Including You in the Arkansas Legislative Process

In this episode of Including You, we explore the Arkansas legislative session of 2025 and its implications for the disability community. Join host Amber Quaid as she speaks with Christian Adcock, a voting rights and public policy specialist at Disability Rights Arkansas.

They discuss the ins and outs of the legislative process, the types of legislation on the horizon, and how individuals can get involved to advocate for their rights. From understanding the importance of committee meetings to the power of public testimony, this episode is packed with essential information for anyone looking to make their voice heard.

Tune in to learn how you can impact legislation that affects you and your community!

Chapters

• 0:00 Arkansas Legislative Session 2025 Overview
• 13:44 Citizen Engagement in Legislative Process
• 21:15 Legislative Engagement Strategies and Tips

Transcript

Amber: 0:00

Welcome to Including you a podcast by Disability Rights Arkansas. On this podcast, we shine a light on the real everyday experiences of people with disabilities the challenges, triumphs and all the moments in between. At Disability Rights Arkansas, we're committed to providing guidance to people with disabilities on navigating their rights, tackling everyday issues and accessing the support they need in a complex world. In this podcast, including you, we bring that information directly to you, the listener. We'll cover topics like accessibility questions, building your career, securing the care you deserve and even navigating the nuances of love and relationships as a person with a disability, because everyone has the right to know their rights Everyone, including you. So, whether you're a seasoned advocate or someone just starting to think differently about disability, you're in the right place. I'm your host, amber Quaid, and together we'll explore how small, meaningful changes can make a big difference. Let's dive in.

Amber: 1:12

Joining us today is Disability Rights Arkansas Voting Rights and Public Policy Specialist, kristen Adcock. Today, he is here to talk about including you in the Arkansas Legislative Session for 2025. Welcome, christian. Hi, so we just have a few questions for you and basically we're going to start with. What is the legislative session?

Christian: 1:32

Well, every two years in Arkansas they have what's called a general legislative session where all the legislators will meet for at least three months sometimes more, depending on if they extend the session and what happens is they all get together and propose and pass new laws. That can affect that can be anything. It's any idea they've gotten from their constituent anything they've heard. The subject matter is wide open. During a general session, in even numbered years, we have what's called a fiscal session, which is generally limited to budget issues.

Christian: 2:02

But yeah, the one we're in right now just started this week and it is a free-for-all. They can go over and they can pass any kind of legislation they want. We've seen some pretty major pieces of legislation in the last couple of years, things like the LEARNS Act, the Protect Arkansas Act and other kind of big reforms, as well as lots of smaller stuff that happens during the legislative session. That doesn't really get a lot of coverage. So things like more local issues or tax issues or things like that that kind of don't get the same press as something massive like the Learns Act, which restructured the entire educational system in Arkansas.

Amber: 2:41

All right, so it's just open season technically right now for all of this, so that's going to be exciting to see what comes out.

Christian: 2:47

It certainly is. It's yeah, like I said, it's a free-for-all. They can kind of. You'll see a lot of things this session, ranging from things like higher education reforms all the way to Medicaid, that kind of thing. But the legislative session in, in short, is when new laws get made and they come together. They vote on the laws. The laws go before the governor. The governor either passes or vetoes them and then, depending on whether or not they're vetoed, they can go back and the legislature can try again with a higher majority of votes. So that's kind of how the sausage is made in Arkansas as far as laws go. If you've ever seen Schoolhouse Rock, it's kind of like that. So that's sort of my go-to example when I want to show somebody how the process works, because it's a good show it's a good show, I agree.

Christian: 3:37

Yeah, so that's kind of the basics of what a legislative session is, and people can participate as much or as little as they like. For anybody that's listening, I would encourage you to participate a whole bunch, because this is where sort of much more than a fiscal session in a general session, these are the laws that are going to have sort of a direct, visible impact in a fiscal session. The impact the laws have with budget and tax stuff. It's things that they definitely have an effect. Don't get me wrong, but this is where you're going to see a lot of the more sort of dramatic, flashy news grabbing stuff come out. So it's definitely worth at least paying attention so that you know if something is going to impact you directly, especially if you're a person with a disability, because you know changes to the way things are funded or the way programs are structured will have a lot more effect on the disability population than they will on kind of the population at large.

Amber: 4:31

Well, now you have my interest just totally peaked. So how can I keep up with the session then?

Christian: 4:35

Well, there's a really good tool is actually the legislature's own website. They have their updated calendar on there. That'll tell you what committees are meeting on a given day, what time those committees are meeting, when the, the full house and the full senate are meeting. Um, because, just to kind of for anybody, I should back up and explain this um, you have separate committees that deal with separate pieces of legislation. So if it's, let's say, a piece of legislation about doctors, how doctors visits are regulated, things like that, that will go to the specific subcommittee for that, which is the public health subcommittee or the public health committee. It's not a subcommittee, and so you will see, those different committees will all have different agendas with different bills on them, based on the kind of legislation that they handle. So, for example, voting goes to the city, county and local affairs committee. Public health is where you're going to see a lot of stuff about Medicaid, certification, that sort of thing, and there's I'm gonna get this wrong, but I think there's eight standing committees at all times that sort of thing, and there's I'm gonna get this wrong, but I think there's eight standing committees at all times that sort of handle everything and everything flows through the committees. So just to kind of go go schoolhouse rock again.

Christian: 5:53

The way the process works is a piece of legislation gets introduced and it's introduced to the full senate or the full house and then it's referred to a committee from there and the committee votes. That's where they'll have sort of the debate and they'll discuss the legislation. It's where the opportunity for public input comes into effect and we'll kind of we'll go into all that later, but those committee meetings then the committee as a whole will vote to either send it out to the house or the senate as a whole or they'll vote to not pass it through committee, in which case it's what we call a dies-in committee. So that's just the end of the bill, right there. But yeah, so if life cycle of a bill basically it's introduced in the House or Senate, gets sent to a committee, gets voted out of the committee, back to the House or the Senate to vote on whether or not they want to pass it, and then, because this wasn't complicated or Byzantine enough, they repeat the whole process on the opposite side. If it went through on the House side first, then it goes through the Senate and vice versa. So that's kind of, and then after it goes through both the House and the Senate.

Christian: 7:03

It gets passed to the governor for either her signature or Rubito, and there's more to that, of course, because of course there is. You have things, there's the amendment process and things like that if they want to change the bill. But that's just kind of the general way that works. So that's why knowing you know where to go to find the committee meetings is so important. On the calendar you can look at the agendas to see what bills are going to be in committee and that's not necessarily a guarantee that they'll get brought up in that committee, because there's nothing that says that if it's on the agenda that a committee has to deal with it that day, it's just sort of on their agenda until they deal with it one way or another or the session ends and it never gets brought before a committee.

Amber: 7:47

But that's kind of the best way to have a general idea of sort of what's where in the process so, if I'm understanding this right, a bill could be either reviewed today or, say, three or four months from now, or not at all.

Christian: 8:03

Yes, and last session there was last general session there was sort of not a lot of stuff got passed until towards the end of the session when they were starting to run out of time. So it really is, and part of that might be due to the fact that for the first time they had these sort of large omnibus style bills. And an omnibus bill is when you have a bunch of a bunch of smaller changes all wrapped up into one larger bill, so something like the learns act or the protect arkansas act. But yeah, so it's. It's hard to tell and that's why I'm later on.

Christian: 8:38

There are places you can go, including dra, that will kind of try to give folks heads up when an important piece of legislation is going to go through committee.

Christian: 8:47

If we know, sometimes things just get it's a surprise and you don't know, or they will suspend the rules so that something can be heard earlier than it would have normally, but that's pretty rare, especially during a general session. That's stuff you see more in sort of the shorter sessions. But yeah, and all of those meetings, there's the calendar on their website, the legislature's website, and then through that same website you can watch all the meetings live, so you don't necessarily have to go down to the legislature if you're trying to see what's going on. Um, you can watch them just on the internet. You can stream them live, and so that's something I do a lot, because sometimes you just don't want to be in a meeting for 12 hours. You don't want to spend the whole day down at the Capitol. The other thing that that's good for is, if you have two committees that are scheduled to meet at the same time and you can only be in one, you can go back and watch the meetings that have streamed later.

Amber: 9:48

Oh, that's such a nice, especially for accessibility reasons, like not only time-wise, but being able to get actually down to the building itself.

Christian: 9:56

People have jobs and people have other responsibilities.

Christian: 9:59

People have whole lives that don't involve the people at the capital exactly yeah, that's a good way to kind of keep up with it on your own time. Like I mentioned before, there's several organizations that kind of keep tabs on what's happening, and so if you know there's a piece of legislation having to do with something, a topic you care about, that's coming down the pipeline but it hasn't been filed yet. For example, disability legislation that's something where, if an important piece of legislation comes up, dra, you know, we'll put it up on our social media or we'll have it on our website and that sort of thing. Additionally, for our people is another organization that usually does live Twitter updates, and I know there's some others. We are a nonpartisan organization so I can't speak to everyone else, but the information you get from us is going to be as nonpartisan as we can make it. We're going to try to focus on the impact that the legislation will have on the disability community and things of that nature, but we're not going to tell you, you know, oh, this is bad. We're not going to put a bunch of political spin on it, and we're not the only organization like that. There's several, and so it's a good idea to keep an eye on that.

Christian: 11:11

If you don't have access to the internet.

Christian: 11:13

You can follow it in the newspaper or traditional media like that.

Christian: 11:17

There should be coverage of the session, and so there's different ways to kind of keep tabs on things. If you go to our website we do legislative tracking we did it during the last session to where we kind of we have a list of legislation that we flagged that we think is going to have an impact on the disability community, and you can go there and kind of get some information about it and find out where it's at in the process, which legislator sponsored it, and the legislative sponsor is just the name of whatever legislator introduced the bill. Sometimes there's one, usually there's two, sometimes there's 40, it depends. But that's good to know so that you know who to contact if it's a bill that you care about, and so there's lots of ways to follow it and to follow the session as it goes, and you just kind of have to determine your own level of involvement so there seem to be a lot of places that you can keep up with the sessions that are happening, but what issues can we expect to see coming up in this next session?

Christian: 12:21

Well, every session there's always the stuff you kind of don't see coming, but if you're paying attention and following the news and listening to statements that the governor's made or that legislators have made, you can get a pretty good idea of some of the bigger issues that are going to be coming out during the session. So we know, for example, that they're looking to make some changes to higher ed policy. We know that they are going to take a look at things, sort of some cleanup stuff with the learns Act and the Protect Arkansas Act, sort of some rulemaking and some supplemental stuff to make that work more in line with sort of what they envisioned. We know that they're going to look at how mental health care services are delivered and how that works with Medicaid and some things like that. We know that maternal health care has also been a big issue over the last year, with sort of postpartum care and possibly extending that out to 12 months. It's something that the governor has said she doesn't think is necessary, but there are some legislative legislators who are in favor of that. So we know that that's going to happen. I think some bills have already been filed on that, and then we know that they want to take a look at some more public safety issues and just some more general kind of education issues. So it's sort of and this is all stuff that you can follow along with it, those places I mentioned before.

Christian: 13:44

But if you're curious as to sort of what's coming for future sessions, you can look. They usually start talking about this stuff a few months ahead of time. So if you're paying attention or if you can, just you know, you can Google or if you pay attention to the news, you'll see comments about it and things you know where the governor will say, oh, we need to take a closer look at this. Or sometimes they will just flat out say this is something we're going to be looking at in the next session. And if there's something speaking of actually, while I'm on the topic, before the session happens and it's too late now for this current session but the time to contact your legislator is not after the session starts. You want to contact your representative or your senator leading up to the session. So you know, a couple of months ahead of time, if there's something you know that you know is a problem in your community that you you know needs to be fixed because they're your representatives, so that's the time to contact them.

Amber: 14:43

It's not a week or a month into the session so it sounds like that I have to get involved before the session starts to really like make an impact on what I want our legislators to talk about. So, at this point point, how do I get involved?

Christian: 14:59

Well, not necessarily before the session. If you have an issue that you want to bring to your legislators' attention, it's best to do it beforehand. But if there's other things that come up during the session that you want to get involved with, the best place to start is always to contact your legislator. You have a representative and a senator that represent you and so know who they are. Um, you can find that on the legislative website as well, if you don't already know. But you know and you can find their contact information as well, to get a hold of them and say let's say, for example, a bill, let's get real silly with it. A bill is proposed that outlaws cookies and you love cookies. So what you would then do is call your legislator, your senator, and say we, the cookie loving people of your district, would prefer that you vote against this bill, you monster. Because who votes against cookies? But it's just sort of that kind of thing. That's the best way to do it. It's just sort of that kind of thing. That's the best way to do it. It's that original direct contact. And legislators have said themselves and this goes back to what I was saying earlier about talking to them earlier is that they've said themselves that they prefer to hear from the people in their district ahead of time. So they don't necessarily want to hear from you one time about an issue that you're real fired up about. It's best if you can sort of build a relationship with them over time and if they know who you are. Obviously you know if you've talked to them before about other issues, then you know that's going to help. But that said, contact them anyway, even if it's your first time contacting them, because you can't let them outlaw cookies. That would be wrong. So you know, if you feel strongly enough about a piece of legislation, you're always going to have the first time reaching out to them. But you know, if you can also reach out to them and let them know, like you did this thing that I supported, good job, you know. I'm sure they appreciate that, because nobody likes to hear about all the things they're doing horribly wrong, you know. So that's kind of a good way to sort of start from the bottom and build that relationship with your legislator so they know who you are.

Christian: 17:10

Another thing that you can do is if you know a piece of legislation that you care about is going up in the committee meeting that day. And this is. There's a lot of caveats that go with this one, because not everybody can take a day off work, not everybody can get to Little Rock, not everybody is okay or comfortable with public speaking, and that's fine. But if it's an option for you and it's something you care about a lot, a really good thing to do is go and sign up to testify at a committee meeting about a piece of legislation, and the way that works is you know, you go onto the legislative website. You find that the calendar says you know public health committee meets at 10 o'clock this morning. So you want to show up a little bit earlier because they'll have a sign up sheet outside the door of the committee meeting. You also want to show up a little bit early if you've never been to the Capitol before, so that you can find where you're going. So, yeah, you want to get there, you want to find your parking, you want to give yourself plenty of time so you're not rushed, and you want to go in and there will be a sign-up sheet out front. You can sign up and that will put your name. They'll ask you know what's your name you're here to speak about and are you for or against it? And then when they're discussing that bill in committee, they'll check and see if anybody's signed up to testify about it and then they'll bring them up and go right down the list and you can come up and you can say your piece.

Christian: 18:28

A couple things about testifying. If it's something you want to do, I would recommend sort of working out in advance what you're going to say. Some people who are better speakers than me can go in and just do it off the cuff, you know, and they're brilliant. But for most of us, mere mortals, you want to figure out what you're going to say ahead of time. Try to time it so you're not going on too long. You know you want to go a couple of minutes. I would say probably no more than five.

Christian: 19:00

And I say that not because some things don't deserve to have that level of discussion, but because sometimes if it's a particularly controversial bill or something like that and there's a lot of people that want to speak, they will limit speaking time. So they will say you know, we're going to hear from the people who signed up to speak. They will limit speaking time. So they will say you know, we're gonna hear from the people who signed up to speak. But you only get two minutes or you only get a minute depending on how many people signed up to speak and you know what else they have on the agenda for that day. So, yeah, do a little bit of prep work in advance and, yeah, try to keep timing in mind, because you don't want to show up with your magnum opus 20 minute speech.

Christian: 19:39

You know, getting ready to get up and do your, mr smith goes to washington jimmy stewart impression and then you find out you have 30 seconds to get your point across. You kind of you want to start with the most important information first, um and yeah, and that's kind of how you go and testify and it's. It can be intimidating, especially at first, but you know they're there to hear from you, they're there to represent you and you have every right to go in and let them know how you feel about what they're doing in a polite way. You don't want to go in and start yelling and telling everyone they're terrible, but you know you want to go in and you want to make your point and it's their job to listen to you and take that into account when they're casting their votes. And that doesn't necessarily mean you're going to vote the way you want them to, but you know you have every right to go in there.

Christian: 20:27

And the other thing is, when you're there I would recommend you know you don't have to, you don't have to dress up nice, anybody can can go in. It's the people's house over there so you can go in, you can talk. But I would recommend kind of, you know, wear clean clothes, that kind of thing, you know, like kind of do at least the bare minimum, just so that you know right or wrong. They'll be a little bit more likely to take what you have seriously. If you don't look like you just, you know, came out of the woods, so yeah, seriously. If you don't look like you just came out of the woods, so yeah. But other than that it can be a little bit scary. But you do it a couple times and eventually it stops. It's like anything else. It stops being scary.

Amber: 21:10

Would I have They'll testify on the bill more than once, or is it usually just once?

Christian: 21:15

Well, because it goes through the House and the Senate, it goes through committees on both sides, so you will have two opportunities to testify and that's really kind of a judgment call. If it passes through the first committee and let's say you didn't want it to pass through that committee, then maybe you go to the second committee to try to stop it there. Want it to pass through that committee, then maybe you know, you go to the second committee to try to stop it there, and so if it doesn't pass in the first committee, then it probably won't get sent over to the second committee. So but yeah, so potentially you could and I have before I know plenty of people that have where you go and you testify at every stage. And if there's an amendment and it has to go back through committee to get the amendment approved, then that provides another opportunity for testimony At a certain point.

Christian: 21:58

If they keep seeing the same person show up to say the same stuff, it will kind of be diminishing returns. But it's going to be different committees in the House and the Senate. So you know if you can go in and if you made an argument that you thought was really persuasive and it just didn't stick on one side. You can always go in and try it on the other side. Persuasive and it just didn't stick on one side. You can always go in and try it on the other side, because you know if it stops. It doesn't matter where a bill stops if you're against it as long as it stops.

Amber: 22:25

So you know that is something to keep in mind, you do get at least two shots out of it. And so, like with your legislators, like continually calling and contacting them is the testimony, kind of the same, or should you be very selective and pick and choose?

Christian: 22:38

The contact is important and kind of more importantly, the contact is easier. So it's a lot less of a heavy lift than, let's say, you live in Bentonville, than getting up in the morning and driving down to Little Rock for a 9 o'clock committee meeting, than getting up in the morning and driving down to Little Rock for a 9 o'clock committee meeting. So that's sort of you can. Like I said earlier, you can kind of determine how involved you want to be. And if you're the kind of psychopath that wants to wake up at 4 in the morning to drive down and testify in front of a legislative committee, Godspeed. But you know it's not necessary and you can. It's up to you to determine whether or not you want to make that sacrifice. So you know you can call and say you know I would like for you to vote against this bill.

Christian: 23:28

And there's also nothing that says you can only call your own legislator. If you want to call every legislator on a committee about a bill, you know you can absolutely do that. You can leave them a message. They will get little pink slips with messages delivered to their desk. So and that's why a lot of the time you'll see organizations who are either for or against a piece of legislation, kind of organizing exactly that like phone campaigns and calling campaigns, because they know not everybody can be off at 10 o'clock in the morning on wednesday to come down to the capitol especially. You saw a lot of that during the sessions that we had during covid, where you know, getting any large group of people together wasn't the best idea. So yeah, there was a lot of that sort of thing happening. But yeah, as far as whether it's better to come and testify in person or whether it's better to call, I always sort of lean on the side of testifying in person.

Amber: 24:21

But if we're being realistic, that's not always an option and then this may be completely off topic or a topic adjacent, but what about signing petitions? Um, you're saying that like sometimes just having all the phone calls come in and somebody presents those, but what about petitions?

Christian: 24:40

petitions can be useful. I mean, anything, every little bit helps, anything that's going to show that there's a large amount of people that feel a certain type, that feel a certain way about a piece of legislation that's going to help and that's going to. You know I can't say legislation that's going to help and that's going to, you know I can't say how much it's going to sway things one way or another, because obviously that's up to the legislators. But you know it definitely doesn't hurt. Again, though I would put it probably testimony, then a phone call or an email or even a physical letter, if you want to do that, that's also good. I don't know how many letters they get over there and then, yeah, probably something like just signing a petition.

Christian: 25:33

The best way to get involved is going to be to find whether it's DRA and our social media and our website or the newspaper or whatever outlet you're using to follow along with the session, their own website, it's kind of find out where to get that information. And if you have questions about where to get that information, contact us at DRA. We can help you with that. And, yeah, just follow along and keep an eye out for the issues you care about and then go from there and remember, like I said before, these people are there to do the work that the people who elected them want them to do, so never feel shy or bashful or like it's not your place to make your opinion known about something that's going to affect your life.

Amber: 26:13

It's like well said Well. Thank you, christian, for being on our show today. He is the Voting Rights and Public Policy Specialist for Disability Rights, Arkansas, and he just wanted to give us a little talk about including you in the Arkansas legislative session for 2025. Thank you for joining us on Including you. We hope today's conversation has sparked ideas, offered guidance or inspired you to take action in your own life and community.

Amber: 26:39

At Disability Rights, we believe advocacy isn't always about sweeping reforms. It's about the small, everyday actions like asking the right questions, standing up when something feels wrong or helping to create a space where everyone feels included. If today's episode resonated with you, visit us at disabilityrightsarorg to learn more about your rights, access resources and find ways to get involved, but don't forget to follow us on social media for updates, tips and stories from the disability community. If you enjoyed this episode, share it with a friend, leave us a review or start a conversation, because that's where change begins. Remember, everyone deserves to know their rights Everyone, including you. Until next time, I'm Amber Quaid and we'll talk with you again soon.