10 Priorities for a Better Arkansas
The 45 member organizations of the Arkansas Citizens First Congress call on lawmakers to:
- Improve opportunities to learn for all students by implementing proven solutions to close education achievement gaps.
- Support fair tax reform that lowers the burden on low- and middle-income families, while protecting the integrity of the state budget.
- Implement energy policies to save consumers money, create jobs, and combat climate change.
- Develop a new state water plan that uses the best science and engages a broad range of Arkansans.
- Oppose all attempts at state-level immigration reform and oppose punitive anti-immigrant legislation.
- Ensure that all graduates of Arkansas high schools have the opportunity to pay in-state tuition at state colleges by passing the DREAM Act.
- Require the oil and gas industry to follow best management practices to protect landowner rights and Arkansas’s water resources.
- Discourage wage theft by increasing penalties for any employer who refuses to pay workers.
- Reform prison sentencing practices to make the parole process unbiased, reduce costs, and restore former inmates back into productive society.
- Insure 43,000 more low-income children by expanding the ARKids First health insurance program.
Along with the 10 Priorities for a Better Arkansas, the Citizens First Congress elected a Broad Platform of issues to support
The CFC's Broad Platform
- Create a Civil Rights Commission to mediate civil rights disputes and protect Arkansans from age, racial, and other discrimination.
- Expand youth diversion as an alternative to prosecution for youth who have committed a first-time or relatively minor offense.
- Expunge the criminal records of some first-time, minor criminal offenders upon release on parole.
- End corporate tax hideouts by implementing a “combined reporting” law that limits the ability of Arkansas companies to avoid paying certain state taxes.
- Hold school districts more accountable for their graduates who require remediation in college.
- Limit school districts’ ability to carry over large sums of state poverty funding dedicated to help increase opportunities for low-income students.
- Improve state coordination of afterschool and summer programs.
- Expand access to early childhood education, including programs for infants and toddlers.
- Make it easier to withhold pay from elected officials who neglect their duty.
- Create an Arkansas Renewable Energy Payment Program (AREPP) and a statewide Energy Improvement District (EID).
- Pass a Property Owner Bill of Rights that spells out landowners’ rights when addressing oil and gas company operations and resulting pollution on their property.
- Reduce the spread of HIV/AIDS by implementing the recommendations of the AR SHARP report endorsed by the AR HIV/AIDS Minority Task Force.

