson suspended the rules that require a face-to-face meeting to establish a physician-patient relationship.

A midst a sea of masked legislators, Gov. Asa Hutchinson addressed the 92nd General Assembly, which opened its biennial fiscal session on Wednesday in Little Rock.

On Jan. 19, 2020, Gov. Asa Hutchinson began to assume the worst. That was the day a 35-year old Washington state resident was identified as having COVID-19 – the first U.S. coronavirus patient.

“Like many Americans, when I first saw that this hit in China, I thought that it would probably be confined there,” Hutchinson said in an exclusive Talk Business & Politics interview aired Sunday.

The first extraordinary session of the 92nd General Assembly was rather ordinary in its business, but extraordinary in its setting.

Arkansas lawmakers wrapped up a three-day special session to create a COVID-19 Rainy Day Fund. The funding mechanism will collect money from a variety of surplus and discretionary state accounts and be available to handle special money from the federal government, if necessary.

A Pulaski County judge has ruled that Gulfside Casino is a qualified applicant and its application with the state Racing Commission must be considered. Circuit Judge Tim Fox said the state’s decision to bar Gulfside’s application because the signatures of local elected officials did not include current officeholders was incorrect.

While Congress has already taken steps to address the COVID-19 pandemic in the U.S., Rep. French Hill, R-Little Rock, said more help will be on the way.

Representatives of Sun Paper Co., the $1.5 billion paper mill project slated for Clark County near Arkadelphia, have said the deal is officially terminated.

In a letter dated March 15, Andrzej Bednarski, International Project Director for Shandong Sun Paper Co., Ltd. notified Gov. Asa Hutchinson and AEDC officials that the project would not move forward, citing trade tensions, economic uncertainty, and the coronavirus outbreak as reasons for pulling the plug.

A new report funded by Entergy Arkansas and the Winthrop Rockefeller Foundation indicates that 41% of Arkansas households are either below the federal poverty level or have incomes that struggle to afford housing, childcare, food, transportation and healthcare.

The report addresses “ALICE” households – those that are “Asset Limited, Income Constrained, and Employed.” While the federal poverty line for a family of four sits at $24,600, ALICE households are between that amount and $46,812.