Revival in the Arkansas House.

• Author: McCord, Robert S.

In the hands of a determined speaker, the specter of term limits in Arkansas has turned into a vision for change.

To everyone's amazement, the Arkansas House of Representatives has been reborn. It happened because of term limits and the frustrations of Representative Bobby L. Hogue of Jonesboro, a 56-year-old insurance man who served for 14 years without ever getting a seat on a key committee. And who, under Arkansas' seniority system, became speaker-designate because most other senior members had already been speaker.

In 1993, the Arkansas General Assembly was the first to appoint committees to study what should be done to prepare inexperienced legislators to take over in 1999 when term limits, approved by the voters in 1992, fully kick in.

No one really paid much attention to them. The Senate committee met only once, deciding that since it had already made some reforms (e.g., limiting the number of chairmanships, caucusing in public rather than at a secret duck dinner to pass rules and elect the leadership), there was no hurry for it to act. (Senators can serve a maximum of eight years while House members may serve only six.) But the House committee members plugged away, prodded gently and quietly by Speaker-designate Bobby Hogue. It took two months for him to formulate his rule changes, sometimes waking up and mulling over them in the middle of the night.

Once completed, he submitted his plan informally and without any publicity to two different groups of his fellow legislators. They approved it, and he passed it on to the committee officially considering changes. That committee also approved, and Hogue then ran it past the Rules Committee, which also said yes. Last December just before the 80th General Assembly convened in January, a full House caucus, the first in history, met in Little Rock and publicly approved the changes. Not everyone was happy with them, but there were no dissenting votes. Once the opponents realized that Hogue had laid the groundwork and that they were going to be approved, they went along rather than be identified as obstructionists.

"I was pleasantly surprised," Hogue says.

THE NEW RULES

The new rules ensure that:

* Members of standing committees are no longer selected by seniority, as they had been since the beginning of the Arkansas General Assembly. They are elected by legislators in four caucuses corresponding to the four Arkansas congressional districts.

* Members of the select committees are appointed by the speaker of the House. Before, they were chosen by seniority, although the speaker was allowed to fill vacancies.

* Chairmen and vice chairmen of all committees are appointed by the speaker, and no person can chair more than one committee. Chairmen previously were determined only by seniority, and senior members frequently held several chairmanships.

* A schedule now sets meeting dates for all committees, and deviations must be cleared through the speaker's office. Chairmen used to call meetings when and if they wanted to.

* The House floor is closed to visitors. Previously lobbyists, journalists and relatives wandered through the area until 15 minutes before the session was called to order, buttonholing legislators who were trying to read bills or confer with each other.

* Other action specifically aids new members: More staff have been hired, and a Bureau of...