By Steve Brawner, © 2019 by Steve Brawner Communications, Inc.

That “phhhbtt!” sound you may have heard is the air coming out of the State Capitol dome. After nearly three months of being separated during the week from their families, and in many cases, their full-time jobs, legislators are ready to go home.

The plan is to recess April 10, and then reconvene for cleanup work in May.

It’s wrap-up time. And last Wednesday, a big item was crossed off the to-do list when legislators approved funding for the agency administering Arkansas Works, the program that purchases health insurance for about 234,000 Arkansans as of February 1. There’s usually much drama associated with this, but it only took two House votes to pass the funding measure, and that’s despite a court ruling that had removed a work requirement.

This week, legislators were deciding how to spend your money under the state’s Revenue Stabilization Act. They also added a third proposed constitutional amendment to Arkansans’ ballot in 2020 – this one to make it harder to amend the Constitution. The other two would permanently extend the half-cent sales tax for roads and change legislative term limits.

House Bill 1763 by Rep. Andy Davis, R-Little Rock, the governor’s transformation initiative, also needs to finish working its way through the process. The slow pace would be expected for a 2,049-page bill that will reduce the number of state agencies from 42 to 15.

Gov. Asa Hutchinson made it one of his top priorities coming into the session. Forty-two cabinet officials report to him (the U.S. president has 15), and more than 200 independent boards and commissions are floating around doing their own things.

The bill reshuffles the deck a little and then places the cards into 15 much neater stacks, with a few stray cards such as the Highway Commission still off by themselves. For example, the various education-related state agencies (Dept. of Ed, Dept. of Higher Ed, Dept. of Career Ed, etc.) will merge into a single Department of Education headed by a cabinet secretary. That should enable a more seamless approach from pre-K to college and the workforce. Moreover, combining these agencies should lead to efficiencies – a few less employees, a little less office space, etc.

The governor really wanted this, so it was going to happen, but it was surprising how little the legislation changed from beginning to end. I thought there would be more fiefdom-protecting, but Davis told me everyone recognized the bill was needed.

Once it becomes law, Hutchinson’s next task will be deciding which of the current 42 cabinet members will head the 15 now bigger departments – and which of them won’t. That will be kind of interesting.

If a major piece of legislation hasn’t passed so far, then it’s probably either officially dead or moving into what’s known as “interim study.” That’s often a polite way of saying it’s dead, but not always.

That’s where Senate Bill 571 by Senate President Pro Tempore Jim Hendren, R-Sulphur Springs, is going. The bill would have increased cigarette taxes by 80 cents to $1.20 a pack while subjecting vaping products to a 67 percent tax. Then it would have provided equivalent tax cuts to lower- and middle-income taxpayers. The centerpiece of the tax cut would have been an earned income tax credit for lower-income workers.

The bill would have cut taxes for working poor people while increasing taxes on unhealthy behaviors. It would have enacted the first taxes for vaping, which is becoming a big problem among young people. And Hendren as Senate president pro tempore (and the governor’s nephew) is a powerful legislator.

But it was always going to generate significant opposition, and he filed it very late in the session. Something like that needs a lot of groundwork laid.

Hendren says he’s going to try to lay that groundwork, so we’ll have to wait and see what happens over the next two years.

It’s no secret what will happen in the next week: phhhbtt!

Steve Brawner is a syndicated columnist in Arkansas. Email him at brawnersteve@mac.com. Follow him on Twitter at @stevebrawner.