FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Senator Bryan B. King
501-682-6107
April 3, 2026
Today I filed the County Equalization Turnback Resolution (SR6) for the Arkansas General Assembly’s upcoming fiscal session.
Passage of this resolution and bill will distribute sales tax collections to county governments. Currently sales tax is collected and sent to the state and then is distributed back to counties in the form of what is called turnback. Unfortunately, local governments are not getting back what they deserve.
What will this resolution accomplish?
- The first $150 million collected will go into the County Equalization Turnback Fund.
- Once $150 million is collected, each county will receive $2 million.
- Ninety percent of the $2 million must be used for critical infrastructure like roads, water systems, police/jail, debt service or other crucial infrastructure projects.
- Ten percent could be used for fire departments, community services such as senior centers or emergency services.
This will provide a steady stream of tax dollars to counties that will benefit communities by solving budget problems and funding critical projects for years to come.
County governments would know how much they can plan on. For example, Madison or Union County could plan on $10 million in the next five years and $20 million in the next 10 years.
This funding would follow the remarkable example our Founding Fathers set by not basing everything on population. Our Founders ensured Arkansas would have equal representation with larger states by giving us two senators.
During my time in the legislature, I have seen the turnback percentage go down enough that this has devastated the ability of counties to get things done and caused irreparable harm.
The average turnback percentage from this governor the past three years has been an anemic 3.6 percent. The past four years of revenue stabilization has been 3.5 percent. Had that percentage been five percent, almost $400 million would have been returned to local people to use. While a little over one percent increase may not seem like much, consider that one percent of this proposed budget is $68 million.
Our state budget is not like Washington DC. We can’t print more money to pay for more and add debt. To put it simply, in Arkansas, if you expand in one area you have to contract in another.
The Governor’s LEARNS bill has expanded new spending which is new taxation. LEARNS has increased the education portion of the budget at the expense of local government.
This means less money for roads, water infrastructure, or for basic local public needs.
Like the saying “rob Peter to save Paul,” the past three years’ budget has robbed local citizens’ needs to pay for elite private school tuition and out of state consultant profiteers.
I have been writing about how LEARNS needs to be overhauled and how the good parts of the act need to be kept, eliminating the elite private school unaffordable payments and instead promoting performance-based school choice.
We have to be better at financial responsibility and not neglect critical local infrastructure at the time we need it most.
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