Category Archives: State government

Ex-con points way to closing prison’s revolving door

By Steve Brawner
© 2015 by Steve Brawner Communications, Inc.

Before this past legislative session, legislators were asked to consider building a $100 million prison, but nobody really wanted to do that. The state already housed more than 18,000 inmates, including a backlog of 2,500 in county jails, and a new prison would add only 1,000 beds. Forty-three percent of inmates released from prison return within three years, anyway. As soon as the new prison was finished, another would have to be built.

Other solutions are needed that change behavior, Gov. Asa Hutchinson said, so that prison becomes less of a revolving door. So he proposed, and legislators passed, a legislative package meant to provide a short-term fix, including renting space in Texas, and a more long-term effort that includes creating transitional re-entry centers where prisoners reintegrate into society – rather than just receiving the traditional $100 and a bus ticket back to the life that sent them to prison in the first place.

Hutchinson and legislators also created a criminal justice reform task force that is studying other options. Let’s hope its members talk to Jason Duncan.

Duncan, 33, does not look like an ex-con. He’s 6-5, handsome, and stands with a leader’s confident posture.

At age 18, he was a different person. At that point, he told me he decided “to seek whatever was pleasurable in the moment” and began a life that, a decade later, “found me completely addicted to drugs, a raging alcoholic and starting to develop quite a spectacular rap sheet.”

He was sitting in a concrete jail cell in North Carolina, a fugitive from Arkansas justice, when he opened a Bible out of boredom to Deuteronomy 28, read about curses resulting from disobedience, and saw himself. He decided to become a Christian, got out of jail, and immediately returned to his old life, which led him, finally, to an Arkansas correctional facility.

Duncan’s life began to change when he enrolled in a program offered through Arkansas Community Corrections where inmates are transported to Little Rock’s Arkansas Baptist College to participate in a program managed by Under Grace Ministries. The inmates attend classes in recovery, spiritual discipleship, entrepreneurial thinking and resource management.

The inmates stood out a little. They wore brown uniforms, which was OK because, Duncan said, “most of the students thought we worked for UPS.” Many were white, including Duncan, and they were attending class on a campus serving mostly African-American students that originally was built to educate former slaves.

The program gave Duncan the direction he needed. After leaving state custody, he remained at ABC for two semesters and then transferred to the University of Arkansas at Little Rock, where he’s studying international business and marketing. He’s now the director of international student ministry at Fellowship Bible Church. He’s married and has a son from his previous life.

Last week, he spoke at a ceremony dedicating ABC’s Scott Ford Center for Entrepreneurship & Community Development, which will house an expanded version of the program that changed his life. So far, about 30 inmates have started the program. Next year, 100-120 will be involved.

I asked Duncan what services inmates need to return to society and stay out of prison. He said they need a spiritual foundation along with education and work training because many have never had a job and don’t really know what one is. They need help overcoming their addictions. Also, each one of them should transition to society in a halfway house, a “safe environment with accountability but also a mix of freedom.”

The recently passed legislative package will pay for 500 parolees to be involved in such transitional re-entry centers. The state each year releases 10,000 inmates back into society.

Duncan didn’t say it, but fewer people need to go to prison in the first place. There are two reasons 43 percent of inmates return to prison within three years. One is that they were messed up to begin with, and prison didn’t fix them. The other is that they had merely made mistakes to begin with, and then prison really messed them up.

Let’s hope policymakers wisely consider solutions from every angle – keeping people out of prison who shouldn’t be there, helping parolees avoid returning, and keeping those who should be in prison locked up. Let’s hope the state finds more partners like Under Grace Ministries and ABC. Halfway houses are a good start, but let’s not settle for halfway solutions.

What do teachers think of Common Core?

Common Core cover cutoutBy Steve Brawner
© 2015 by Steve Brawner Communications, Inc.

What do Arkansas teachers think about the Common Core? According to a recent survey, 61 percent would keep it rather than eliminate it, but 87 percent don’t like the testing.

Those were some of the findings of the University of Arkansas’ Office for Education Policy, which asked 2,795 teachers to participate in an online survey and received responses from 975 of them.

Many Arkansas teachers seem to find a lot of positives in the Common Core, which is a set of common standards in math and English language arts currently used by 43 states. Sixty-six percent said they were satisfied with the standards, and 92 percent said they were more rigorous than the previous ones. Large majorities agreed or strongly agreed that the Common Core will lead to improved student learning, help students think critically, and better prepare them for college and the workforce.

Lt. Governor Tim Griffin, who is leading a panel appointed by Gov. Asa Hutchinson to review the standards, found the results somewhat contradictory. Despite the above results, when asked to complete the sentence, “Overall, my students will be ___ after the introduction of the Common Core Standards,” only 46 percent said “better off,” while 28 percent said “the same” and 26 percent said “worse off.”

In other words, less than half of the teachers said the Common Core will make a positive difference overall in the same survey where large majorities were saying it makes a positive difference in the areas that matter – learning, critical thinking, and college and career preparation.

Griffin, a public school father who seems willing to listen to both sides of the Common Core debate, said the survey is “interesting” and “helpful” but “not dispositive” – which, he had to explain to me, is a legal term meaning it doesn’t settle anything.

Polls rarely do, which is why a democracy shouldn’t be based on them. This is not a criticism of the Office for Education Policy, which seems to have conducted a thorough survey. But, as is often the case, of course you get contradictory results when you ask complicated people about complicated issues with only a few simple answers from which to choose. Also, survey respondents often answer the questions they want to answer, not the ones that are asked. (Happens in real-life conversations, too.)

Which brings us to the 87 percent who said they didn’t like the testing associated with Common Core. Of all the elements of the Common Core, the testing is the most controversial. Arkansas is part of a consortium of nine states plus the District of Columbia involved in the PARCC assessment, which compares students across state lines. At one time, there were 24 states, but a majority have left. Legislators considered doing the same here but ultimately decided to renew Arkansas’ participation no more than one year at a time.

There are many questions about the test, including how the data will be used and whether the results will be known in time to do any good. With an 87 percent majority, it’s clear that teachers don’t like PARCC, but many probably also were expressing years of frustration with testing in general. It takes too much time, and they don’t like being judged for how another human performs on a test.

Teaching has undergone many changes in recent years. No Child Left Behind put the federal government in charge of holding schools accountable. The state has instituted a Teacher Excellence and Support System to evaluate teachers and help them improve. New instructional methods are de-emphasizing lecturing. More and more, teachers instead are expected to guide students through technology-driven, project-based learning.

Change is hard. Sixty-four percent of the survey’s respondents disagreed with the statement, “I like teaching more now than before the Common Core Standards were introduced.” Seventy-four percent said that teaching has become more stressful. But 63 percent agreed that the Common Core has made them better at their job.

So maybe many in that 61 percent who said the Common Core should be retained really think it’s better. And maybe some were really just saying they didn’t want to change to something else yet again. Maybe some were just saying, “Let us catch our breath!”

At the very least, this much is clear: A majority of teachers who answered this survey want to keep the Common Core, and a large majority don’t like the testing.

What should Arkansas do with this information? It’s not dispositive.

Seek first to understand, even in politics

By Steve Brawner
© 2015 by Steve Brawner Communications, Inc.

The fifth of Dr. Stephen Covey’s “Seven Habits of Highly Effective People” is “Seek first to understand, then to be understood.” Could that apply to politics, even today?

Covey taught that being understood is such a fundamental need that it is impossible to influence another person until that need has been met. He compared it to air: Remove it from a room, and nothing else would matter to the occupants.

Unfortunately, understanding is in short supply – in Washington, D.C., of course, but also outside the Beltway. Americans are divided ideologically, culturally and even geographically. We live in red and blue states and in safe Republican and Democratic congressional districts. Even our neighborhoods and churches are largely politically segregated. As a result, we’re far more likely to talk about people on the other side than with them. Now we’re entering another campaign season where billions of dollars will be spent to disunite us. Didn’t we just have an election?

Seeking first to understand, then to be understood is important politically for three reasons: because none of us knows everything (except radio talk show hosts and TV pundits, of course); because most of us have something to offer; and because the stakes are too high not to try.

The issues that we argue about usually involve competing worthwhile values that are difficult to balance – what government should do to help the needy, for example. Few Americans, including conservatives, want the government to do absolutely nothing to help those who truly need it, and most of us, including liberals, agree that too much government dependence is bad both for society and for dependent individuals.

What’s the exact dollar figure that perfectly balances those two competing values? No one can know. Thank goodness we don’t have to hit that sweet spot perfectly. Just getting reasonably close and governing responsibly is good enough.

In a country with 300 million people, you don’t reach that point by digging ideological trenches and shooting at each other across no man’s land. That kind of thinking just perpetuates an unsustainable status quo.

So how about seeking first to understand? What if we humbly acknowledged that, because we don’t know everything, the greater good is accomplished by combining our ideas with others’? It’s good that liberals warn of the dangers of capitalism degenerating into a survival of the fittest mentality, and it’s good that conservatives voice their concerns about government’s inefficiencies and its capacity to restrict freedom.

By valuing both points of views, and others across the political spectrum, we can get to Covey’s sixth habit: Synergize. That’s the idea that individuals can come together from different places and create something better than what either would have created on their own. It’s much better than compromise, where no one walks away particularly happy. Compromise is better than continued fighting, and in politics, it’s often the best possible result. But synergy happens, too. It’s how we got the Constitution. These days, a framework might be created that better addresses human needs without increasing dependency and adding to the $18 trillion national debt.

Covey also taught that each of us inhabits two circles: a circle of concern where we have no control, and a circle of influence where we do. Focus on your circle of influence, he said.

I can’t create synergy in Washington, but I can seek first to understand, then to be understood in my own life. I’ve decided to learn to avoid fruitless political debates, online or in person – the kind where two people are concerned only with scoring points and not considering the other’s ideas. Nothing productive happens when two people are emotionally invested in a political argument and motivated by pride and fear of losing face. I’ve wasted my time on several of these lately. In the end, all I accomplished was become frustrated and lose 45 minutes that could have been spent more productively.

Instead, I’ve determined to treat these discussions as opportunities for partnership rather than competition – to seek first to understand. I expect I’ll learn something actually listening to others. Maybe we’ll create a dialogue that enriches us both. Maybe I’ll influence the other person, and if I don’t, I certainly wouldn’t have done so by trying to debate them into submission.

And if I’m caught in a conversation with someone who’s not seeking to understand? Hopefully, I’ll be wise enough to get out of it, go somewhere else, and get some air.

Limit state lawmakers to 10 bills

CapitolBy Steve Brawner
© 2015 by Steve Brawner Communications, Inc.

During an 81-day session, Arkansas state legislators considered 2,200 bills and passed 1,288 of them into law. That’s a lot in a short amount of time.

The session was relatively brief. The legislative volume was not out of the ordinary, but were there really 1,288 ways Arkansas needed to be fixed – especially this way, this fast?

This is not a column bashing legislators, whom I find to be generally honorable and likable, with flaws like the rest of us. Many are idealists who spent months walking the streets of their hometowns campaigning for office with no guarantee they would win.

They want all that work to mean something, which is why they filed an average of 16.4 bills per legislator. (There are 135 legislative seats, but one was vacant this session.) Many lawmakers are reluctant to vote against each other’s bills for fear of offending someone they may need later for their own legislation – plus, it just feels kind of rude. As a result, many bills are passed with overwhelming majorities, at least in one chamber. Because there are so many bills – and because legislators don’t have staff members to read them – most of the important work happens in committee. There’s just too much to do in too little time.

The Legislature’s cooperative spirit enables it generally to get its work done – unlike Congress. Under the Revenue Stabilization Act, Arkansas state government will not run a deficit this upcoming fiscal year. In contrast, the Congressional Budget Office projects Uncle Sam will add $468 billion to the national debt in 2015 – the equivalent of about $1,459 per American, and this was a good year. In contrast to the Legislature’s 1,288 acts, Congress passed 296 laws over a two-year period in 2013-14 and 283 in 2011-12, according to the Pew Research Center. In other words, the Legislature passed more than twice as many laws in 81 days as Congress passed in four years.

Congress and the Legislature exist in very different universes. Congress deals in trillions while the Legislature deals in billions. Congress governs a vast, diverse country with significant regional and partisan differences. In the Arkansas Legislature, most Democrats and Republicans have similar viewpoints. The politics is less professional in Arkansas – though it’s moving in that direction.

Still, it probably would be best if Congress were more like the Legislature and if the Legislature were a little more like Congress. Passing 1,288 laws in 81 days – that’s just too many.

So here’s a modest proposal: Each legislator should be limited to filing about 10 bills per session. That would have cut the number to 1,340 this year, creating a more deliberate process and giving legislators a chance to focus on their priorities. If a bill is only 11th on their list, it can’t be that important to them.

This should start as a flexible rule of thumb enforced by the Legislature’s culture rather than a formal, legal limit enforced by law. Issues arise late in a session – for example, banning adoption “rehoming” – and legislators need to be able to file another bill if they are the best positioned to do so.

The downside would be that legislators would write longer, broader bills – try to get two for the price of one, in other words. Yes, that’s a danger, but the more a bill tries to do, the more likely it will contain provisions that draw opposition.

In 1,288 ways, legislators over the past three months have changed Arkansas through the force of government. Some of those laws were good and some weren’t, but all of them were passed in a hurried environment that places too much emphasis on passing bills for passing bills’ sake. Lawmakers should slow down and do less, but do it more deliberately.

•••

I need to make a correction. In a column about the Legislature’s Religious Freedom Restoration Act published around April 1, I wrote that I voted against the state’s 2004 amendment banning gay marriage. I had my elections confused. I voted in 2008 against a ban on unmarried couples adopting or fostering children, which also passed. It was aimed at gays and lesbians and also affected heterosexual unmarried couples.

I’m pretty sure I voted for the gay marriage ban in 2004. I would not vote that way today. Americans should not look to the government to define marriage. Let the government focus its attention elsewhere – and pass fewer laws at the state level thanks to a 10-bill limit. See above.

Governor conducts legislative orchestra

Asa for webBy Steve Brawner
© 2015 by Steve Brawner Communications, Inc.

Arkansas’ state government was designed to have a weak governor, and that tradition has continued. The framers of the current 1874 Constitution ensured a veto could be overridden by a simple majority vote, and later amendments, such as the one that transferred the governor’s authority to the lieutenant governor when the governor leaves the state, have continued that tradition.

Gov. Asa Hutchinson pretty much took a sledgehammer to all of that during this recent legislative session.

On issue after issue, the Legislature gave him whatever he wanted. He wanted a middle class tax cut. It passed. He wanted to buy time on the Medicaid private option, so he asked legislators to extend it for two years while they study what to do with it. Even those who campaigned on an over-my-dead-body platform said yes. When the House Committee on Public Transportation advanced a bill transferring part of general revenues to highways, Hutchinson said it didn’t fit into his budget, so the sponsor killed it, though with a promise from Hutchinson to appoint a task force to study highway funding.

Then there were the constitutional amendments. Legislative leaders indicated they didn’t really care to refer any of those to the voters, so the process looked dead in its tracks. Then Hutchinson said he wanted two – one to end the aforementioned practice of giving up his powers to the lieutenant governor, and one to increase the fund Arkansas uses to attract economic superprojects like auto plants. Both now will be on the ballot in 2016.

How did a system designed to produce a weak governor instead produce an orchestra conductor like Hutchinson? One explanation is that he displayed extraordinary political skills this session. He took potential train wrecks like the private option and Common Core off the table by appointing task forces to study them, and when all heck broke loose with the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, he charted a middle ground that made him a hero to both sides even though he originally supported the bill.

History also was on his side. Hutchinson is the first Republican governor to hold office with a Legislature controlled by Republicans since shortly after the Civil War. His party wanted to govern effectively rather than look like the dog that caught the car and didn’t know what to do with it.

Hutchinson had another explanation during a sit-down session with reporters in his office last Thursday.

“The strength of the governor is from the respect of the office and the recognition that we need to have a leader, and also the desire to have the governor succeed,” he said. “And so that’s impressed me, and that’ s not a Republican thing. That’s a Republican and a Democrat thing. Democrats who opposed me, they not only said it, but they showed it in actions that it is important for Arkansas that the governor succeed.”

Contrast that attitude with this statement made by Sen. Mitch McConnell, R-Kentucky, now majority leader, during an interview with National Journal on Oct. 29, 2010: “The single most important thing we want to achieve is for President Obama to be a one-term president.”

Democrats often point to that statement. To be fair, according to the fact-checking site Politifact, he said it in the context of discussing historical elections and said in that same interview that Republicans were willing to work with Obama “if he’s willing to meet us halfway.”

Still, Republicans’ priority from day one of Obama’s administration clearly has been to position themselves for future elections – just as Democrats in Washington will behave if a Republican presidential candidate manages to beat Hillary Clinton. The days when the president had a “honeymoon” after being elected may be just a fading memory.

Of course, it’s not the job of Democrats and Republicans to help each other succeed – particularly not in Washington, where the parties have real differences in their stated goals. But Washington could use more of Arkansas’ spirit, and Arkansas probably could use a little of Washington’s. Very little, but a little.

The latter will happen in Arkansas over the course of the next two years. Hard decisions on issues like the private option must be made, and legislators in both parties increasingly will challenge the governor.

It will get tougher for Hutchinson, just as it did for previous governors after they had been in office for a while. Unlike in Washington, most legislators still will want him to succeed, but eventually the honeymoon will be over.