Arkansas Democrat Gazette

5/18/12

LITTLE ROCK — The unemployment rate in Arkansas fell to 7.2 percent in April, the Department of Workforce Services said Friday.

That was a slight drop from the month before when the rate was 7.4 percent.

The civilian labor force increased by 500 because of 3,300 more employed and 2,800 fewer unemployed Arkansans in April, the agency said.

The number of employed Arkansans has now increased for nine straight months and the figure in April was 30,700 more than the same period a year ago.

According to figures released Friday, non-farm payroll jobs increased by 6,100 in April with gains in eight sectors, led by leisure and hospitality (3,700 jobs), educational and health services (1,100 jobs) and health care and social assistance (800 jobs).

 

Arkansas Democrat Gazette

5/15/12

LITTLE ROCK — Departing U.S. Rep. Mike Ross on Monday ruled out running for governor in 2014, nearly 10 months after he announced that he wouldn’t seek a seventh term in the House this year because he was considering a governor’s office bid.

Instead, the 50-year-old Prescott Democrat said he will become senior vice president for government affairs and public relations for Little Rock-based Southwest Power Pool after his current term in the House ends Jan. 3.

Ross said in a written statement Monday afternoon that he has received “a lot of encouragement” and has given “serious consideration” to a 2014 bid for the governor’s office, a race that will begin early next year.

“However, after a lot of prayer and reflection, I have decided that I will not be a candidate for governor in 2014,” he said.

Ross said he has been able to spend “more time, including weekends, with my family” since he announced on July 25 that he wouldn’t be seeking reelection, and “we have enjoyed getting back to a more normal way of life after 22 continuous years of elective service.

“This led me to the realization that there is life after politics,” he said.

Ross’ announcement Monday caught some Democrats by surprise.

But Jay Barth of Little Rock, a political science professor at Hendrix College in Conway, said it’s always been clear that running in a Democratic primary for governor was going to be “a very challenging endeavor” for Ross as a conservative Democrat.

Hal Bass, a political science professor at Ouachita Baptist University in Arkadelphia, said, “I think he would have run a strong race, but there is no guarantee in politics.”

“The change in the political landscape makes it more difficult to get nominated and elected,” he said.

Barth said Ross’ decision not to run opens up the Democratic primary to other candidates.

Attorney General Dustin McDaniel of Little Rock has been widely expected to run for governor as a Democrat in 2014, and Little Rock businessman John Burkhalter, who serves on the state Highway Commission, has said he’s considering a bid for governor as a Democrat.

McDaniel said in a written statement that he called Ross on Monday, thanked him for his 22 years of public service and congratulated him on “this exciting opportunity for him and his family.”

A spokesman for former Democratic Lt. Gov. Bill Halter of North Little Rock, who lost in a primary-election challenge to U.S. Sen. Blanche Lincoln in 2010, said Halter received many phone calls after Ross’ announcement Monday urging him to run for governor.

Halter spokesman Bud Jackson said Halter has received such phone calls for a long time, but the number “picked up dramatically” after Ross’ announcement.

Halter is seriously considering running, according to Jackson.

Little Rock Republican Curtis Coleman, an unsuccessful GOP candidate for the U.S. Senate in 2010, said he is also considering running. Republican Lt. Gov. Mark Darr of Springdale has said he is considering the race, and Republican U.S. Rep. Tim Griffin of Little Rock has declined to say whether he’s considering a bid for governor or the U.S. Senate in 2014.

Former U.S. Rep. Asa Hutchinson, a Republican who lost to Gov. Mike Beebe, a Democrat, in the governor’s race in 2006, said, “We have many great potential candidates for 2014, but that is too far off to consider.”

In his new job, Ross will develop and lead Southwest Power Pool’s governmental affairs at the federal government level and the nine-state region it serves, and manage public relations for the company, according to Southwest Power Pool.

Southwest Power Pool President and Chief Executive Officer Nick Brown said in a written statement that Ross’ success in leading bipartisan solutions in federal and state government is “an excellent fit to the diverse membership” of the group.

“I’ve known Mike since high school in Hope, Arkansas, and have followed his political career for decades,” Brown said.

Founded in 1941, Southwest Power Pool consists of 66 group members in Arkansas, Kansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, Nebraska, New Mexico, Oklahoma and Texas that serve more than 15 million customers.

The group members include investor-owned utilities, municipal systems, generation and transmission cooperatives, state authorities, wholesale generators, power marketers and independent transmission companies.

Southwest Power Pool said it ensures reliable supplies of power, adequate transmission infrastructure and competitive wholesale prices of electricity.

“While many people have never heard of Southwest Power Pool, they perform an important mission in managing the electric grid and keeping electric rates affordable in nine states,” Ross said.

“Public service has always been an important part of my life, and although I will no longer be holding elective office, this is another way for me to continue to serve the public as Southwest Power Pool works to meet the electricity needs of its nine-state region today and for the future,” he said.

“This is an especially good fit for me, as I begin a new chapter in my life, because Southwest Power Pool is a nonprofit organization that serves an important public service, and it allows me to remain here at home in Arkansas with my family,” Ross said.

He noted that he has served 10 years in the Arkansas Senate and a dozen years in the U.S. House of Representatives.

“Let me assure the people of Arkansas’ 4th Congressional District that I will remain on the job, and continue to provide them with a strong and effective voice in our nation’s capitol for the remainder of the term that I was elected to serve, just as I have tried faithfully to do from the beginning,” Ross said.

Ross informed Beebe about his latest plans Monday afternoon “to give him a heads-up about the news,” Beebe spokesman Matt DeCample said.

When asked about the governor’s thoughts about Ross not running for governor, DeCample said the governor has “been careful not to say much when asked about people who might be running – same will hold true when people decide they won’t be running.” Information for this article was contributed by Alison Sider of the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette.

 

Beebe told him it was time for change, spokesman says

Arkansas Democrat Gazette

5/15/12

LITTLE ROCK — Dave Fletcher resigned Monday as director of the Arkansas Department of Veterans Affairs after the discovery this month of federal law violations at the Little Rock Veterans Home, lax budgetary oversight and growing legislative criticism.

Gov. Mike Beebe appointed Fletcher in 2007 to head the agency that oversees services for the state’s more than 260,000 veterans, two veterans cemeteries and veterans nursing homes in Little Rock and Fayetteville.

The governor’s spokesman, Matt DeCample, said Monday that the governor “made it clear to David that the time was coming for a change in leadership.”

Fletcher’s resignation letter reflected that message. He wrote that he was proud of what the agency accomplished over the past five years.

“However, it is clear that there are improvements that must be made to the internal operations of the department, and the mistakes have been made in the administration of both the department and the Little Rock Veterans Home.”

He wrote that he had been “contemplating retirement for some time.”

His retirement was effective immediately and will require his resignation as president of the National Association of State Veterans Department Directors, a post he was elected to in November.

The governor is expected to name a new director this week.

The new appointee will take over an agency in crisis.

Fletcher’s management of the agency came under scrutiny two weeks ago after he fired the administrator of the Little Rock nursing home, claiming that she knowingly collected $560,000 in out-of pocket fees from wounded and severely disabled veterans for more than three years after a change in federal law prohibited such fees.

E-mails uncovered through an Arkansas Freedom of Information Act request by the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette and Fletcher’s own congressional testimony in March indicate that he knew those fees were being collected.

Fletcher has said the agency doesn’t have the funds to repay residents and their families.

In 2009, the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs increased to $7,000 per month per resident payments to the state to cover all care for war-wounded and service disabled veterans with a VA disability rating of at least 70 percent.

The same law that increased the VA’s monthly payment for the care of those veterans also required the state to use some of the funds to pay for primary care and related medicines.

The state Veterans Affairs Department contracted with a Little Rock doctor in February for primary care but still has not set up a contract for prescriptions.

Fletcher acknowledged last week that the agency has double-dipped federal funds for three years by using the Little Rock VA hospital to supply veterans’ primary care and prescriptions while receiving the federal money to pay for that care elsewhere.

Every annual VA inspection of the Little Rock Veterans Home from 2007 through 2011 included a warning that the home is required to contract with a doctor for primary care of the veterans. Yet over the past three years, little has been done to find prescription coverage, according to records obtained by the newspaper.

The VA offered a contract for prescriptions that would cover the veterans, but Fletcher turned it down as too expensive.

The Central Arkansas Veterans Healthcare System gave the state Department of Veterans Affairs a 90-day extension last year that continued free prescription coverage with the understanding that the agency was actively seeking a prescription contract. That extension was renewed in February. Last Friday it was extended again, but for only 30 days.

Five days ago, members of the Joint Legislative Auditing Committee criticized Fletcher’s lax oversight of his agency in the wake of an audit that highlighted poor inventory controls and misappropriation of state funds by an employee who has since resigned.

The audit uncovered inaccurate inventory records for more than $200,000 in agency equipment and inadequate budget oversight that allowed the agency’s former finance officer to use a state credit card to charge more than $1,800 over six months to beauty salons, pet stores and liquor stores.

The employee was allowed to resign with benefits. The illegal charges were never recouped.

When the committee chairman asked how a state credit card could be abused without notice for so long, Deputy Director Lawrence Pickard said, “The environment at the time was not healthy, and I’ve since changed that.”

The morning after that hearing, Pickard gathered the staff of the Little Rock Veterans Home and gave a stern warning about people coming to work late. The lecture ended in at least one grievance complaint filed against Pickard for using racial slurs.

“Yeah, what happened was, basically people have been really late. I said, ‘I don’t want to hear any excuses,’” Pickard told the newspaper Monday. “‘I don’t want to hear that you’ve got this problem or that problem.’ And I said, ‘The one I really don’t want to hear is about black-people time.’”

Pickard said the home’s director of nursing corrected him, calling it “colored-people time.”

He met with the staff and the grievance officer Monday and apologized.

“I told them that I have a different relationship with my inner staff, and I thought you guys were part of my inner staff, so basically I made the mistake of trying to be funny,” he said, adding that it wasn’t meant to be insulting.

“It was one of those things where I just basically didn’t think about what I said because I was talking to people like normal people and like they talk to each other. And it was one of those things that was totally taken out of context and totally got misunderstood.”

 

Arkansas Democrat Gazette

5/13/12

LITTLE ROCK — A panel of three federal judges is considering how to resolve a lawsuit over whether Arkansas’ Senate districts were drawn to dilute the black vote. One redistricting trial expert said it could be months before the court rules whether there is a problem with the boundaries.

The lawsuit seeks to prohibit Arkansas from using district boundaries approved last summer by the state Board of Apportionment and make the state draw districts that the plaintiffs say would better serve black voters in the eastern Arkansas Delta region, particularly in District 24.

The judges announced through an order Friday that they would not stop the primary election because early voting is taking place. Early voting began May 7. The primary is May 22.

The case is Future Mae Jeffers v. Mike Beebe. Plaintiffs in the case were part of lawsuits in the 1980s and 1990s that created some House and Senate districts where black voters are in the majority. These districts were created to enhance the influence of black voters. They sought to make up for lower rates of black voting caused, experts said, by institutionalized bias.

In this suit, the plaintiffs alleged that the boundaries of District 24 dilute black voters’ chance to elect the candidate of their choice and that the dilution was intentional.

The black voting-age population percentage of District 24 is 52.88 percent.

Gov. Mike Beebe, Attorney General Dustin McDaniel and Secretary of State Mark Martin make up the board and are defendants in the suit. On Wednesday the panel cleared Martin of the intentional-dilution charge after all three men testified that Martin had little input on the final map approved by the board.

Martin largely sided with the plaintiffs in the case.

The lawsuit contends that the boundaries of District 24 violate Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act of 1973 as well as the 14th and 15th amendments to the U.S. Constitution, which were ratified after the Civil War to protect blacks’ civil rights.

Chief U.S. District Judge J. Leon Holmes, District Judge Susan Webber Wright and 8th U.S. Circuit of Appeals Judge Lavenski Smith, a former Arkansas Supreme Court justice, heard the case.

Loyola Law School professor Justin Levitt said the judges’ decision not to delay the primary could signal they need time to make a ruling.

“It doesn’t mean much,” he said. “It could be a signal that the judges don’t particularly think they’re going to find the district’s unlawful or it could be a sign their minds are wholly not made up. It may be a while. There’s no particular deadline on them.”

Levitt runs all about redistricting.org, which tracks how each state completes congressional and legislative redistricting, and legal challenges that are raised.

He said that if the judges rule that the lines dilute voter strength, a lot depends on how egregious they determine the violation to be.

“It is conceivable but unlikely that the court will order a new primary between now and the general election,” he said. “Chances are the results of the primary will stick for November.”

Starting over would mean either the judges would redraw the boundaries based on maps submitted by parties in the case or the boundaries would be sent back to the board, he said.

The plaintiffs offered up two maps as possible options during the trial.

One that was created April 4 would give the district a black voting-age population percentage of 58.41 percent. It would include all of St. Francis and Lee counties as well as southern and western Crittenden County and portions of Cross and Monroe counties.

Beebe said he “absolutely” would consider that map if the district is redrawn.

Any of the parties in the case can appeal directly to the U.S. Supreme Court, which cannot refuse to consider the case.

“There’s a special federal statute for constitutional challenges to state legislative redistricting – and in this case, the plaintiffs have alleged not only violations of the Voting Rights Act, but intentional racial discrimination that’s prohibited by the 14th and 15th Amendments,” Levitt said. That statute is 28 U.S.C. 2284.

Federal statute 28 U.S.C. 1253 sets up a special procedure for appealing these cases.

HOW MUCH IS ENOUGH?

At no point in the four-day trial did a witness provide an exact percentage for what the black voting-age population needs to be so that blacks in a majority-black district will have a fair chance to choose the candidate of their choice.

Levitt said there is no static population percentage that states have to reach when creating majority-minority districts. Instead, it depends on the size of the population, how racially polarized election patterns are and whether the state has a history of discrimination.

He said states that have to draw majority-minority commonly perform an analysis of voter behavior in those districts before drawing the lines.

“Not everybody does, but most should. It’s a safeguard against violating the law,” Levitt said. “If you haven’t done the analysis and somebody sues you, then you don’t know whether or not you broke the law.”

Beebe, McDaniel and their staff members testified that no analysis was done before the boundaries were approved. They couldn’t give a reason why Senate District 24’s black voting-age population of 52.88 percent was sufficient. The 2010 census showed that the old district that encompassed much of the same space, District 16, had a black voting-age population of 65.1 percent.

Senate District 24 has the lowest black voting-age population of the four majority-minority districts.

District 25 has a black voting-age population percentage of 55.85 percent; the 30th’s is 53.19 percent and the 31st’s is 58.26 percent.

During the public meetings before new districts were approved, board coordinator Joe Woodson said the informal standard for black voting-age percentages in the districts would be 55 percent.

“My intention was to say this is a ballpark, it’s what it has been in the past,” he testified at the trial.

Beebe and McDaniel testified they were not aware Woodson used that number. Both said their goal was to maximize the number of black voters in the majority-minority districts.

“I didn’t have an arbitrary number in mind,” Beebe said.

The two men said they were most concerned that all districts meet the commonly held redistricting “principles.”

Those include that districts need to have less than 10 percent population variance; not be drawn solely based on race; be designed with all parts connected and compact; avoid splitting political entities such as cities; keep similar communities together; maintain the core of existing districts; protect incumbents; and minimize gerrymandering, which is drawing districts to protect a political party.

THE HISTORY

Thirty-eight years ago Arkansas had no black legislators – although in the 1800s Arkansas had about two dozen – but redistricting and a series of legal battles over the shape and racial composition of legislative districts led to an increase in the number of black lawmakers.

Currently, 15 of Arkansas’ 135 legislators are black.

“We still have to recognize the historic impact of discrimination,” Martin’s attorney, Asa Hutchinson, said. “History is essential in this matter. It’s about the next generation of African-Americans that simply want the opportunity to elect that candidate of their choice.”

Attorney James Valley and the plaintiffs tried to show that voting in the Delta continues to be racially polarized and that black candidates struggle to win county positions.

District 24 includes all of Crittenden County and parts of Cross, Lee, Phillips and St. Francis counties.

Former Sen. Roy “Bill” Lewellen of Marianna testified that black voters went so long without being represented in government, that there is still a pervasive attitude that it won’t do any good to vote.

“The biggest problem was basically changing the attitude in the black community,” he said. “It’s something that has gone on for hundreds of years.You are not going to change it in 20.”

He said in some counties polling places aren’t in black communities. And without public transportation, it is difficult to get black voters, especially poor voters, to the polls.

“That’s the way it’s always been,” he said.

In his closing arguments Valley drew parallels between the current lawsuit and the cases that increased the number of majority black districts, calling it “same stuff, different decade.”

In 1989, M.C. Jeffers of Forrest City and others sued the state over the 1981 redistricting map, which included four majority-black House districts and one such Senate district. In the case, Jeffers v. Clinton, the U.S. District Court ruled that the state’s map violated the federal Voting Rights Act.

The court ordered an increase to 13 majority-black House districts and three such Senate districts for the 1990 election. In that case the board was reconvened to draw the lines, Valley said.

Several of the plaintiffs in that case, including Jeffers’ widow and daughter, are plaintiffs in the current case.

During redistricting after the 1990 Census, the Board of Apportionment kept that same number of majority-black districts. The same plaintiffs again challenged the state map in U.S. District Court. But a three-judge panel ruled that the state’s changes were sufficient.

In 2002 a U.S. District judge threw out a lawsuit from the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People that challenged the constitutionality of the realigned legislative districts after the 2000 Census.

Assistant Attorney General David Curran said that in the old district, then labeled District 16, black voters were able to elect the candidate of their choice. He pointed out in his closing argument that the sitting senator, Jack Crumbly, D-Widener, is black.

“The idea that the old District 16 wasn’t working defies common sense,” he said.

He said the plaintiffs were basing their argument that the old district wasn’t effective on a single 10-year-old Senate race in which the white candidate beat the black candidate.

In the 2002 Democratic primary after the 2001 redistricting, the black sitting senator, Alvin Simes, received 36.47 percent of the vote and lost to Steve Higginbothom.

Curran said the years the district was held by a white senator shows that the district was fair to both blacks and whites.

 

Arkansas News Bureau

5/14/12

LITTLE ROCK — Fifty of the 135 state legislative seats will be filled in the May 22 party primaries, leaving 85 contests this fall to decide control of the next General Assembly.

After making substantial gains in 2010, Republicans need to pick up five House seats and three Senate senate to become the majority in both chambers for the first time since Reconstruction.

“We’re looking to gain the majority in both the House and the Senate,” state GOP chairman Doyle Webb said during the political filing period in March.

In the primaries, 13 Senate candidates have a free ride to the 2013 legislative session, including 11 incumbents — seven Republicans and four Democrats — and three former state House members, two Democrats and one Republican.

In the House, 37 candidates have no opposition in the primary or the Nov. 6 general election. Thirty-two are incumbents — 13 Democrats and 19 Republicans. The remaining five, all Democrats, will be completely new to state office when they are seated in the House in January.

“Hallelujah, praise the Lord,” said Democrat Mark McElroy of Tillar, who faces no challenger in his first legislative race.

“To tell you the truth I was shocked … flabbergasted,” said McElroy, who for nearly 20 years has been the Desha County judge. “This year, especially with the margin between the Republicans and Democrats, the first time since Reconstruction that they’ve got a good chance of taking over the House anyway … with a full court press on, I was prepared to campaign.”

Despite a historically strong Democratic Party in Desha County, the Republican Party has grown in popularity in southeastern Arkansas, he said. He considers himself a fiscal conservative because he recently got the Desha County Quorum Court to approve a 10 percent cut in the county budget and “we never once talked about raising taxes.”

Jobs and the economy are the biggest concerns among voters, he said.

“When people are putting nearly $4 a gallon in gas in their vehicles and they’re only making $7.30 an hour, do the math on that. People are hurting,” he said.

The Democrat will replace House Speaker Robert S. Moore, Jr., D-Arkansas City, in the House next year.

Also this year, nine races — six involving Democrats and three involving Republicans — will be decided May 22 because the winners will not face opposition in the fall.

The remaining 54 House races do not have primaries and will be settled in November. Forty-six have head-to-head contests pitting a Democrat against a Republican, while two others also pit an independent against major-party candidates. Four races have a Republican facing an independent, one has a Republican facing a Green Party candidate and one has a Democrat facing a Green Party candidate.

Ten state Senate incumbents and three newcomers are unopposed. Three other incumbents face primary challengers only, three face challengers in the primary and in the general election if they survive.

Of the remaining Senate races, which don’t include any incumbents, one will be settled in the primary, three have both a primary and general elections and four will have just a general election.