McDaniel Focuses On Ethics, Animal Cruelty For ’09
Last updated Saturday, January 10, 2009 7:17 PM CST in News
By Andrew DeMillo
The Associated Press
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LITTLE ROCK — Attorney General Dustin McDaniel said he’s paring his wish list for this year’s legislative session, focusing on a handful of controversial issues where it may take more time to build support.
“This session, it’s my intent to run fewer bills but have them be weightier, meatier,” McDaniel said in an interview with The Associated Press in his office last week. “Clearly they are more complex and controversial and time-consuming, so I intend to lower the gross number of bills I would characterize as package bills.”
Two years ago, McDaniel’s legislative package included a dozen items.
The former state representative from Jonesboro has spent the past several months working to stiffen the penalties for animal cruelty and crafting an ethics bill. He said he also will push for legislation that will remove an escape clause from aggravated robbery convictions for people trying to recover gambling losses — an arcane piece of state law that the state’s highest court last year used to order an inmate off death row.
McDaniel’s already won a preliminary victory for one of his top priorities, a bill that would make aggravated animal cruelty a felony on the first offense, by winning over a group that opposed similar efforts. The Arkansas Farm Bureau announced that it would support McDaniel’s animal cruelty bill.
McDaniel said the proposal already has the support of a majority of both the House and Senate judiciary committees, which would likely consider the measure, and he’s already predicting passage of the bill. Legislative leaders and Gov. Mike Beebe have said they support making aggravated animal cruelty a felony on a first offense.
“I’m hoping to file that bill early in the session and have it on the governor’s desk by the end of the month,” McDaniel said.
McDaniel’s office hasn’t released a copy of the legislation, but said it will make felony aggravated cruelty to dogs, horses or cats a Class D felony on first offense, punishable by up to six years in prison and a $10,000 fine. A second offense within five years would be a Class C felony, punishable by between three and 10 years in prison and a $10,000 fine.
Currently, Arkansas law makes it a misdemeanor to abuse an animal, punishable by up to a year in jail and a $1,000 fine. McDaniel’s proposal would include a structured system for increasing penalties for subsequent animal abuse misdemeanor violations. It would also make cockfighting a felony in the state.
McDaniel is less sure of his chances for an ethics bill. McDaniel said the proposal is still being drafted, but that it will include a ban on what he calls “absentee lobbying,” or lobbyists allowing legislators’ meals to be put on their tab even if the lobbyist isn’t there.
Another prohibition McDaniel said he wants to include is a moratorium on lobbying by elected officials and agency directors, a measure that he said he expects to draw the most opposition. McDaniel said the restrictions and the length of the moratorium are something he hasn’t decided.
“If we’re going to avoid the appearance of impropriety, regulators should not be negotiating employment with the folks they’re still actively regulating. And they shouldn’t be turning around the next day and lobbying the same people who used to be their subordinates,” McDaniel said.
The ethics bill, which McDaniel said probably won’t be filed until early February, will probably require online filing of lobbyist reports and impose penalties for soliciting a lobbyist to falsify a lobbying activity report. Sen. Steve Faris, the chairman of the Senate State Agencies and Government Affairs Committee, said he plans on handling the attorney general’s ethics legislation.
McDaniel said his office also plans on legislation to address the Supreme Court’s ruling last year that removed Michael B. Daniels from death row. Daniels said he was attempting to recover $20 he lost in a game of three-card monte when he stabbed and killed James Williams, 52, on Jan. 8, 2006. Daniels claimed during the trial that Williams had cheated in the game.
Justices cited a 1940 ruling that said someone couldn’t be convicted of aggravated robbery while trying to recover gambling losses. Aggravated robbery was the underlying circumstance when a jury ordered Daniels to die for Williams’ death.
“The way I see, if you use a knife and kill a man to take money from him, that’s aggravated robbery regardless of whether you think it was your money to begin with or you were cheated at three-card monte,” McDaniel said. “I didn’t like losing that case, so we’re going to run a bill to fix that.”
Though it won’t be part of his legislative package, McDaniel said he also expects his office to be active in the discussion over changes to the state’s School Choice Act. Parents in Hot Spring County have sued over the 1989 law, which has given parents more freedom in choosing schools regardless of geography. However, the law bans transfers that would lead to further racial segregation — and the parents argue that provision violates their civil rights.
McDaniel, whose office is defending the law in federal court, said that he expects proposed changes to come up during the session. He said one suggestion he finds “palatable” is putting a performance trigger where students could transfer if their grades are failing or their behavior problems increasing.
“Do we have a constitutional obligation to allow that student to move out of that district that is serving his or her needs to go to a district that is overwhelmingly white just because that’s where they want to be? Instead, I think we should be focusing on those students who are at the bottom whose needs are potentially not being met,” McDaniel said.
Unlike 2007, lawmakers head into this year’s session without the cloud of a long-running school funding case hanging over their heads. McDaniel, who represented the state when the Supreme Court ended the Lake View case, said school funding is still a major issue for lawmakers even without the litigation.
“It gives us more flexibility because our system has now been blessed by the courts, but it doesn’t change the level of attention we have to pay to the issue,” McDaniel said.
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