BILL DENIES JOBLESS BENEFITS IN DRUG-TEST CASES

Lawmakers filed legislation Tuesday that would disqualify people who have
been fired for testing positive for illegal drugs through drug screening
from receiving unemployment benefits.

These people would be disqualified from receiving unemployment benefits
from the date of filing their claims for unemployment benefits until they
have 10 weeks of employment in which they have earned wages equal to at
least their weekly benefit amount.

Sen. Tim Wooldridge, D-Paragould, said he and Sen. Claud Cash, D-Jonesboro,
introduced Senate Bill 237 at the request of several human resource
directors for major employers in northeast Arkansas. A drug-testing program
helps preserve the safety of the work environment, he said. "It is not one
of those gotcha things," Wooldridge said. If someone is using illegal drugs
and the company's policy prohibits the use of these drugs, it would seem to
be inconsistent for the company's former employees to be able to get
unemployment benefits as a result of being fired for using illegal drugs,
he said.

He said the bill is common-sense legislation. "We want to make our laws as
protective of the worker as possible and friendly as possible to industry,
too," he said.

House Bill 1351, filed Tuesday by Rep. Dean Elliott, R-Maumelle, would
change state annexation law to make an annexation dependent upon approval
of a majority of residents of the municipality seeking to annex land and of
residents of the area slated for annexation.

Under Arkansas Code 14-40-303, votes from city residents and residents of
the annexed area are combined to determine whether the annexation passes.
Elliott introduced a similar bill during the 1999 session and withdrew it
pending further study. In 1997, then-Rep. Joe Molinaro, D-Sherwood,
introduced a bill to make annexations dependent upon a majority vote in the
city and a 60 percent majority in the annexed area. Molinaro, too, withdrew
his bill.