Representative Matthew Shepherd, who is Speaker of the Arkansas House of Representatives, announced he will seek reelection but will not seek a fourth term as Speaker of the House. Some Representatives have already announced they will seek the Speakership and several others have expressed interest in a possible run.
A change in House leadership may not be the only consequence of Shepherd’s announcement. Other legislators see it as an opportunity to change the House rules which have given the Speaker extreme power over colleagues in the House of Representatives.
Throughout most of the history of the Arkansas House of Representatives, Speakers served for one term only. But Speakers gained the power to stay in office as long as they liked once the Speaker was given the power to appoint all committee chairs and the default power to appoint all the committee vice chairs and all subcommittee chairs and vice chairs.
Over the past several years, there have been several unsuccessful attempts by Representatives to change the rules and give the appointment power back to the committees. It is hard to change the Speaker’s powers when the Speaker makes more appointments than there are Representatives in the House.
Also, this year there was an unsuccessful attempt to take away the Speakers absolute power over the House Rules Committee. Currently the Speaker appoints all members of the House Rules Committee. One of the jobs of the Rules Committee is to consider changes in the House Rules. If the Speaker doesn’t like your proposed change, it doesn’t have a chance in committee. The Rules Committee also considers appeals from rulings by the Speaker. Think the Rules Committee might buck the Speaker? Not happening. The Rules committee also considers bills on important issues such as: alcohol, cigarettes, movies, pornography, tobacco, tobacco products, coin operated amusement devices, vending machines, lobbying, code of ethics, bingo, lotteries, raffles, racing, race tracks, pari-mutuel betting, etc.
Having broad power, gives the Speaker significant influence over legislation. After the 2021 legislative session, Conduit for Action observed that the committee chairs appointed by Speaker Shepherd had some of the weakest voting records on conservative legislation in the House. At times those chairs have a direct impact on whether legislation passes or fails. Conduit for Action will again analyze how his Chairs voted this year. We expect they will have done better because of the conservative influence of Governor Sarah Sanders but we note some of the same 2021 Chairs were still Chairs in 2023 and pulled some of their same procedural shenanigans to favor progressive positions over conservative positions.
Big money lobbyists know the most efficient place to affect legislative policy is in the election of a friendly and powerful Speaker. Representatives can expect lobbyists to start steering them to support a new Speaker candidate who will continue to support special interests. Big lobbyists are also likely to oppose rules that would take away any powers of the Speaker, because having a powerful Speaker makes their job easier. We assume the lobbyists have already been at work.
The House of Representatives will be choosing a Speaker-Designate next year. The Speaker-Designate is almost always rubberstamped when the House formally elects the Speaker at the beginning of the regular session of the House. It will be interesting to see which, if any, of the candidates pledge to change House rules to restore traditional powers of the individual Representatives.
