Arkansas senators convene for a special legislative session on June 18, 2024. (Mary Hennigan/Arkansas Advocate)
The Arkansas Senate voted Friday to ask Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders to submit her appointments to the Game and Fish Commission for Senate approval.
The legislative body then approved 23 appointments to a range of other state boards and commissions, including one rejected and sent back in June to the Senate Rules, Resolutions and Memorials Committee.
Both the Rules Committee and the full Senate must confirm most gubernatorial appointments. Act 794 of 2023 requires both bodies to meet once every three months to consider these appointments regardless of whether the Legislature is in session.
Sanders announced in June that she selected Chris Caldwell for an open commission seat since Chairman Stan Jones’ term expired. Caldwell’s term is expected to end in 2031.
Caldwell is a political consultant and Sanders’ gubernatorial campaign manager. He also leads two ballot question committees established this year to oppose proposed constitutional amendments on abortion and education and an initiative to expand medical marijuana availability.
Members of the Rules Committee noted that Sanders did not refer Caldwell’s appointment for Senate approval. Amendment 35 of the Arkansas Constitution explains the authority and composition of the Game and Fish Commission, but it does not say the Senate must confirm the governor’s appointments of commissioners.
Conversely, state law says the governor appoints members to boards and commissions “by and with the advice and consent of the Senate.”
Sanders’ predecessor, Asa Hutchinson, only referred one Game and Fish Commission appointment to the Senate in his eight years as governor, said Phillip Treat, the Arkansas Senate’s legal counsel. However, Hutchinson’s predecessors — Mike Beebe, who was previously attorney general, and Mike Huckabee, who is Sanders’ father — both directed all of these appointments to the Senate, Treat said.
As attorney general, Beebe wrote in a 2003 opinion that he believed the Senate must confirm Game and Fish commissioners, based on state law and Amendment 35’s lack of conflict with it, but “only a court could definitively answer that question.”
Treat said Beebe’s opinion is “still solid rationale” and “a defensible position,” and he saw no reason to discourage the Senate from requesting that future Game and Fish Commission appointments go before the Rules Committee and the full chamber.
The motion passed both the committee and the Senate with no dissent. State law allows gubernatorial appointees to serve on boards and commissions before the Senate vote to confirm or reject.
There was some opposition in both the Rules Committee and the Senate to the appointment of Tammy Browning, a Hot Springs real estate agent, to the Arkansas Real Estate Commission. Rules Committee Chairman Sen. Clint Penzo, R-Springdale, was one of the dissenters in the split voice vote, and he previously expressed concerns that Browning’s appointment didn’t follow the correct process.
Sen. Ben Gilmore, R-Crossett, abstained from the vote appointing his father, Ashley County Medical Center CEO Phillip Gilmore, to the Osteopathic Rural Medical Practice Student Loan and Scholarship Board.
The Senate confirmed the remaining 21 appointees as a batch with no audible dissent.