Category Archives: State government

This family’s really super

Inspirational, State government

Jeremy, Elizabeth, Kenneth and Miles Spann are ready to take flight at the Walk for the Waiting.
By Steve Brawner
© 2017 by Steve Brawner Communications, Inc.

Superman was adopted. So were Batman, Spiderman, and Kenneth and Miles Spann.

You probably haven’t heard of Kenneth, 8, and Miles, 7, yet. But someday you might. They might seem like the ordinary children of Little Rock parents Jeremy and Elizabeth Spann, but they’re already developing their superpowers.

“We’ve had a lot of first birthday parties, first bike riding, first vacations, just seeing them grow into individual people, and they’re just amazing,” Elizabeth Spann said. “They’re the most resilient kids ever. They’re so bright, so funny.”

Spann made those comments on the football field at War Memorial Stadium in Little Rock May 6 shortly before the family participated in the Walk for the Waiting.

That’s the annual event that raises funding for three faith-based organizations that serve children in the foster care system: The CALL in Arkansas, which recruits and trains foster and adoptive parents; Project Zero, which links prospective adoptive parents and children; and Immerse Arkansas, which serves young people who are aging out of the system without finding a permanent home.

This year’s Walk for the Waiting drew a couple of thousand participants and so far has raised most of its $300,000 goal. Its other purpose was to raise awareness and recruit people to serve the state’s foster care population, which ballooned from 3,806 in 2015 to 5,209 by last September but has leveled off and stood at 5,155 as of May 5.

Foster children are those whom the state’s Division of Children and Family Services (http://www.fosterarkansas.org) temporarily has removed from their biological families because of abuse, drug abuse and other issues. The goal is to return the children home as soon as their parents are ready to take care of them. When the courts determine they cannot be returned, parental rights are terminated and the children become eligible for adoption. About 500 foster children are eligible, 200 of whom are already in pre-adoptive homes.

Superman’s human dad, Jonathan Kent, brought him home after he discovered the spacecraft that had carried the young boy from the planet Krypton.

Kenneth and Miles were discovered a little less dramatically. The Spanns, unsuccessful at having children even after infertility treatments, had decided to adopt and were looking through photos on Project Zero’s online “Heart Gallery” when they found their two future sons, whom they adopted at ages 5 and 4.

What drew them to those two?

“They have the prettiest smiles, and they look so happy, and their eyes, their eyes sparkle,” Elizabeth Spann said. “Still do.”

The parents have their own secret identities: Jeremy is a science teacher, while Elizabeth is a school psychologist. Creating a new family can tax the powers of any such mortal man or woman, but it hasn’t been too difficult for the Spanns. Among the challenges: They are white, and Kenneth and Miles are African-American. A few people stare at them in stores, but most are very supportive, and African-American friends have taught Elizabeth about hair and skin care. Meanwhile, the sons are not troubled by the cosmetic differences.

“It’s surprisingly not as big a challenge as we expected it to be,” she said. “They’re super understanding. They notice right away that they’re brown and we’re not. They’re super fascinated by it, especially like in the summer when they notice that I get browner. They love that. They’re like, ‘You’re almost as brown as we are now!’”

Unlike Superman, the sons know from the beginning who they are, where they come from, and what makes them special. Still, part of their parents’ job will be helping them make sense of it all. They’ve decorated their sons’ room with superhero references, including signs with messages such as “Superman was adopted.” Every member of the family wore a cape or another superhero-related article of clothing at the Walk for the Waiting.

“We do a lot of things with superheroes,” she said. “We always tell them, you know, Batman was adopted, Superman was adopted, Spiderman was adopted, so we always kind of talk about that. So talking to them about their origin story as a superhero is important. And they’re little, so we try to figure out how much to tell them at a time.”

Sounds like there are four heroes in that home.

Related:
He has an iPod. He wants a family.
Trading an empty nest for a full house.

$23.33 less debt

Debt and deficits, Legislature, Politics, State government, U.S. Congress

By Steve Brawner
© 2017 by Steve Brawner Communications, Inc.

The past couple of weeks showed two different ways to react when you don’t have enough money coming in: the Arkansas state government reaction, which is relatively effective, and the federal reaction, which isn’t at all.

Why the difference? One big reason is that Arkansas has a structure for responding to budget shortfalls and, more important, a culture that respects that structure. The federal government has neither nor the structure nor the culture.

Let’s start with Arkansas. The state’s budgetary decisions are governed by the Revenue Stabilization Act, a law passed in 1945 that is amended by the Legislature each budget cycle and sets the parameters for a balanced budget. Under the act, state spending is divided into categories: an essential Category A and a much smaller, spend-it-if-we’ve-got-it Category B.

State revenues this year have been a little lower than was budgeted because sales and corporate income tax revenues are lower than expected while income tax refunds have been higher.

Faced with a deficit, on Friday Gov. Asa Hutchinson announced that various state agencies would see total cuts of $70 million in Category B (out of a $5.33 billion general revenue budget) to make up the difference. The announcement took up part of a half-hour news conference that also covered the death penalty and the health care-related legislative session occurring this week. And that was that.

Contrast that with what happened in Washington, D.C., where members of Congress, faced with a looming government shutdown, managed last week to pass a continuing resolution to fund the government for another week – a process that happens so often these days that Americans hardly even notice anymore. Then on Monday it was announced that the Trump administration and Congress had agreed to a $1.1 trillion spending bill that increases money for defense and other areas while not cutting much elsewhere. The bill does not affect Social Security and Medicare, the government’s biggest programs, which Trump has vowed not to cut.

This is happening within the context of a federal government that is expected this fiscal year to spend $4 trillion but only collect $3.4 trillion, leaving a $559 billion deficit ($1,731 per American) that is being added to the $20 trillion national debt ($62,000 per American).

Meanwhile, President Trump released the bare outlines for tax cuts that the nonpartisan Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget guesstimates will reduce federal revenues by $5.5 trillion over the next decade. His administration promises the tax cuts will spur enough economic growth to pay for themselves, but history has shown that rosy scenario simply won’t happen. History has shown, however, that when a president calls for tax cuts, there’s a good chance taxes will be cut.

For comparison, the federal government’s deficit for 2017 is 14 percent of expected expenses, and nothing is being done to close the gap. In Arkansas, the $70 million shortfall – $23.33 per Arkansan – was 1.3 percent of the state budget, and Hutchinson filled it with nary a peep from the Legislature or the affected agencies.

So why can’t Uncle Sam do what Gov. Asa did? There are many reasons, but one of the biggest is the fact that the federal government doesn’t have effective structural controls like the Revenue Stabilization Act.

A national Revenue Stabilization Act is not the answer. Letting the president unilaterally make cuts would give him or her too much power and would be unconstitutional. One potential solution is an amendment to the Constitution requiring a balanced budget, an idea that goes back to the Founding Fathers. Sometimes that idea gains some traction, but there always have been too many opponents who’ve stopped it without offering a better idea.

Even if it were to pass, the culture of Washington still would have to be changed. A balanced budget amendment could be bypassed like other parts of the Constitution are bypassed now.

On the other hand, a structure helps create a culture. Gov. Hutchinson acted so decisively and uncontroversially in 2017 in large part because the Revenue Stabilization Act, passed in 1945, has become ingrained in the way we do things here over the past 72 years.

Regardless, future generations of Arkansans can be thankful they someday won’t have to pay back that $23.33.

They can apply it to the $20 trillion.

Can work be added to Arkansas Works?

Health care, Legislature, Politics, State government
Cindy Gillespie is director of the Department of Human Services.

By Steve Brawner
© 2017 by Steve Brawner Communications, Inc.

Next week, legislators will meet in special session to change the Arkansas Works program to encourage its recipients to work for their benefits and, eventually, no longer need them.

Changing the program will be reasonably easy. Changing the recipients will be much harder.

Arkansas Works, formerly known as the private option, uses federal Medicaid dollars to buy private insurance for 311,000 Arkansans with incomes up to 138 percent of the federal poverty level, or about $17,000 for an individual. The state pays 5 percent of the program’s cost this year and 10 percent by 2020. The federal government pays the rest.

It was created through the Affordable Care Act, otherwise known as Obamacare, which expanded Medicaid. Many Republican-leaning states declined to participate. Arkansas instead obtained a waiver from the Obama administration allowing it to buy private insurance rather than simply enroll recipients in Medicaid.

It has allowed Arkansas to be a national leader in reducing its uninsured population. But it is a government program that has grown bigger than expected, which happens a lot.

Gov. Asa Hutchinson, who wasn’t governor when it was created, wants to keep it but shrink it, so he is asking the Trump administration to change the waiver to reduce the maximum income from 138 percent of the federal poverty level to 100 percent, or about $12,000. That will reduce the rolls by 62,000 to about 249,000. Meanwhile, his administration wants to require some beneficiaries to work at least 20 hours a week, train for a job or volunteer. Those changes require legislators to amend some state laws, which they’ll do next week.

Creating those policies is the easy part. The Legislature is expected to approve the changes quickly. The state has been talking to the Trump administration and expects to be approved. The 62,000 Arkansans bumped from Arkansas Works can buy the same insurance they have now with a federal government subsidy. Their contribution will be $13 to $19 a month, about what they are supposed to pay now, though 75 percent of them don’t because the state can’t enforce the rule. Department of Human Services (DHS) officials think most will pay next year when insurance companies can remove their coverage.

The work requirement? Let’s keep our expectations reasonable.

In a briefing with reporters Wednesday, DHS Director Cindy Gillespie said it won’t affect 161,000 of the remaining 249,000 Arkansas Works recipients. They won’t have to work because they are age 50 or above, are “medically frail,” have a minor living at home, etc. Those exemptions mirror the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, formerly known as food stamps, which also serves many Arkansas Works recipients. Some of the remaining 88,000 won’t have to work either if they are students, pregnant or caring for an incapacitated person.

Most of the 88,000 are not working now. More than three-fourths have zero income. Moreover, less than two-thirds of the 62,000 with incomes between 100-138 percent, the ones who will move into private insurance, have jobs. The rest subsist on government benefits and other means.

Most recipients have not taken advantage of a big opportunity they have now. Under Arkansas Works’ current waiver granted by the Obama administration, recipients are referred to the Department of Workforce Services, which can help them get jobs. But of the more than 37,000 individuals referred to DWS in January, only 628 accessed the services or reported a new job after the referral while 703 had done so beforehand.

Changing Arkansas Works will help some people. Given access to health care and an incentive to work, they’ll begin pulling themselves up by their bootstraps.

But some will not. Regardless of whatever liberal or conservative social engineering the state attempts, some people will not be self-sufficient because of lack of skill or will, addictions or very difficult personal circumstances. And then some people will simply choose to work the system and get by.

When they arrive sick and injured at the hospital doors, society must figure out what to do with them. One option: If they can’t pay, turn them away. Another option is the pre-Affordable Care Act method of letting them use the emergency room for free and then hospitals eating the costs or shifting them to the rest of us invisibly so we can pretend they don’t exist.

The state is opting for door number three: Try to provide enough but not too much, and try to get as many off the program as possible, for their own good and the taxpayers’.

Got a better idea? Call your legislators. They meet next week.

The death penalty: At least change it

Legislature, Politics, State government

By Steve Brawner
© 2017 by Steve Brawner Communications, Inc.

Arkansas’ attempt to execute eight inmates in 11 days has led to a lot of discussion about whether the death penalty should continue to exist, and that discussion should continue. But given that polls show a strong majority of Arkansans support it and the governor is ready to enforce it, the more immediate discussion should be about how to administer it far better than it is has this month.

As you and a lot of people in the United States and the world know, Arkansas’ plan would have set a recent record for most executions in the least amount of time. This was done because the inmates had reached an end point in the appeals process at the same time the state’s supply of one of its three death penalty drugs, midazolam, was about to expire at the end of April. The drugs are hard to obtain because the manufacturers didn’t make them to be used in executions and don’t want to sell them for that purpose, in part because it gets them in trouble with the European Union, a much more important client than Arkansas.

Gov. Asa Hutchinson, a lawyer by training, knew the schedule would result in a flurry of lawsuits and disruptions and that probably not all eight executions would be carried out. (Three have happened and a fourth looks likely, but the rest probably won’t occur before the end of April.) He knew this would be a difficult time for everyone concerned, including his own administration, whose attention this has dominated. But the need to complete the process before April 30 apparently overshadowed how it would affect the state’s brand, which is surprising, because his concern for that brand was the main reason legislators never even seriously considered a transgender bathroom bill during the past three months.

Worldwide, the story is not that Arkansas is executing eight people. The story is the rapid pace, and reason for it. At the moment, many outsiders would fill in the blank in the following sentence “Arkansas is _____,” with “the state that planned to execute eight people in 11 days because one of its drugs was about to go bad.” Regardless of what you believe about the death penalty, if that’s the first thing that pops into an outsider’s head, it’s not good for business.

Also not good for business are the unprofessional methods Arkansas has used to obtain its three-drug cocktail: the sedative midazolam; vecuronium bromide, which stops a person’s breathing; and the heart-stopping potassium chloride. As reported by the Associated Press, the Department of Correction director obtained potassium chloride against the wishes of the manufacturer by meeting in an undisclosed location with a distributor who “donated” it rather than sell it. Moreover, the manufacturer of vecuronium bromide sued the state saying it had been misled about how the drug would be used, though a Department of Correction deputy director said he did give that information to a company salesman.

The lack of straightforwardness by one party in these transactions – Arkansas – is possible because a state law keeps anonymous the identities of drug manufacturers and suppliers, which is looking more and more like a bad idea. The rule of thumb should be, open government is better than a secretive one, lest agency directors sneak around the corner to obtain drugs from undisclosed suppliers.

Governments have been executing people for eons using a variety of methods, from hangings to guillotines to feeding them to lions. Despite there being thousands of ways to kill a person, Arkansas state law very specifically requires using either a barbiturate or that three-drug cocktail, all of which are difficult to obtain, or if lethal injection is invalidated by a court, the electric chair.

Legislators met for three months this year, but the state’s execution processes where hardly discussed despite the gathering storm. They will meet three more days in a special session May 1-3, but there’s no talk about changing the processes then, either.

Regardless of what one believes about the death penalty, we can all agree that this has been a roller coaster ride for everyone, and not a fun one. Much of that is because of an American legal system that Arkansas can’t change, but it can change its own laws and administrative processes. It should do what it can as soon as it can. There are still 30 inmates on Death Row, with more to be added later.