| Senator Stephanie Flowers of Pine Bluff represents District 25, which includes parts of Pine Bluff and Jefferson County, as well as parts of Arkansas, Desha, Lincoln, Monroe and Phillips Counties. An attorney, she is vice chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee.
Senator Flowers is a member of several other committees including Senate City, County and Local Affairs, Joint Energy Committee, Senate Rules, Resolutions and Memorials Committee, Joint Budget Committee and Arkansas Legislative Council and serves on several different subcommittees. A native of Pine Bluff, she served in the House of Representatives from 2005 through 2010, when she was elected to the Senate. She was sworn in as a State Senator in the 2011 Regular Session.
Flowers has sponsored legislation to foster community support for public schools, such as Act 1507 of 2013 to expand the ability of schools to hold events. She sponsored Act 1002 of 2011 and Act 1423 of 2013 to make parental involvement plans more user-friendly and more effective. During each session, she regularly sponsors bills to fund after-school programs, drug abuse treatment and services for juveniles in the justice system and legislation updating the terms, caseloads and jurisdiction of courts and judicial districts.
Many of the bills that she sponsors are appropriation bills. They flow through the process quietly, after Senator Flowers has reached a consensus with other committee members. Some of her appropriation bills have included funding for the University of Arkansas at Pine Bluff, Southeast Arkansas College, the Southeast Arkansas Economic Development District, the Rural Services Department, the Heritage Department, literacy programs and senior citizens centers. One of Flowers' priorities is to expand and improve re-entry training of inmates to help them better prepare for a productive life outside prison. She has been instrumental in setting up a program in which probationers and parolees work to clear away condemned properties.
In 2017, she co-sponsored a package of bills to strengthen ethics and campaign finance laws. She also co-sponsored legislation to create a monument on the state capitol grounds honoring Gold Star Families who have lost a loved one during active military service. In 2019, she co-sponsored legislation creating the major highway program and to set up a grant program for improvements at historically black colleges and universities.
Senator Flowers is a graduate of Philander Smith College in Little Rock and the Thurgood Marshall School of Law at Texas Southern University in Houston. She is a member of the African Methodist Episcopal Church and has one son. |