Category Archives: State government

Tiffany Wright is looking for child welfare warriors

Tiffany WrightDo you remember the U.S. Marines’ recruiting slogan, “We’re looking for a few good men”? Tiffany Wright is looking for 130 child welfare warriors.

Wright is director of the Division of Children and Family Services, which responds to reports of child abuse and neglect and administers the state’s foster care system.

DCFS has more than 130 job vacancies, including 69 for front line workers who manage an average of 24 cases. It is advertising job opportunities through social media, recruitment webinars, and a new webpage, humanservices.arkansas.gov/u/dcfs-jobs.

Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders’ state employee pay plan last year increased front line workers’ starting salaries from $36,155 to $52,137. Average annual turnover has since fallen from 60%-70% to 43%, which is still high.  Continue reading →

Jett: Arkansas needs a ‘stress test’

Large banks must perform “stress tests” to ensure they would be OK if the economy took a severe downturn. Should Arkansas’ state government do the same?

Former state Rep. Joe Jett, who chaired the House Revenue and Taxation Committee for eight years until he left the Legislature in 2022, believes it should. He’s particularly concerned about what would happen if the federal government reduced the billions of dollars it sends Arkansas’ way.

The former lawmaker and farmer from Success, Arkansas, now splits his time between working with the Rose Group Advisors business strategies and lobbying firm, crop dusting, and being a relief aerial firefighter fighting wildfires in the West. He’s also a grandfather to four grandsons ages 6-16. His two sons now run the farm where he and his wife still live. 

Jett said state government should perform stress tests like large banks must do under the 2010 Dodd-Frank Act, which was a response to the preceding financial crisis. Some states have already started doing so. Continue reading →

Sanders’ State of the State shows what will pass

One big difference between a president’s typical State of the Union address and Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders’ State of the State address April 8 is this: What the governor proposed will actually happen.

While the State of the Union often features a laundry list of policy proposals applauded only by the president’s party, Sanders’ State of the State at the beginning of this year’s fiscal session didn’t offer many policy specifics. And while there were standing ovations and opposition sit-downs, it didn’t have a partisan vibe.

In fact, don’t expect a lot of fireworks during the fiscal session, for three reasons. First, fiscal sessions, which happen every even-numbered year, are designed to last 30 days and focus on relatively boring budget matters. Lawmakers can get into other topics, but most don’t want to. Second, Sanders is in her first term and still likely to pass most of her priorities through a supportive Legislature. Third, Sanders has taken the most contentious item, her proposed 3,000-bed Franklin County prison, off the table for now. It just doesn’t have the votes, and may never have them.

We can be fairly certain, then, that lawmakers will agree to Sanders’ request for full support of the educational freedom accounts in her 2003 LEARNS Act. Those accounts provide families of any income level about $7,000 per child annually for private and homeschooling expenses.  Continue reading →

Carlton Wing: State’s break with PBS paused, but still could happen

Arkansas TV’s split from PBS is on pause, but the relationship is hardly on solid ground, and it may take a major donor to save it.  

That’s the situation after the Arkansas PBS Commission voted March 12 to take a 180-day pause from its previous decision December 11 to disaffiliate from PBS.

PBS provides more than half the station’s programming. Disaffiliation would mean the station would no longer broadcast “Sesame Street” or “Masterpiece Theater.”

That first disaffiliation decision in December resulted in a public backlash and an overflow crowd at the March 12 commission meeting. Former Arkansas first ladies Gay White and Barbara Pryor co-chaired a group opposing the breakup.  Continue reading →

Ten Commandments ruling put schools between rock and hard place

Ten Commandments BrooksWhat do you do when you’re stuck between a rock and a hard place? Two Arkansas higher education institutions are choosing the rock. All but six public schools will have to make their own decisions. 

The rock is the law plus the lawsuit that could come as a result of obeying it. Act 573, passed last year, says every public school district and higher education institution must conspicuously post the Ten Commandments in every classroom and library. The law specifies that the posting must be the Protestant King James Version displayed on a 16-inch-by-20-inch poster or framed copy. The Commandments must be provided through private donations; otherwise, schools don’t have to post them. 

The hard place is a federal judge’s ruling this week that states that the law is unconstitutional, but only directly applies to six K-12 public schools. The limit exists because of a U.S. Supreme Court decision last year stating that judges cannot issue “universal injunctions” that reach beyond the parties in a case.

In other words, schools and colleges can obey the law and potentially get named in a lawsuit. Or they can disobey the law and, perhaps, face legal consequences for that. Continue reading →