Category Archives: State government

Saving $100 and, hopefully, a few inmates

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

“Right now, as you know, if you leave prison, you get $100 and a bus ride, a bus ticket, or something of similar fashion,” Gov. Asa Hutchinson said Wednesday in announcing his prison reform plan. “That is really not going to help reduce repeat offenders from going back in.”

That wasn’t political exaggeration. A hundred dollars is really what a prisoner receives when he walks out of prison, plus a bus ticket if no one is there to give him a ride.

Forty-three percent of inmates who leave prison soon return, which, if you think about it, might be surprisingly low. If a person only knows two worlds – the one that led him to prison, and prison – where is he going to go with nothing but a hundred bucks in his pocket? Back to that first world, and then, often, back to the second.

We can’t afford this, Hutchinson said, and he’s right. There are now 18,000 inmates in Arkansas’ prison system, which is so overcapacity that the state has been forced to house 2,500 inmates in county jails. County officials are screaming because they have no space and therefore no “stick” to use with their own local offenders. Worse, the state does not fully reimburse them for their costs.

One possible solution is a new $100 million prison that would house 1,000 inmates. That still would leave a county jail backup of 1,500 inmates, making it the equivalent of poking an extra hole in a too-small belt and then gorging on a pizza buffet. The state released 10,000 inmates in 2014, Hutchinson said. If 43 percent of them return to prison, the state would have to find that many beds.

Short-term, Hutchinson proposes spending $50 million for enough prison space for 790 inmates, including leasing 288 beds from a county jail in Bowie County, Texas. In round numbers, that $50 million is about $63,000 per bed.

That’s to address the crisis, he said. As for the long-term overcrowding issues, Hutchinson proposes spending about $16 million on initiatives meant to change behavior and keep people out of prison. He wants to spend $7.5 million for additional parole and probation officers, and $2.8 million on alternative sentencing options such as drug courts, which have had some success in keeping people out of the penitentiary.

Finally, he wants to spend $5.5 million to create transitional re-entry centers for 500 inmates who are within six months of their parole eligibility – job training, that kind of thing. For those inmates, which represent a fraction of those let out of prison each year, it would offer a lot more than $100 and a bus ticket.

How to pay for all this? Most initially will come from $31 million from the Arkansas Insurance Department’s reserve fund, and then starting in two years it will have to come from the general revenue budget.

All of this was to be included in one bill to be filed Thursday by Hutchinson’s nephew, Sen. Jeremy Hutchinson, R-Benton. It will pass, because everything Gov. Hutchinson has proposed has passed or is passing – his tax cut, his private option plan, the requirement that high schools teach computer science. The state’s first Republican governor with a Republican Legislature in 150 years is enjoying quite a honeymoon.

Hutchinson was asked about another long-term solution – changing the state’s sentencing structure. He said his proposals are meant to address a crisis, and that sentencing reforms will involve a larger discussion with a lot of input from the prosecutors.

But it must be discussed. Dina Tyler, who was the spokesperson for the Department of Correction and now speaks for Arkansas Community Correction (parole, probation, etc.), said after the press conference that it’s not true that prisons are full of inmates busted for simple drug possession. These are people who have really messed up. However, many prisoners aren’t hardened criminals, but instead they’re OK people who just made bad choices. It’s time to stick some ankle bracelets on some of them so they can have jobs, get an education, and actually be corrected instead of teaching them how to become real criminals in prison.

They might have a chance to make something of themselves that way, and it would save Arkansas taxpayers at least a hundred bucks and a bus ticket – plus, in the future, maybe $100 million.

Captain Legislature didn’t save the day in Fayetteville

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

Arkansas is now a Republican state, and there is a strain in Republicanism (and in the Democratic Party, and in human nature in general) that seeks to assert power. It has already happened once in a big way this legislative session. Legislators should resist the temptation to do it again.

I’m referring to Senate Bill 202, which makes it illegal for local communities to create their own classes of citizens protected from discrimination. It passed easily in both houses. Gov. Asa Hutchinson opposed the bill because it usurps local control but, unwilling to fight this battle and issue a probably useless veto, he is letting it become law without his signature.

The new law comes in the wake of a local ordinance passed by the Fayetteville City Council last year that would have banned discrimination in the workplace against various groups – but really, it was all about gay rights. Business and religious groups collected enough signatures for a popular vote to overturn the measure. Voters narrowly overturned it. The Eureka Springs City Council recently passed its own now apparently meaningless anti-discrimination ordinance.

The sponsors of the bill said they did not want businesses to have to deal with varying rules city by city – which, by the way, happens all the time. Every locality has its own rules about a lot of things. Arkansas is a collection of wet and dry counties, gambling islands, speed traps, etc.

Senate Bill 202 ultimately isn’t about gay rights. It’s about how decisions are made in a democracy, which is why this was a bad bill. Each situation is different, but the principle should be that, whenever possible, decisions should be made at the level of government that is closest to the people. We regular folks have less say about what happens in the State Capitol than we do in our hometowns, and we have virtually no influence over what happens in Washington, D.C.

It’s often said that states are the laboratories of democracy, where ideas can be tried in one place and then adopted, improved or discarded elsewhere. It is good thing that California can pass all kinds of regulations and that Texas can be halfway its own country and that Arkansas can create the Medicaid private option and, then, if it chooses, get rid of it. We learn from each other’s successes and mistakes.

The same is true for local communities. What would have happened had state government minded its own business on this particular issue? Maybe there would have been a flood of discrimination lawsuits in Fayetteville that would have shut down businesses and put people out of work. Or, maybe Fortune 500 companies would have been attracted to the community because they saw it as forward-thinking. Either way, Fayetteville would have determined its next course of action, and other communities could have learned lessons and applied them to their own decision-making processes in their own city halls.

Fayetteville did not need to be rescued by Captain Legislature. The elected City Council openly passed an ordinance. Some people didn’t like the ordinance and collected signatures to overturn it. The citizens of Fayetteville debated the issue publicly and privately. The voters had their say, and majority will prevailed. Until legislators stepped in, maybe the City Council could have considered other ways of meeting the ordinance’s goals without possibly stifling commerce and infringing on religious beliefs. Or maybe in the next election, the people would have voted everybody out and been done with it.

In other words, real democracy was happening there. I’m having trouble seeing what state legislators meeting three hours away in Little Rock needed to fix.

Governor, enjoy this while it lasts

Asa for web

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

We are witnessing the smoothest legislative session in recent memory, thanks to its placement on history’s timeline and the political skills of the state’s leadership, particularly Gov. Asa Hutchinson. He should enjoy this while it lasts.

I say it’s the smoothest because of what it could have been. Going into the session, the debate over the private option threatened to dominate the session. The program, which uses federal Medicaid dollars to purchase private insurance for 200,000 lower-income Arkansans, barely passed in 2013 and barely was reauthorized in 2014. A number of freshman legislators had campaigned promising to end it, but supporters weren’t about to let it die, either. In presenting to the House one of the bills that will keep it afloat for two years, Rep. Kelley Linck, R-Flippin, said it has been perhaps the state’s most debated issue since secession. That was laying it on a little thick, but not that much.

Two things happened, the most important being that for the first time since shortly after the Civil War, Republicans control the Legislature and the governor’s office, and they do not want to give their party’s leader a hard time. One of the private option’s most influential opponents, Senate Majority Leader Jim Hendren, R-Sulphur Springs, is Hutchinson’s nephew and wanted to find a way forward. It’s not Mike Ross’ fault, but if a Democratic governor had been elected with a Republican Legislature, the debate over the private option would be deadlocked at this point.

The other thing that happened was that Hutchinson smartly took the issue off the table by proposing to fund it for two years while a task force studies overall health care reform, including changing the private option into something else. The proposal, sponsored by Hendren, gave opponents a reason to vote yes in hopes of ending the program at the end of 2016. Legislative Democrats knew there is a time to fight and a time to make peace, and this was not the time to fight. It not only passed, but it passed easily.

The rest of Hutchinson’s agenda is sailing through the Legislature. He’s already signed into law the middle class tax cut that was the centerpiece of his campaign. His budget has been meeting little resistance. His bill to require all high schools to offer computer science will have no problem passing.

He should not get used to this. Some of the legislators who campaigned against the private option but then voted for Hutchinson’s proposal could face primary opponents in the next election because they didn’t vote “no” enough. The task force will recommend significant changes and will no doubt want to change the private option’s name, but it won’t simply recommend ending it. That means the debate we’ve had the past three sessions will resurface in 2017, if it doesn’t do so earlier. The 2017 legislative session will not be the first in 150 years that Republicans control both the Legislature and the governor’s office. By then, it will be the norm. Factions will develop, and dissidents will be emboldened.

In other words, Republicans soon will start looking a lot like Democrats always looked when they were the undisputed majority party.

Earlier in his career, Hutchinson was a Republican candidate when being a Republican candidate wasn’t cool. Now, he’s a Republican governor when being a Republican governor may not again be this easy.

That’s not to discredit his accomplishments, because he ran a great campaign, transitioned well, and has performed effectively during his first month in office. His leadership has been thoughtful, measured and fair. A lesser governor with fewer political skills would not be this successful, regardless of what historical winds were at his or her back.

He’ll need those skills in the future when those winds start to swirl. They always do.

Voters should select, not elect, judges

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

The recent admission of bribery by former circuit judge Michael Maggio is an example of why Arkansas should consider changing the way it fills judicial offices – still relying on average citizens, but not by using elections.

Maggio pleaded guilty Jan. 9 to a felony bribery charge and now probably is on his way to prison. He had reduced a jury verdict against a nursing home operator from $5.2 million to $1 million two days after receiving large campaign donations from the operator.

Clear-cut justice-for-sale cases like this are relatively rare, so let’s not overreact. The corrupt official was caught, so you might say the system worked.

The problem, however, isn’t so much the obvious cases of bribery that can be prosecuted. The problem is when judges are merely influenced. Who donates to judicial campaigns? Often, those who have an interest in the outcomes of judicial decisions in general, such as attorneys and nursing home operators.

Elections of judges and justices has always been the least democratic of all ballot races. Candidates aren’t supposed to discuss how they would rule on specific cases because a judge should remain impartial until hearing the evidence. Meanwhile, they aren’t allowed to run under party labels, which at least would give voters a sense of where they stand. Many voters are just guessing.

In the future, the problem may go from voters having no information to them having a lot of bad information. More and more, the waves of campaign dollars swamping the executive and legislative branches is engulfing judicial races. In some other states, ads by outside groups in judicial races are as nasty as the ads for other offices. It hasn’t really come to Arkansas yet, but when it does, it will change not only judicial campaigns but also the administration of justice.

Solutions? One would be for the governor to appoint justices and judges the way the president does at the federal level, subject to legislative confirmation. That kind of power bestowed on the governor might make some people uncomfortable, but remember that he or she would be held accountable by the voters. A personal example: In 2000, enthusiastic about no candidate, I decided while driving to the polls to vote for soon-to-be President Bush solely because I preferred the justices he would appoint over Vice President Gore’s likely selections.

There is another model. In American democracy, where do registered voters best collect adequate information in a deliberative fashion before making an important decision? Juries.

So let’s have “voter duty” where 100 (or some other number of) Arkansas voters are randomly selected, summoned to a location, and given two days to interview judicial candidates and study their records. The names of the voters would be withheld so the candidates couldn’t influence them beforehand. At the end of two days, the voters would select the officeholders and go home.

We trust jury members to make life-or-death decisions in capital murder cases. Why not trust registered voters to appoint judges, which they do now anyway through the ballot box? Wouldn’t 100 informed and focused average Arkansans do a better job than 1 million scrolling through a list of names on the ballot that they recognize only through campaign attack ads? Best of all, judicial candidates could avoid having to raise money from shady donors who want something in return.

So let’s have a selection process instead of an election process for judicial offices. Elections are a means to an end, not the end itself. The ultimate goal is a just, democratic society ruled by the people. To keep justice from being for sale, 100 people might accomplish that goal better than 1 million of them.

Asa’s state of the private option address

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

Gov. Asa Hutchinson’s health care reform speech last Thursday was what the State of the Union address ought to be but rarely is – an accurate definition of a problem respecting both sides, followed by a solution that actually has a chance of being enacted.

Hutchinson spoke last week at UAMS before an auditorium full of legislators, health care policymakers, and other interested listeners. The atmosphere was serious and expectant.

Hutchinson started his speech with a history lesson. One of the provisions of the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare) expanded Medicaid in the states, but the Supreme Court had made that provision optional. Arkansas had created what Hutchinson called an “innovative” approach: using federal dollars to buy private health insurance instead of just pouring more money into Medicaid.

Hutchinson then accurately defined the two opposing viewpoints on the issue. Because of the private option, 200,000 Arkansans have health insurance, and hospitals are providing far less uncompensated care. However, the state will soon be responsible for up to 10 percent of the costs, which could equal $200 million by 2021. Opponents, he said, are “wise” to be concerned about this.

As he pointed out, the private option has paralyzed Arkansas politics. The votes in the two previous legislative sessions have been close enough that health care providers can’t completely rely on it. So many legislators campaigned this past election on ending the private option that its future is very much in doubt, but what about the 200,000 people?

Now for the solution. Hutchinson asked legislators to broaden the debate. Pointing to a single chart beside him, he said most Medicaid spending has nothing to do with the private option, so why argue over one slice of the pie? He asked legislators to approve the private option for two years, and to create a task force that will study health care reform in general for one year. The task force will produce recommendations based on principles such as minimizing the need for more revenues and increasing recipients’ accountability and work requirements.

It will be interesting where this goes. Arkansas is already involved in a promising health care reform process, the Arkansas Health Care Payment Improvement Initiative. Will the task force build on that, produce a different idea, or just tie a pretty ribbon on the private option and rename it so certain legislators can vote yes? We’ll know in a year, assuming the Legislature passes the bill that would create it.

At the end of the speech, Hutchinson remarked good-naturedly that he had not been interrupted by applause, so the audience clapped. The reason that had been the case was that audience members were listening intently – in order to learn important information, not for cues that would tell them to stand or sit in order to make a political point.

Contrast that with the State of the Union address, delivered two days earlier. President Obama’s speech had some good points in that it had a clear theme (middle-class economics) and a call for civil debate. But as is usually the case, it was marked by a list of proposals that had little chance of being enacted. Members of Congress played their expected parts. It was theater, not policymaking. Much of it will be ignored.

Not that there wasn’t some theater in the UAMS auditorium. Part of what Hutchinson was doing was buying time. He’s willing to change the private option, even significantly. But he wants neither to take health insurance from 200,000 people, nor to turn away the $1.3 billion in federal funds the private option will provide the state this fiscal year. After the speech, some legislators opposed to the private option expressed at least mild support because they said Hutchinson’s plan would end the private option in two years. That was not what he said.

But all that’s to be expected. This is politics. Hutchinson’s address changed the tone of the debate and offered a way forward. The legislation to create the task force has been filed, and there are good reasons for it to pass: Supporters don’t want the private option to fail, and Republicans opposed to the private option want their party’s governor to succeed.

Some still will oppose the plan, but what Hutchinson said won’t be ignored. Good speech.