Category Archives: State government

Why college? To get a useful degree and a job

Education, State government

Dr. Maria Markham is the new Department of Higher Education director.
Dr. Maria Markham is the new Department of Higher Education director.
By Steve Brawner
© 2016 by Steve Brawner Communications, Inc.

What’s the purpose of college? In the past, answers to that question often have been relatively abstract: to get an education; to expand your horizons; to be exposed to new ideas. Or the answers would be completely wrong: because it’s the next thing to do after high school; to party; to play football.

Increasingly, Arkansas policymakers have a new, more concrete answer: to earn a degree or certificate that leads to a job.

Last Friday, the Arkansas Higher Education Coordinating Board approved a funding framework that would change the way colleges and universities are funded – emphasizing completion versus enrollment.

Traditionally, the state has funded institutions based on head count, meaning the more students enrolled, the more tax dollars rolling in. That’s an imperfect incentive because it places too much of an emphasis on getting students in school versus getting them through school. In 2011, the funding formula was tweaked. Now, 10 percent of a school’s state funding is based on various performance-based measures that haven’t really changed anything.

Now what’s being proposed is a totally different, outcomes-based funding formula. The framework is still light on the details, so this explanation will be light. Funding would be based less on enrollment and more on the number of students earning degrees and certificates. It would provide incentives for schools to help students move to a degree faster – the opposite of the current model, where institutions make more money if students switch majors three times and stay in school six years before quitting with nothing. How well students do once they leave college would figure into the mix.

Are there potential unintended consequences? Sure. The state does not want to encourage schools to accept only the best and brightest, so the model will provide extra money for helping underserved and at-risk students complete a degree. The other big concern is that schools will water down their academic requirements so students more easily complete their courses. Dr. Brett Powell, former ADHE director, said the state will have to trust that faculty members won’t let that happen.

How colleges are funded is important because obtaining an education after high school is both expensive (for taxpayers and students) and necessary. A study by the Georgetown University Center on Education and the Workforce found that of the 11.6 million jobs created since the recession, 11.5 million went to those with at least some education after high school.

Obviously, it’s better to have not just some college but a degree or certificate and a set of skills, and here’s where Arkansas has some challenges and opportunities. The state ranks 48th in its percentage of adults with a college degree, 29.8 percent. But Arkansas ranks fourth highest in the percentage of residents with a career and technical education certificate. And these days, those certificates can be really valuable – as well as relatively cheap and fast to obtain.

The Arkansas Department of Higher Education and higher education officials have crafted a plan, Closing the Gap 2020, which seeks to increase the percentage of Arkansans with a degree or certificate from the current 43 percent to 60 percent by 2025. To meet expected workforce needs, the state needs to increase its percentage of residents with a career and technical education certificate from 9 to 22 percent by 2020; its percentage with an associate’s degree from 7.2 to 12 percent; and its percentage with a bachelor’s degree, but no higher, from 15.1 percent to 18 percent.

The new outcomes-based funding formula has a long way to go before becoming law. The Legislature must approve the bare-bones framework next year. Then Higher Ed must add some meat to those bones under the leadership of its new director, Dr. Maria Markham. Then the Legislature has to approve the final plan in 2018.

Making the task easier is that some of the state’s higher education leaders are on board. The chancellors of the University of Arkansas System and the University of Arkansas at Fayetteville have expressed support. So have Arkansas State University President Chuck Welch and Dr. Robin Bowen, president of Arkansas Tech University.

For change to occur, that support will have to hold as the details become known. Somebody’s going to lose something, including institutions that don’t make the transition well. And who will be the winners? Students who complete their programs and are ready to make a living as productive citizens.

If that’s not the main purpose of college, it should be.

Related: Is college worth it?

Medical weed: What images do you see?

Elections, Politics, State government

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

Unless Arkansas somehow becomes competitive in the presidential race, which it probably won’t, the state’s airwaves won’t be crammed with political advertising by Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump. Pity our unfortunate fellow Americans in Ohio, Pennsylvania and Florida for that one. In Arkansas, the only race between candidates that might be mildly interesting is the one for U.S. Senate.

What we will have is a pretty good three-way debate about medical marijuana.

Arkansans likely will have two choices on their ballot: the Arkansas Medical Cannabis Act and the Arkansas Medical Marijuana Amendment. The act has already qualified, while the amendment is in the process of doing so.

Both would legalize marijuana for medicinal use, but they differ in substantive ways. The act would have the force of law, while the amendment alters the Arkansas Constitution, a more permanent statement. The act includes about 50 ailments for which marijuana could be prescribed; the amendment lists 14. Both would set up a network of dispensaries where patients could obtain the product, but the amendment’s would be for-profit enterprises while the act’s would be run by nonprofits. Only the act includes a provision allowing patients living too far from a dispensary to grow their own.

That last provision is the reason there are two ballot proposals. The leaders of the two groups,
the act’s Melissa Fults and the amendment’s David Couch, worked together in 2012 to convince voters to legalize medical marijuana and almost succeeded. Since then, they’ve split over “grow your own,” which Couch says Arkansans won’t accept. The split does not appear to be amicable.

Meanwhile, a campaign is forming to oppose both groups. On July 22, the Coalition for Safer Arkansas Communities held an informational meeting at the Arkansas State Chamber of Commerce. The coalition will include law enforcement personnel, educators, medical providers and others. Gov. Asa Hutchinson is opposed to the legalization efforts, as is the state’s surgeon general, Dr. Greg Bledsoe. The State Chamber is opposed because it says medical marijuana will complicate workplace safety enforcement efforts and worker’s compensation claims.

The main speaker at the meeting was Henny Lasley, a Little Rock native now living in Colorado, which legalized marijuana medically in 2000 and recreationally in 2012. Now, she says, youth marijuana use in Colorado is the highest in the nation. There are more marijuana stores in Denver than pharmacies, Starbucks, or McDonald’s. Hundreds of marijuana products – including all kinds of fun-looking foods – are for sale in that state. She and Dr. Bledsoe say that, far from being harmless, marijuana is a dangerous plant with long-term effects and far higher concentrations of the mind-altering THC compound than it contained in the past.

Lasley said that all of the four states, plus D.C., where marijuana is now legal recreationally originally legalized it medically. She and the coalition’s campaign manager, Terry Benham, say the medical marijuana efforts are just Trojan horses hiding the marijuana industry’s true intentions, full-scale legalization.

Fults and Couch say this is not a Trojan horse. They say marijuana ought to be an option for doctors and patients in some circumstances, such as cancer and epilepsy, and that the Food and Drug Administration is dragging its feet on studying the drug for political reasons, including the influence of the pharmaceutical industry. Medical marijuana is now legal in 25 states plus D.C., but legal recreationally in only four states plus D.C., so most states have not followed Colorado’s lead in expanding its use.

This campaign, like many, will come down to images – the kind voters see on television and the internet, and the kind they see in their heads. What comes to your mind with the words “medical marijuana”? A cancer patient or an epileptic getting a little relief, or a teenager getting his hands on a now-available gateway drug? Do you see a small network of dispensaries responsibly providing a plant to a few who can benefit from it? Or do you see marijuana stores popping up on Main Street?

If you’re not sure, campaigns will be trying to help you form those images, one way or the other. This is an election, after all.

Spend less to tax less

Politics, State government, U.S. Congress

Lt. Governor Tim Griffin says tightening state government's finances is the necessary first step to cutting taxes.
Lt. Governor Tim Griffin says tightening state government’s finances is the necessary first step to cutting taxes.
By Steve Brawner
© 2016 by Steve Brawner Communications, Inc.

Lt. Governor Tim Griffin is pushing an idea: Cut spending first and then cut taxes. It’s so crazy it just might work, which is why he wants to try it in Arkansas and why, hopefully, someone will try it in Washington, D.C.

Griffin, who has announced he is running for re-election in 2018, points to the state’s ranking in the high 40s in many areas. Sitting across the table from me in a Little Rock coffee shop, he said the state can’t get to the top by tweaking. “Bold is the only option” he said.

A top priority would be the state’s income tax. It ranks in the middle of the country, according to the Tax Foundation, but the top rate, 6.9 percent, is tied for 14th highest and hits all filers with incomes of $35,099, which is not exactly Walton money.

Arkansas’ top rate is higher than all its surrounding states, including Texas, which has no income tax. Thus the state is at a competitive disadvantage, which is one reason Gov. Asa Hutchinson wants to cut income taxes next year, as was done in 2015. Hutchinson probably will propose relatively modest cuts. Griffin wants to go big.

The problem, Griffin says, is that elected officials who talk about tax cuts run into a brick wall erected by those who argue that the state won’t have enough revenues to meet critical needs. To get past that, the state must make reforms to meet those needs with fewer dollars.

The simplest way of looking at how the state spends money is its general revenue budget, which in fiscal year 2017 is $5.3 billion. Griffin says making government 10 percent more efficient, which is really doable, would free up $530 million – enough for a substantial income tax cut along with increased spending in other areas, such as highways.

Griffin is talking about not just cutting waste, fraud and abuse, but instead undertaking systemic reforms of state agencies, many of which he says were designed before the remote control was invented. He says if a boat is designed to require six rowers, it does no good to try to propel it with four. Instead, change the boat so it only needs four.

“Make smart government your focus. … If you just cut, you still have the same inefficient systems in place that require the inefficient resources,” he said.

Last year, Griffin undertook a review of the state’s massive Department of Human Services, which takes care of a lot of the state’s neediest residents and is a mess. Its new director, Cindy Gillespie, now is reorganizing it. Griffin wants to see the same effort undertaken across state government. He started by cutting one position from his three-person office.

Griffin says state government has a moral obligation to spend taxpayer dollars efficiently. He says Arkansas must be competitive with other states. And, it must prepare for the day when the debt-ridden federal government starts sending less money to Arkansas.

And that brings us to Washington, D.C., where Republicans adhere to two entrenched beliefs that are very different from what Griffin, a former Republican congressman, is describing. One, “starve the beast,” says government can be shrunk by depriving it of money through tax cuts. The other belief is that tax cuts generate so much economic growth that spending cuts aren’t really necessary. Donald Trump’s plan reflects that belief – tax cuts without spending cuts – which is why the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget says it could add $11.5 trillion to the national debt.

Republicans in Washington over the past few decades have pledged allegiance to those two beliefs, enthusiastically cutting taxes without insisting on cutting government. Democrats shook hands on that bargain because they like to spend without taxing, too. The result has been the national debt ballooning from $1 trillion in 1981 to $19.4 trillion today. Unfortunately, money did not grow on trees, and the beast wasn’t starved because it could reach across the table into the future and steal food from the plates of our children and grandchildren.

All of this should make perfect sense to those of us who live on a budget. If you are struggling to make ends meet, you look for waste and inefficiency in your spending first, and certainly before you switch to a lower-paying job.

It makes sense in government, too, where being smart should be the focus, and where the state of Arkansas is a good place to start.

Related: If Trump or Clinton succeed? More debt.

Is age 70 too old to judge, case closed?

State government

golden balanceBy Steve Brawner
© 2016 by Steve Brawner Communications, Inc.

Is a 69-year-old perfectly acceptable to serve as a judge, but a 70-year-old too old? That’s sort of how the state of Arkansas looks at it.

Under a law passed in 1965, judges who reach age 70 would lose their retirement benefits permanently if they are re-elected, though their paycheck contributions through the years would be returned to them. Not surprisingly, no Arkansas judge has ever given up those benefits to keep serving.

Several judges who are about that age recently sued, saying the law effectively adds an age requirement to the Arkansas Constitution.

They lost. In a 5-2 decision, the Arkansas Supreme Court ruled June 23 that an age limit for receiving retirement benefits is not the same as an age limit for serving. “If it is possible to construe a statute as constitutional, we must do so,” wrote Justice Courtney Goodson in her majority opinion.

Thirty-three states have upper age limits for judges, but Arkansas is the only state that uses retirement benefits to encourage judges to retire. We’re not going to make them leave, but we will grab their cane and use it to nudge them toward the door. In her concurring opinion, Justice Karen Baker wrote that most of the recent efforts to change or repeal those laws across the country have failed. The Arkansas Legislature rejected an attempt to increase the age to 72 in 2015 and has rejected other efforts to change the law in the past. Legal challenges also have failed. The U.S. Supreme Court – which currently has three members above age 70 – has ruled age requirements to be constitutional.

The Arkansas Supreme Court justices who are nowhere near 70 all voted to uphold the law. Two of the older justices split, with Justice Jo Hart voting with the majority and Chief Justice Howard Brill dissenting.

And the one justice who has reached age 70, Justice Paul Danielson, really let ‘em have it in his dissent. He wrote that the Legislature is trying to indirectly accomplish what it can’t accomplish directly, and that what the law actually says is, “leave or we’ll steal your wallet.” And then he got even more personal, writing, “The General Assembly may consider me aged and possibly even senile, but I can still spot a constitutional violation when I see one.”

Some facts are noteworthy here. One is that legislators and members of the executive branch are not required to retire by a certain age to receive benefits. Also, this is not a term limits measure. You can serve 40 years, and as long as you quit at 70, you still receive a pension.

Finally, it’s worth pointing out that lawmakers are members of political parties whose presidential candidates would be considered too old or almost too old for the Arkansas Supreme Court. Donald Trump is 70. Hillary Clinton will be 69 by the time the election occurs in November. So 70 is too old to sit in a chair and judge cases, but not too old to fly around the world on Air Force One.

What bothers me most about this law – and it bothers me more now that I’m 47 than it would have when I was 37 – is how arbitrary it is. The age limit is sort of picked out of a hat. At a time when society is contorting itself not to discriminate against some individuals, Arkansas is saying that 70-year-olds in general probably can’t make wise decisions any more. That’s unfair and dumb. There are many 70-year-olds who are in excellent physical shape and who haven’t lost a step mentally. Arkansas is discouraging from service the very people who have the most experience with the law.

This society is rapidly aging, and it will have to question some of its assumptions about what a senior citizen can do. Otherwise, we’ll carry on our backs people who are still capable of shouldering their share of the load. Certainly, some 70-year-olds should not be judges – but neither should many 50-year-olds. As in a court of law, it should be decided on a case-by-case basis.

Related: Why Supreme Court races matter: Lake View