Category Archives: State government

Arkansas should honor the most honorable

Legislature, Politics, State government
Statues, statue
Sen. James Paul Clarke’s statue at the U.S. Capitol, near the entrance.

By Steve Brawner

Hillary Clinton’s running mate, Sen. Tim Kaine, said Aug. 20 that Virginia could “do better” in picking its two historical figures to honor with statues in the U.S. Capitol  than George Washington and Robert E. Lee.

Certainly, Arkansas could. Unlike Virginia, our state is honored in Congress’ National Statuary Hall Collection by two figures occupying very small spaces in anyone’s history books.

One is Uriah Rose, founder of the Rose Law Firm and a nationally prominent attorney during the latter half of the 1800s and early 1900s.

The other is James Paul Clarke, Arkansas’ 18th governor from 1895-96 who then served more than two terms in the U.S. Senate after the turn of the century. He was president pro tempore of the Senate, broke with his party to support the Panama Canal, and supported progressive legislation, including opposing literacy tests for immigrants.

White supremacy views, not a titanic figure

Clarke also, according to the Encyclopedia of Arkansas, supported white supremacy. Campaigning for governor in 1894, he said, “The people of the South looked to the Democratic Party to preserve the white standards of civilization.”

We are all products of our time, but Clarke clearly doesn’t represent the best of Arkansas, and he doesn’t represent all Arkansans. The state should grant its highest honors to the most honorable.

Aside from his views on race, he is not a titanic historical figure in Arkansas history, much less American history. Certainly, he does not compare to historical figures representing other states, such as Washington or Kansas’ Dwight Eisenhower. One of Oklahoma’s is Will Rogers, while Helen Keller is one of Alabama’s. On the other hand, many states also are represented by forgotten or forgettable figures and by those who also should be replaced, such as Mississippi’s Jefferson Davis, president of the Confederacy.

Perhaps Arkansas should follow the lead of some states that have replaced statues in recent years. California swapped one of its statues for President Reagan in 2009. Michigan honored President Ford with a statue in 2011. Arizona enshrined Sen. Barry Goldwater in 2015. In 2016, Ohio replaced one of its own white supremacists with Thomas Edison, paying the sculptor $80,000 for the job.

Replacing a statue would require an act of the Legislature. It also would require funding.

I’m doubting Clarke would have many defenders. The controversy would involve paying for the new statue and, of course, deciding who to pick.

Who instead?

According to the 1864 law establishing the collection, the statue must honor a deceased person. Some off-the-top-of-my-head suggestions would be:

– Hattie Caraway, the nation’s first female senator.

– Daisy Bates, civil rights leader and mentor to the Little Rock Nine as they integrated Central High School.

– Johnny Cash, famous country singer.

– Sam Walton, founder of Walmart.

The selection would not have to enjoy universal support. Not every Californian is a Reagan fan, and even Edison has his detractors because of his sometimes ruthless business practices. But the statue must honor someone historically important, clearly tied to the state, and recognizable. It should be someone of whom Arkansans could say, “We had the only one of these, and you didn’t.”

History changes as our lenses get longer. Those who seem important today can be forgotten tomorrow. Some should be forgotten. And some really weren’t that memorable to begin with.

Arkansas should find someone else to represent the state. Who would you pick?

© 2017 by Steve Brawner Communications, Inc.

Castro’s death moves Cuba farther into the market for Arkansas rice, ideas

Business, Business and economics, Politics, State government, U.S. Congress

By Steve Brawner
© 2016 by Steve Brawner Communications, Inc.

Fidel Castro is dead. How does that affect people in Arkansas? Maybe a lot, especially if they work in the rice industry or are elected to represent people who do.

Cuba’s 11 million people import 400,000 tons of rice each year, mostly from Vietnam, which means the rice arrives after a long boat ride from a country on the other side of the globe. Rep. Rick Crawford’s eastern Arkansas 1st District includes half of America’s rice acreage, so it’s understandable that his reaction to Castro’s death focused on the future, not the past.

“Fidel Castro’s death is an opportunity for America to end its ineffective policies so we can influence the future direction of that nation,” he tweeted, then added, “Through my own visits to Cuba I’ve seen people ready for change. With Fidel dead, America needs to help lead Cuba toward a better future.”

Crawford for some time has been an outspoken supporter of prying open Cuba’s markets, which have been largely closed since Oct. 19, 1960, because of the American trade embargo. He’s pushed legislation to allow Cubans to purchase agricultural products on credit rather than the currently required cash, of which Cubans don’t have much, so they could replace that Vietnamese rice with fresher, cheaper rice grown here.

Two other Arkansas officials who represent those same eastern Arkansas agricultural producers (and voters) took a similar forward-looking approach. Sen. John Boozman tweeted, “I hope the death of Fidel Castro marks a new beginning for an American-Cuban partnership and brings light to democracy in #Cuba.” Speaking to reporters, Gov. Asa Hutchinson called Castro’s death a “moment that I believe needs to be seized.”

President-elect Donald Trump said he would terminate the current opening with Cuba initiated by President Obama unless Cuba makes a better deal for its own people, for Cuban-Americans, and for the United States. That threat may have just been the country’s new dealmaker-in-chief doing what he does, which is start the negotiating process by taking a hard line and then moving away from it.

In response, the governor said Trump’s stance is “understandable,” but while change must be accompanied by enhanced freedom for Cubans, “I hope that we do not go back to the simple, straightforward, rigid embargo that we have tried for 50-plus years.”

Hutchinson and Boozman represent the state while Crawford represents his district, so their remarks were meant for those audiences. Sen. Tom Cotton has an additional audience – a national one. It includes many people who, like him, have argued that this thawing of relations between America and Cuba will only help the Castro regime. Cotton released a two-sentence comment focused on the past, except for one assertion of Castro’s future: “Fidel Castro created hell on earth for the Cuban people. He will now become intimately familiar with what he wrought.”

Count me with Crawford, Boozman and Hutchinson on this one. The American people are supposed to be practical-minded problem-solvers who, when something doesn’t work, try something else. We’re the country where Thomas Edison invented the light bulb through experimentation, failure and more experimentation. And yet when it comes to its Cuba policy, we’ve stubbornly tried the same thing for 56 years that clearly didn’t work. Only old age and death, not the American trade embargo, removed Castro from power. Now his brother, Raul, remains in charge. He’s 85, by the way.

Pry open the doors to Cuba, let in a little freedom, and see what happens. Arkansas rice will be more than just an item on the dinner table. It will be a taste of what a free market economy offers. As Cuba opens itself to visitors from Arkansas and elsewhere, it will not be able to choke off ideas that are contrary to its glorious revolution. Fifty-five years after the failed Bay of Pigs invasion, an army of businessmen, tourists and missionaries will descend on an island 90 miles from Florida, accomplishing what the embargo never could.

Somebody’s going to sell rice to the Cubans, and when they do they’ll also export their ideas and way of life. Currently, that exporter is Vietnam, another repressive communist regime. I think Arkansas offers a better deal.

From only one party to mostly one party

Legislature, Politics, State government

By Steve Brawner
© 2016 by Steve Brawner Communications, Inc.

They say it’s always darkest before dawn. After this year’s election, and the days afterwards, Democrats in Arkansas have to be wondering if they’ve reached that point, or if it’s still only about 3 a.m.

Republicans, of course, won the presidential election in Arkansas, easily won the U.S. Senate race, and were re-elected in all four congressional races, three of which didn’t even produce a Democratic opponent.

As of the morning after the election, Republicans had picked up nine seats in the state House of Representatives, giving them 73 out of 100, and two seats in the Senate, giving them 26 out of 35. In 2008, Democrats controlled 102 of the 135 seats.

For Democrats, that was pretty dark. Then, the day after the election, one of their own, Rep. Jeff Wardlaw of Hermitage, switched parties, and on Nov. 22, another Democrat, Rep. David Hillman of Almyra, switched as well. Republicans now have 75 of the 100 House members – a three-fourths supermajority allowing them to pass all appropriations bills without having to worry about Democratic objections, and they’re one short of having that same majority in the Senate. Another Democratic legislator is seriously considering switching.

Bluntly speaking, what’s happening in Arkansas is what’s already happened throughout the South: Rural white Democrats are disappearing at the state and national levels. With a dwindling number of exceptions, the Democrats remaining in the Legislature increasingly represent urban areas, or they are minorities representing districts with large minority populations.

Those remaining rural white Democratic legislators know they are faced with three choices, which sometimes are spelled out explicitly to them by Republicans in power: Switch parties so they can stay in office; decline to run again and leave office gracefully; or stick with their party and probably lose if they have a decent Republican opponent. Six Democratic incumbents chose that last option this year, and they lost.

The vestiges of 150 years of Democratic dominance will take a while to reverse. Democrats still control a majority of all partisan elected offices thanks to their strength at the county level. Those offices will turn over more slowly because they aren’t term-limited and because county officials have staying power. Democrats are pouring resources into their county committees because they know it’s where they are still strong.

But Republicans are making gains at the county level, too. According to numbers supplied by the Republican Party of Arkansas, this election Republicans picked up seven county judges’ seats to reach 25 out of 75, and nine sheriff’s offices to reach 21, with another candidate in Hot Spring County still to face an independent in a runoff. The party increased its number of justices of the peace from 248 to 295. Republicans now control almost 39 percent of all partisan offices in Arkansas, excluding surveyors and constables. In 2010, they controlled 11 percent.

For Republicans, this might be too much of a good thing. They’re not going to turn anybody away, of course, but party discipline is easier to enforce with a small majority of party loyalists than with an overwhelming majority that includes ex-Democrats.

Democrats, meanwhile, must figure out some way to appeal to culturally conservative Arkansans despite their national party moving in the other direction. Rep. Michael John Gray of Augusta, who says he’s running for the party chairmanship in March, said Democrats must focus on “kitchen table” issues, rather than more controversial “coffee shop” ones, and reclaim the spirit that existed when Roosevelt Democrats were seen as offering hope to the common man.

In the meantime, let’s all hope both parties expand their bases – certainly past geography and most certainly past race. One hopeful sign is that the newly elected county judge in Washington County, home to Fayetteville and Springdale, is Joseph Wood, a Republican and an African-American.

For much of Arkansas’ post-Civil War history, Democrats weren’t just a majority party but practically the only one. During those years, Arkansas was less a one-party state than a no-party state.

Republicans will not reach that point, but at the state and national levels, they are dominant and becoming more so. Democrats ran things for a century and a half. How long will this realignment last? Hard to tell, because the Republican era is just now dawning.

Giving thanks for foster kids’ caseworkers

State government, Uncategorized

By Steve Brawner
© 2016 by Steve Brawner Communications, Inc.

While most of us this week will enjoy a Thanksgiving meal with our families, 5,200 children in Arkansas also will be fed a meal – but not by their parents.

That’s the number of children who are in the state’s foster care system, and it’s risen by more than 1,000 since 2014. According to Department of Human Services Director Cindy Gillespie, the system “truly is in a crisis.”

What’s happening is not so much that more children are entering the system, though they are, but that much fewer are leaving it.

Gillespie and her Division of Children and Family Services director, Mischa Martin, say a major cause is a declining number of front-line caseworkers who work with children and their families, biological and foster. In Arkansas, they average 28 cases apiece when the national standard is 15.

Caseworkers, who earn about $31,000 a year, are working a lot of overtime in a high-stress, high-stakes job. They walk into extremely difficult, unsafe family situations where parents are drug addicts or abusive, or both. Then they walk out carrying a kid, or dragging several, for whom they must find a place to stay that night. Sometimes, that involves long hours of making phone calls – surely one of the most stressful and heartbreaking sales jobs ever. Then they work with the biological family so their children can return. Meanwhile, they’re monitoring the children in their temporary home. They’re also spending too much time driving, making copies, and doing other work that doesn’t directly involve efficiently taking care of kids.

Naturally, turnover is high, so we have a corps of hardworking, dedicated, understaffed, underpaid caseworkers who in many cases are either burning out or learning on the job. Because of that, they’re less capable of achieving the ultimate goal, which is reuniting as many kids as possible with their newly equipped biological parents.

According to Gillespie, this is more than just a problem for the Division of Children and Family Services, which is in charge of foster children. It’s a problem for the entire Department of Human Services, a sprawling agency that handles many programs for struggling families. So for four months starting in May, she regularly convened the entire agency’s leadership in a “war room” environment to consider strategies. Gov. Asa Hutchinson, who has asked many other state agencies to be as lean as possible, has proposed $26 million next fiscal year to hire 228 additional staff members, including 150 caseworkers. Pay increases are also being considered, as is instituting a second shift so caseworkers aren’t working all the time.

Meanwhile, DHS is working with private organizations like The CALL in Arkansas to recruit foster families who can give children a temporary home – days, months or longer – until the biological parents are ready to raise their children again. Those homes are where many of those children will spend their Thanksgiving this year. There are currently 1,641 such families, along with 274 therapeutic homes for more serious cases, and the agency is hoping to increase those numbers to 1,749 and 350 by August 2017.

As long as I can remember, there’s been a big debate about whether government can do anything right. This is something government must do right. Children should be separated from their parents only when absolutely necessary – when those parents are strung out on drugs, in prison, physically or sexually abusive, or neglectful. Unfortunately, in a state with 3 million people, that’s going to happen sometimes. In those circumstances, someone must take the kids away and then assume responsibility for them, at least for a while. That’s probably going to be the state of Arkansas.

So yes, Gov. Hutchinson, if you’re going to spend my tax dollars on anything, spend them on this. Hire good people, and pay them enough that they’ll stay on the job and get really good at it. Of all the reasons for families to be separated on Thanksgiving, an inadequate number of caseworkers is one of the worst ones.

None of this is meant as a criticism of those caseworkers, who wade into situations the rest of us avoid to help kids and families in a crisis. On this Thanksgiving, I’m thankful they’re there, and I’m thankful that, assuming the governor gets his way, there soon will be more of them.

Related: Trading an empty nest for a full house.