LITTLE ROCK, Ark. (AP) — Arkansas lawmakers gave final approval to bills outlining the state’s $6.3 billion budget for the coming year as they wrapped up this year’s legislative session.

The House and Senate approved identical versions of the proposed Revenue Stabilization Act, the state’s budget bill, sending the measure to Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders’ desk.

The proposal mirrors Sanders’ budget proposal unveiled earlier this year that will increase state spending by 1.76% over the previous year. Most of the $109 million increase in spending will go toward a new school voucher program that was created through an education overhaul that Sanders signed into law last year.

The budget was approved the day after lawmakers approved new restrictions on cryptocurrency mining operations, one of the few non-budget items that was on the agenda for this year’s session.

Legislative leaders have said they expect discussions toward the end of this fiscal year on whether there will be a special session to take up additional tax cuts. Sanders has signed into law two income tax cuts since taking office last year. Lawmakers will return to the Capitol next week to formally adjourn the session.

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The surprise team of the SEC baseball season is awaiting the University of Arkansas this weekend in Lexington, Ky., with first place in the conference standings hanging in the balance.

The No. 2 Razorbacks are tied with No. 8 Kentucky with each team sporting a 16-5 record atop the SEC chase and each holding a one-game lead in their division.

Kentucky (33-9) entered last weekend with a one-game lead, but the Wildcats dropped two of three games at South Carolina while the Razorbacks (39-7) were winning a home series against Florida.

The Wildcats have announced chair-back seats are sold out at Kentucky Proud Park, which has a capacity of 7,000, so the Razorbacks are in for a raucous environment at the cozy artificial turf stadium.

Arkansas Coach Dave Van Horn, whose team has won or tied for two of the past three SEC titles, put the series in perspective when asked about the showdown atop the standings.

“The series all count the same,” Van Horn said. “It’s one win or one loss every time you play. You want to try to win two out of three so you have a tiebreaker.

“You win a couple games every weekend, you’ve got a chance to win the league. It’s a big deal, but it’s not a big deal. It’s another SEC series. The next weekend we’ve got Mississippi State, the last one we go to Texas A&M, so they’re all big.”

Arkansas holds its one-game lead in the SEC West over No. 1 Texas A&M, while Kentucky’s slim edge in the East is over No. 3 Tennessee.

The Razorbacks would have a seemingly built-in advantage for Friday’s 5:30 Central game, which will pit ace left-hander Hagen Smith (8-0, 1.35 ERA) against Kentucky right-hander Trey Pooser (3-0, 3.75).

Arkansas has won all 11 of its weekend openers behind Smith. His individual streak of eight wins was halted last week when he was pulled from a 1-1 game against the Gators that Arkansas eventually won 2-1.

Smith leads the nation with 16.65 strikeouts per nine innings and his WHIP (walks and hits divided by inning pitched) of 0.82 is fourth in the country and second in the SEC.

“Hagen Smith, the guy throwing Friday night, should be the first pitcher taken in the Major League Draft, right?” Kentucky Coach Nick Mingione said. “He’s that good. He’s left-handed, up to 100 mph. Those guys aren’t just walking all over this planet.”

While recent opponents have seemingly not matched their top pitchers against Smith, Kentucky appears ready to roll out its regular weekend rotation. Pooser, a 6-4 senior who had been the No. 1 starter at College of Charleston last year, began this season in the bullpen, but he’s worked his way into the Friday job as staff ace Travis Smith (lat muscle injury) and lefty Dominic Niman (7-3, 5.00) fell out of the spot.

“He’s been really solid and he continues to just pitch at a very high level,” Mingione said. “I just go back to his experience. He’s had it. … When you’re the guy that been handed the ball on a Friday night for a really long time, there is a comfort level.”

The Wildcats are hitting .295 with 8.4 runs per game and they have 92 stolen bases in 114 tries (80.7%). They rank 17th nationally with 2.2 stolen bases per game and their stolen base total is 14 more than second-place Vanderbilt (78) in the SEC and 54 more than Arkansas (38).

“I think they have a really good team,” Van Horn said. “They swing the bat extremely well, they pitch, they field the ball good and if you let them get on a roll, they can get on a roll. So we know we have our hands full.”

Mingione is equally complimentary of the Razorbacks, who have won 10 of the past 12 games in the series, including a sweep in Fayetteville to open conference play in 2022.

“Their pitching is really good,” Mingione said. “They’ve defended at a really high level that I’ve seen. Their offense, they do what it takes. It doesn’t matter if it’s leaving the yard or getting their extra-base hits or grinding you out for a walk.

“You don’t have their record if they’re not well-rounded, right? So when you look at them as a whole, they just do a lot of things that are at a really high level.”

Because the Wildcats stole 12 of 13 bases against South Carolina last weekend, including a steal of home, the Razorbacks’ lineup selections at catcher among Hudson White, Parker Rowland and Ryder Helfrick will be of importance.

Kentucky first baseman Ryan Nicholson (.321 average, 14 home runs, 42 RBI) has 10 home runs in the past 11 games.

The Wildcats got out to a 15-1 start in league play, their best ever, with sweeps of Georgia, Ole Miss, Alabama and Auburn, before running into recent trouble. They lost their final two games of a home series against Tennessee on April 20-21, then lost the series at South Carolina the week after Arkansas won two of three there.

While Arkansas was sweeping a midweek series against Missouri State to post a 12-0 record in midweek contests, the Wildcats had a clear week to go through final exams in preparation for the Razorbacks.

Van Horn announced junior right-hander Brady Tygart (4-1, 2.68) would start Saturday’s 1 p.m. game. Left-hander Mason Molina (3-1, 3.47), who rolled an ankle last week and sat out the Florida series, is likely to return to the rotation Sunday.

The Arkansas Senate and House of Representatives voted Thursday to send Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders identical bills that would boost the state’s general revenue budget by $109.3 million to $6.31 billion in the coming fiscal year.

Before the Senate and the House went into a recess for this year’s fiscal session, the Senate voted 33-0 to approve House Bill 1097 by state Rep. Lane Jean, R-Magnolia, and the House voted 88-1 to approve Senate Bill 80 by state Sen. Jonathan Dismang, R-Searcy. State Rep. Austin McCollum, R-Bentonville, voted against SB80.

SB80 and HB1097 would amend the state’s Revenue Stabilization Act for fiscal 2025, which starts July 1, 2024, and ends June 30, 2025.

With “our partners in the Legislature,” Sanders said “we continued to advance our promises to the people of Arkansas — chief among them is slowing the growth of government,” in this year’s fiscal session.

The state’s general revenue budget will increase by 1.76% in fiscal 2025 — below an average of 3% a year in recent years — and that is half of the current inflation rate, Sanders said at a news conference in the governor’s conference room.

“At the same time we are still making critical investments in public safety and education,” the Republican governor said.

“And we are paving the way to cut taxes in the future and eventually and responsibly phase out our state income tax to let Arkansans keep more of their hard-earned money,” she added.

The state would accumulate a general revenue surplus of $376.6 million in fiscal 2025 if the state’s general revenue collections meet the state Department of Finance and Administration’s Feb. 1 forecast of $6.68 billion for net general revenue based on the state’s general revenue budget of $6.31 billion in fiscal 2025.

In its Feb. 1 forecast, the finance department projected a $240.5 million general revenue surplus in fiscal 2024 that ends June 30.

“With two months remaining in Fiscal Year 2024, (Department of Finance and Administration Secretary Jim) Hudson is confident the state revenue surplus will surpass $400 million,” finance department spokesperson Scott Hardin said Thursday.

Senate President Pro Tempore Bart Hester, R-Cave Springs, told reporters he suspects that, if the state’s surplus general revenue exceeds $300 million or $400 million at the end of fiscal 2024, the Legislature will consider cutting income taxes in a special session in August or September. He said he hopes the income tax cuts could be made retroactive to Jan. 1, 2024.

“What we are not interested in is putting ourselves in a position where we are cutting essential services for the people of Arkansas,” he said Thursday.

Asked about plans for a special session later this year to consider tax cuts, House Speaker Matthew Shepherd, R-El Dorado, told reporters: “I wouldn’t say at this point that there’s any significant discussions at this point.

“I think that what has been said in the past by House and Senate leadership and the governor’s office is that, well, we wanted to get a little further down the road this year and take a look at potentially there may be an opportunity for a special session later this summer or early fall to potentially pass an additional income tax reduction,” he said. “That’s my hope. That’s my expectation.”

The Revenue Stabilization Act measures — SB80 and HB1097 — would increase general revenue for the state’s Education Freedom Accounts by $65.7 million to $97.4 million in fiscal 2025. Education Freedom Accounts are vouchers designed to help students attend private school, parochial school or homeschooling.

Sanders’ signature education initiative — the LEARNS Act, which was enacted in the 2023 regular session — created the Education Freedom Accounts. Among other things, the LEARNS Act also increased starting teacher pay from $36,000 to $50,000 a year and authorized $2,000 raises for other teachers.

SB80 and HB1097 also would increase the state’s general revenue for the public school fund by $38.2 million to $2.48 billion, including a $34.2 million increase in general revenue to $2.44 billion for the state Department of Education’s Division of Elementary and Secondary Education and a $4 million increase in general revenue to $26.8 million for career and technical education.

Sanders said the state will grant educational freedom to more families than ever in Arkansas’ history and pay for the highest starting teacher salaries in the nation after factoring in the cost of living.

House Democratic leader Tippi McCullough of Little Rock said in an interview: “I know the governor says this was one of the smallest percentage-wise raising of the budgets ever as far as extra spending, but this is still the largest budget ever.”

“I’m not sure — a lot of the money’s now going to private schools who there’s not much accountability for yet,” she said. “We have some highly paid staff people. We haven’t done enough for the people that feed our kids at school.”

The $109.3 million, or 1.76%, increase to $6.31 billion in the state’s general revenue budget in fiscal 2025 will be the smallest increase since fiscal 2022, state records show.

In fiscal 2022 that ended June 30, 2022, the state’s Revenue Stabilization Act was reduced by $50.4 million, or 0.85%, to $5.84 billion based on state records. State government reported a $1.628 billion general revenue surplus at the end of fiscal 2022.

In fiscal 2025, SB80 and HB1097 also would increase the general revenue allocated to the Division of Arkansas State Police by $3.9 million to $92.5 million in fiscal 2025. The proposal funds an additional Arkansas State Police trooper school.

“We’ll put more state troopers on our roads, making sure that we provide them with the resources and the training they need to keep our communities safe and secure,” Sanders said.

Under the measures, the general revenue for the Department of Corrections’ Division of Correction would increase by $536,285 to $434.8 million and by $571,631 to $105.3 million for the department’s Division of Community Correction in fiscal 2025.

The general revenue allocation for county jail reimbursement would remain at $25.7 million in fiscal 2025. The Legislature and the governor have enacted Act 117 to appropriate $4.2 million more to the state Department of Corrections for reimbursing counties for holding state inmates in county jails and fund the appropriation with $4.2 million in state surplus funds in fiscal 2024 that ends June 30.

The state Department of Human Services’ general revenue allocation would increase by $4.4 million to $1.83 billion under the bills, including a $3.6 million increase to $57.4 million for county operations. State officials said most of the increased general revenue for the Department of Human Services stems from the transfer of the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families program from the state Division of Workforce Services.

The bills also would reduce the total general revenue allocation to the state’s institutions of higher education by $2.4 million to $778.8 million, but also allocate $4.5 million in general revenue to fund a sustainable building maintenance revolving loan program for the state’s higher education institutions in the coming fiscal year.

In total, the measures for fiscal 2025 would increase the University of Arkansas at Pine Bluff’s general revenue budget from $26.1 million to $27.7 million in fiscal 2025, with a $2 million increase to $5.8 million for the university’s land grant matching program.

Under the identical bills, the University of Arkansas, Fayetteville’s general revenue budget would increase by $387,468 to $134.5 million and the University of Arkansas at Medical Sciences’ general revenue allocation would stay flat at $93 million.

The measures also would amend the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Grants Matching Set-Aside in the Restricted Reserve Fund to provide for matching funds for the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act as well as “the Inflation Reduction Act, the CHIPS Act and other infrastructure and certain projects that are majority federally funded” in a sum not to exceed $200 million.

There is $194.8 million remaining in this Restricted Reserve Fund set-side account, said Hardin.

The overall balance in the state’s Restricted Reserve Fund is $2.05 billion, including $710.6 million in the Arkansas Reserve Fund established in legislation enacted in the September special session, Hardin said. The state’s Catastrophic Reserve Fund balance is $1.5 billion, he said.

Hester said, “We held the line on the (general revenue) budget,” and “we have got a lot of reserves and a lot of money in reserves right now.”

He said every lawmaker has water and sewer project needs in their legislative district, “so I am really going to be pushing to spend some surpluses on water and sewer projects across the state.”

Legislative leaders said lawmakers will return to the state Capitol on May 9 to adjourn the fiscal session, which started April 10. May 9 will be the 30th day of this year’s fiscal session, which is the state’s eighth fiscal session.

The state’s shortest fiscal session was 17 days in 2020 at the onset of the covid-19 pandemic, with the state House of Representatives meeting at the Jack Stephens Center at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock. Most lawmakers wore masks and spread out to maintain the recommended distance between them.

The state’s longest fiscal session was 38 days in 2014, the last year that Mike Beebe, a Democrat, served as governor and the second year since Republicans had gained majority control of the Legislature for the first time since Reconstruction.

Information for this article was contributed by Josh Snyder of the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette.