The state Alcoholic Beverage Control Division won’t be asking state lawmakers to repeal a law banning ABC employees from accepting gifts after all.

A spokesman for Gov. Mike Beebe said Wednesday the governor believes the law should remain in place.

“We’ve been reviewing that proposal as it goes along, and there are some parts we agree with,” Beebe spokesman Matt DeCample said. “Repealing the rule in regards to gifts is not something that we agree with.”

ABC Director Michael Langley said Wednesday, “I support the governor’s decision.”

Langley had said Tuesday the division was considering asking lawmakers to repeal section 3-2-208 of the Arkansas Code, which prohibits a division employee from soliciting or accepting a gift from any manufacturer, distributor, wholesaler or retailer of alcoholic beverages or any person who has applied with the division for any type of permit.

The law has “no teeth,” Langley said, because it does not provide a penalty. ABC employees have to report gifts and comply with ethics laws that apply to all state employees, he said Tuesday.

DeCample said Wednesday, “Just because there are no penalties in the rule, that does not mean that violators will not be held accountable.”

An Arkansas Economic Development Commission spokesman says $2 million from the governor’s “quick action” fund is part of an incentive package given to Cooper Tire & Rubber Co. to keep the Texarkana plant open.

The company announced today that it is closing its plant in Albany, Ga., and that the Texarkana plant, which employs about 1,400, will remain open. Additional employees are expected to be hired at the Texarkana plant over the next few years.

Along with the $2 million, other incentives given to the company by the state are a sales tax credit of 6.5 percent on capital investment, a 2 percent income tax credit for new employees only for five years and a 5 percent rebate for 10 years of payroll for new employees only.

The city of Texarkana and the state of Texas also offered incentives to the company to keep the plant open.

Cooper Tire & Rubber Co., currently considering closing one of its four U.S. plants, has reached a tentative agreement with union workers that could keep its plant in Findlay, Ohio, open for at least the next three years.

Gov. Mike Beebe said Wednesday that Arkansas has offered an incentives package to Cooper to keep its plant in Texarkana open, though he would not say how much the offer was worth. Texas has contributed to the package because many of the plant’s employees live in that state, Beebe said.

Mississippi has offered Cooper $30 million in incentives to keep the company’s plant in Tupelo open. Georgia officials have not revealed details of an incentives package they offered to save Cooper’s plant in Albany from closure.

Findlay is home to Cooper’s headquarters. Beebe said Wednesday he believed the choice for closure was between the plants in Arkansas and Georgia.

Zac Wright, the governor’s director of communications, was wandering the state Capitol today, and he took time to talk about his successful work in Missouri.

The Tennessee native took some time off from his job in Gov. Mike Beebe’s office earlier this year to go to work in the Show Me State as spokesman for Democrat Jay Nixon’s campaign for governor. Nixon, longtime Missouri attorney general, defeated Republican Kenny Hulshof for the seat on Nov. 4.

Before helping Nixon, Wright spent several months in South Carolina helping Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign last year and early this year. A former spokesman for the Tennessee Democratic Party, he came to Arkansas to serve as spokesman for Beebe’s gubernatorial campaign in 2006.

Barack Obama could have won Arkansas if he had campaigned here, according to U.S. Sen. Mark Pryor, D-Ark.

“I think if Obama had come here and worked here and allocated some resources to Arkansas, we could have been like North Carolina or Missouri or some of these other states who were very close, and we could have won the thing. … They made the right decision nationally, but I do wish the Obama campaign had spent some more time here,” Pryor told reporters.

As of today, provisional ballots are still being counted in Missouri and no winner has been declared.

Pryor, who campaigned in the state on Obama’s behalf, said Arkansas’ election results — 58.6 percent for McCain, 39 percent for Obama — also may have been affected by former first lady Hillary Clinton’s defeat in the national Democratic primary and “probably some other factors.”

Obama’s most recent appearance in Arkansas was in October 2006 at a rally for Mike Beebe and other Democratic candidates.

A nonprofit child advocacy group gave a mixed review today to Gov. Mike Beebe’s balanced budget proposal.

The $4.5 billion proposed budget for the next fiscal year, unveiled this morning, calls for reducing the state’s sales tax on groceries from 3 cents to 2 cents. Beebe also is proposing setting aside about $146 million from the General Improvement Fund as one-time money for state needs, including prisons, Medicaid and the Department of Human Services.

“Gov. Mike Beebe said he was committed to improving the child welfare and children’s mental health systems, and his budget priorities reflect his commitment on these issues,” said Rich Huddleston, executive director of Arkansas Advocates for Children and Families, in a statement.

Huddleston said investing in a rainy day fund would be critical in preventing cuts to the Department of Human Services in the event of a severe economic downturn.

“On the flip side, we are disappointed that the budget does not address two major economic issues facing working families: the lack of health care coverage and the lack of access to subsidized child care,” he said.

Huddleston also questioned whether a 1-cent cut to the grocery tax might be too large given the current economic climate. A smaller cut would allow room for tax relief targeted more toward low-income families, such as an earned-income tax credit or fixing a flaw in the state income tax that penalizes low-income single parents, he said.

Beebe said today he usually considers it bad policy to use one-time money for ongoing programs, but in this case he felt it was necessary. He made the proposal even though some advisers in his administration thought it was a bad idea, he said.

Arkansas also has won two 2008 Excellence Awards from the National Electronic Commerce Coordinating Council, a governmental organization that, according to its Web site, promotes solutions to technological issues impacting the business of government.

Arkansas won for protecting Arkansans’ private information through the Payment Processor Security Initiative and for enhancing citizens’ involvement in government through the Information Network of Arkansas.

“Gov. Mike Beebe’s Information Network of Arkansas encourages citizens to help craft a positive vision for their state. Arkansas.gov offers numerous online services and an e-newsroom with audio/video, podcasts, four different electronic newsletters, listservs and RSS feeds,” the council said on its Web site

Also this year, Arkansas’ state government Web site was named one of the top state Web portals in the nation by the Center for Digital Government, a national research and advisory institute on information technologies and best practices in state and local government.

Arkansas.gov was named a finalist in the center’s 2008 Best of the Web Awards. First through fifth place winners, in descending order, were Virginia, Maine, California, Texas and, in a tie for fifth place, Alabama and Rhode Island.

Finalists were Arkansas, Colorado, Delaware, Michigan and Nebraska.

Former Arkansas first lady Janet Huckabee attended today’s Veterans Day ceremony at the state Capitol. She said she is working hard to make sure the needs of military men and women returning home from deployment, as well as aging veterans with health concerns, are met.

Gov. Mike Beebe recently named Huckabee, who works for the Red Cross, to the Arkansas Yellow Ribbon Task Force, which is working to help veterans across the state.

“We have almost 3,200 soldiers fixing to come back from Iraq and Afghanistan,” she said. “That’s what we’re getting ready for, is their return.”

She said her husband, former governor and Republican presidential nominee Mike Huckabee, is traveling a lot, promoting a book and doing a weekly cable news show.

Despite a troubling national economic climate, state revenues continue to run above forecast.

The state finance office reports today that net available general revenues for October totaled $352.4 million, or 2.4 percent above October 2007. Collections also were above forecast by 2.3 percent, or $7.9 million.

Gov. Mike Beebe cautioned Monday that Arkansas could begin feeling the impact of the national economic slowdown sometime in the next fiscal year, which starts July 1. In case that happens, he said he wants to keep the state’s $310.5 million surplus in reserve “to plug the one-time gap created by a recession.”

The money would be used to shore up essential services such as Medicaid, Beebe said.

The governor is scheduled to present his balanced budget proposal on Nov. 13.

Net available general revenues through the first 10 months of the year were $1.55 billion —  4.9 percent above last year and 4.8 percent, or $71.1 million, above forecast, the state Department of Finance and Administration reported.

DF&A says general revenues were above forecast last month primarily because of gains in individual income tax collections and a $13.7 million transfer from unclaimed property proceeds.

A state lottery is not the ticket for Arkansas, according to Gov. Mike Beebe.

Beebe, who has said for more than a year he was undecided on the issue, voted today against a proposed constitutional amendment to create a state-run lottery to fund college scholarships.

Beebe spokesman Matt DeCample said the governor weighed the advantages of a lottery, including the potential to offer more scholarships and to keep money in the state that Arkansans are now spending on other states’ lotteries, against the disadvantage of a potential negative economic impact “on some people in our state who can least afford it.”

Concerns about the impact on the poor “weighed a little heavier in the end, especially with the economic picture like it is,” DeCample said.

Beebe cast his ballot at a polling site in his hometown of Searcy after a 40-minute wait.

Meanwhile, Lt. Gov. Bill Halter, who proposed the lottery amendment, cast his ballot today at a North Little Rock polling place. On the way in Halter told reporters he was confident voters would approve the measure.