Media Availability - Speaker-Designate of the Arkansas House of Representatives
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- October 4, 2026
Bill Barnes
Unverified
0:00
I want to thank all of you for hanging around and coming up to our North Gallery. Those of you who haven't been in this room before, we hope this is going to be a room you find functional and useful for you in doing your jobs. And we will be making some improvements moving forward that will make it even better. We have a great institution in the House of Representatives. One of the things that we are most proud of is a very smooth transition in leadership.
We have just completed an election to designate the next Speaker of the House for the 88th General Assembly. That person also has the official title of Speaker Designate of the 87th General Assembly. What we will be doing moving forward is do what we have done in the past and have a very smooth transition. It's my job now to do everything I can to support the Speaker-designate, make sure that he has all of the information and all of the tools in place
to hit the ground running when the 88th General Assembly convenes in January of 2011. This person who is elected today has been a very valuable member in the House of Representatives and a very valued member of my House leadership team. He is very knowledgeable in state government, And he is very knowledgeable in the workings of the House of Representatives. So with that, it is my honor to present to you the speaker designate of the 87th General Assembly and the future speaker of the 88th, Representative Robert Moore.
Representative Robert Moore
Unverified
1:35
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Thank you. First of all, I'd like to say thank you to Speaker Wills for the excellent leadership through a regular session and the fiscal session that we just finished up. Speaker Will certainly has been a model for me in the conduct of business in the House of Representatives. The institution that I'm honored now to be designated to lead is so profoundly on my mind every day
and will be for the duration of the time that I have the privilege to serve my colleagues and sort of the people of the state of Arkansas. I certainly want to thank my colleagues who have supported me in this very long campaign. They have worked hard and deserve the credit for the privilege of me standing before you here today. But I will, as I have just affirmed to my colleagues in my remarks before the election,
my commitment to my colleagues and to the people of the state of Arkansas that collectively we represent in this body, I will serve honorably, fairly, and to the very best of my ability. And again, it's such a wonderful privilege and pleasure to be here today, and I look forward to working with Speaker Wills and all House leadership as we make the transition of taking care of the business of the House of Representatives and the people of the state of Arkansas. Thank you. Is there a reason that
Speaker 10
3:11
you felt compelled to say that you hadn't promised them in a position in return for support for their allegations?
Representative Robert Moore
Unverified
3:21
I just reaffirmed in my remarks to the members what I had told them when we began the campaign, that I would not run the campaign on the basis of promises to anybody for anything. I wanted to, the reason for that primarily is, it's the type of person I think I am, but primarily I want to be in the position now that I don't feel,
I owe all of my supporters tremendously for their hard work. But now I have the luxury of being able to objectively look at all of the talents, the experience, and the knowledge that's in the house to try to make the right decisions as I assemble a leadership team for 88. Do I now? No, no. I certainly have. I have people in mind for a lot of positions, but I've made no decisions, no final determinations.
Speaker 15
4:25
You mentioned in your speech that you want your leadership team to be as diverse as the House membership is. Currently, I believe there's three women, three Republicans on the leadership team. Do you feel like that's diverse enough? Do
Representative Robert Moore
Unverified
4:39
you plan to make it more diverse? and how do you plan to go about doing that? Well, diversity certainly includes gender, race, and political party affiliation. And I just intend on doing exactly what I said. We'll look at the composition of the House as we begin to assemble for the 88th General Assembly,
and those will be criteria that I'll be looking at as I make those decisions because the primary responsibility that I think the Speaker of the House has is to be able to bring the membership together on issues that are collectively important to the membership, to be able to get the 51 votes or the 67 votes, depending on what the issue is, to get those votes together so that our voice can be effective. And in order to be able to do that, I recognize without assembling diversity and leadership that that becomes a very ominous task.
And that's what I've committed to the members is that diversity, and that's what I'll do when we begin that process. Do you feel like it's sufficient as it is now, or do you feel like it's now? I haven't run the statistics on it, but I'm
Speaker 10
5:55
just talking about where we'll be when we get to the 88. I've been kicking you guys around for a while about travel policy. You're a former state employee.
You guys can continue to have a different travel policy
Representative Robert Moore
Unverified
6:15
in terms of how the state is. Well, I'll just say, Mike, this is an issue that has gotten some attention, and I think justifiably so. we can do a better job of making sure that our travel policy reflects guidelines that are in place that do result in the most efficient use of taxpayers' dollars.
I don't, and I have a couple of my colleagues who are, who I've talked with about working on getting something in place that ensures taxpayers that we're wisely spending their tax dollars when we're traveling. As I stand here right now, I can't tell you exactly what the bottom line is going to be because we realize that everybody, unlike times in state government where you have planned events,
there are events that require us at times to travel on short notice, which don't give the same opportunity for pricing of airline tickets and so forth. But the bottom line is, yeah, it's a matter that's worth certainly pursuing because we owe that to our constituents that send us up
Speaker 11
7:30
here to spend their money wisely, and we'll be taking a look at
Speaker 10
7:35
that. Is there a reason that normally, historically, when they announced the vote, they also announced the vote of the losing party?
Is there a reason why those votes
Speaker 25
7:47
weren't announced? I mean, I could just, there were 100 votes, so 63 plus 37 is 100. Do you anticipate the
Speaker 26
7:57
next session being one of a lot of challenges? Can
Representative Robert Moore
Unverified
8:03
you talk about what those challenges will be? Well, undoubtedly, we know the uncertainty of our economic times, and we know we have indicators that we'll, you guys are the media.
We know we see one day that there are things that seem to be favorable, that we're beginning that curve upward in our economic indicators, but then there are other things that tell us maybe we're not there yet. So certainly as our economy goes, our revenue in state government to meet the many needs and responsibilities that we have to our constituents and certainly primarily in health and education
health care, and security, we know that we're going to have challenges because whatever they hopefully will be in that economic upturn, but our state revenues lag behind the curve of increased job growth and expansion. So we're going to have some challenges primarily in budget areas, but we have an enormous amount of wealth and talent in our group and i have no doubt that we'll be able to meet those challenges
okay thank you very much thank you again mr speaker thank you mr speaker designate thank you thank you
Agenda
Remarks by Speaker Robbie Wills
Introduction of Speaker-Designate
Remarks by Speaker-Designate
Media Questions
Documents
No documents posted.
Speakers
Bill Barnes
Unverified
Representative Robert Moore
Unverified
Speaker 10
Speaker 15
Speaker 11
Speaker 25
Speaker 26