Preparations Begin In Case Of Government Shutdown

Members of the state`s finance department are frantically sifting through the state constitution and court decisions to figure out what state offices must be funded if the Arkansas Supreme Court orders a government shutdown in the school funding case. Governor Huckabee has ordered state agencies to advise him by next Tuesday of requirements for providing absolute bare bone service to protect public safety. The Legislature didn`t come up with a funding program for schools by January 1 that met with a Supreme Court order from November 2002, so Bill Lewellen, a lawyer in the school-funding case, asked the court to close all but constitutionally mandated services of the government. Finance director Richard Weiss said he and department lawyers were trying to compile a list of necessary services by the governor`s deadline. Weiss noted that some say the state has enough money in other departments to properly fund education. Posted by Mike Hellgren