What a waste of legislative time! Perhaps this last week was the most blatant and disassociated 135 members of the General Assembly to ever gather on one singular topic in the state's history. Yes, I think so, and I'll go ahead and say it.
This General Assembly, from all intents and purposes, is a victim of its own covid culture.
This legislature exhibits a stand-and-fight attitude on any topic but what is pertinent to this virus and its toll on Arkansans.
The 93rd General Assembly is vapor locked by a surge of fear and loathing that is so virulent against others under the guise of protecting personal freedoms that it has already, unless the courts say differently, told every city, county, school board and other governing boards in our state -- your local control does not matter.
All that matters is for these boards to do what the legislature tells you to do from Little Rock. Leave your personal protections to us. Got it?
Every one of the 135 members of the General Assembly has a school district, a city council, and all are under the umbrellas of the 75 quorum courts in our state.
Not every member of the General Assembly was happy with the recent three-day legislative gathering.
Even those who gave passionate testimony for allowing public schools to have some ways of deciding by their locally-elected school boards to set policies were sadly disappointed.
The minority can say, "well, we tried."
But I'll just say it. I am tired of hearing that numbers were just not there to keep children in K-6th grades in a safer school environment. And I am also sick of seeing double-figured death rates recorded each day for the past week.
How big would be the headlines in the newspaper or minutes spent on the local television news stations each night if the state reported 13 or 15 or 17 more people killed every day from storms in any Arkansas community?
How many more Arkansans have to die before legislators will repeal a bad law, saying the 135 members of the General Assembly know better than the elected city council members in any given town in Arkansas what should be done to protect its citizens?
How many school board members will hang their heads as a local child suffers and dies from covid when all those local school board members had to do was to listen and follow a medical recommendation for children too young to be vaccinated?
The debate about allowing schools the leeway to make decisions by the district's elected board members was, in all reality, drowned out by those who are singularly hyper-focused only on individual freedoms.
Ask this central question: "How many of the unvaccinated tonight in the intensive care units of area hospitals are focused on their personal freedoms when they are laboring to breathe on a ventilator?"
How many of the parents who don't want their kids wearing a mask at school will sit by a child's ICU bedside wondering about the correctness of that decision?
How loud were the laughs and catcalls of victory by the personal freedom crowd in those marbled halls of the State Capitol when the bills were defeated?
Will those cheers by salons for personal freedoms drown out the anguished cries of grief and sorrow from their constituents as ICU doctors deliver the news another loved one has died?
Did our lawmakers fail us? Did our governor just give up? Will the courts step up and overturn these prohibitions on city councils, school boards and quorum courts for setting local protections of their constituents?
Tom Marrs, in his last-minute lawsuit seeking to overturn these laws, may save hundreds of lives, by stopping these "unconstitutional laws."
I sure hope so.
-- Maylon Rice is a former journalist who worked for several northwest Arkansas publications. He can be reached via email at [email protected]. Opinions expressed are those of the author.