OPINION
The end of democracy in LR
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he state Board of Education was scheduled to talk this week about the Little Rock School District, under state control for two years because six of its 48 schools failed to meet an arbitrary pass rate on a standardized test. Board member Jay Barth had the idea, because of progress in the district, to get the board to use its flexible powers to promise a return to local school board control in elections in May 2018. Education Commissioner Johnny Key, who serves as the “school board” now, can’t make such a decision unilaterally. He had to check with HIS boss, Governor Hutchinson, who now controls the majority of seats on the state board. He said no. This means, barring surprises, the district will stay in state control for at least five years, maybe forever. A new state law changes the way school distress is mea-
Those same white chamber of commerce establishment forces — many of whom have never sent a child to public schools — that pushed the state takeover are now asking voters to approve a tax plan to add some $600 million in property tax payments over 14 years. Some of this would go to buildings. The majority will be consured. But it’s certrolled by Key for any use he deems fit. There’s justifiable fear that Key and tain to give the state board flexibility to Co. want to get the buildings in shape for control whatever the eventual surrender of the Little Rock district it wishes School District to a privatized operation to control. such as exists in New Orleans. The WalMAX ton forces tried to legislate that in 2015. Backers of the BRANTLEY school “choice” Meanwhile, Key is encouraging explosive maxbrantley@arktimes.com movement don’t (and LRSD damaging) growth of charmuch like school boards. They like cen- ter schools, the Waltons are financing tral authority. And they like choice for charter school buildings and their chief choice’s sake; quality of schools and lobbyist in town is singing the praises of results are largely unimportant. anything and everything but the old Little Barth hoped to send a positive signal Rock School District. Lurking in the wing to Little Rock school supporters unhappy is still further Little Rock charter expanabout the state takeover. Instead, he got sion by a national private school chain. confirmation that the governor and Key We shoot our own feet in Little Rock. don’t want them to have their school board There’s no greater proof of the sorry state back. Key and Hutchinson undoubtedly of Little Rock schools than the speed with fear a return of the majority black school which rich, white chamber of commerce board that so riled the Little Rock business. types run from them and encourage devel-
Coal is over
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eeding solace days after the Trump election in November, an old friend who has spent his long career in industry and government working for cheaper, cleaner energy and healthier air and water telephoned his mentor, Amory B. Lovins, the great physicist and environmental scientist who originated the “soft path” for achieving energy independence and a healthier world. More than anyone, Lovins is the father of the clean, renewable energy movement that is the chief hope for staving off global devastation. Only seven years earlier Donald Trump had signed a full-page ad in The New York Times demanding that President Obama adopt an audacious plan to halt global warming and protect Americans’ health from atmospheric poisons, but, as with so many other issues, like abortion, war and health care, his last campaign promises went dramatically in the opposite direction. “Is all lost?” my friend asked Lovins. “Work hard, make money and love, travel and be happy,” the old oracle replied cheerily. The free market’s natural search for cheaper and more efficient energy has taken over and even President Trump and a governing party heavily
in denial about climate change cannot stop it, he said. My friend passed the balm on to me. Lovins may ERNEST have been in DUMAS denial about how much harm Trump’s energy and environmental policies, such as he is able to implement, will bring to the planet and our little corner of it between the Mississippi and Red rivers, but he was mostly right. Despite Trump’s promise to applauding unemployed coal miners and a largely sympathetic public that he would “bring back coal” and their jobs by scuttling President Obama’s Clean Power Plan, it won’t happen. The president of the largest privately held coal company said the next day, “He can’t bring them back.” Obama was not coal’s problem; it was the market. I was reminded of Lovins and his uplifting message the other day when I was perusing the testimony in a little rate case at the Arkansas Public Service Commission. If you are a customer of Entergy Arkansas, the state’s biggest power supplier, you will detect a little jump in your monthly bill in a few weeks as the com-
pany recovers from its ratepayers some $2.6 million it lost dealing with the coal companies that supply fuel for its Independence and White Bluff power plants. The loss actually was $7.1 million, but Entergy’s partners will have to recover the rest. There could be more of that later, especially if the president can sway things, but the Public Service Commission, which was complicit in perhaps the cause of Entergy’s coal-buying fiasco in 2015, will see to it that it doesn’t happen again in Arkansas. It is probably too complicated to explain here, but it’s important to understand how power generation and distribution work. Entergy has a bunch of generating plants powered by coal, nuclear, gas and water, and, shortly, by solar and wind. However, which plants in which companies actually generate the power on any given day is determined by a regional independent operator (now MidContinent), based partly on the generating costs at each plant. Coal used to be dirt cheap, but, with the surge of hydraulic fracturing, natural gas has become a competitor, and solar and wind have become competitive with the availability of federal tax credits. Usage of the coal plants sank from 75 percent to 45 percent from 2014 to 2016. Entergy had signed long-term contracts for the mandatory delivery of coal from the Powder River Basin in Wyo-
opment in white flight suburbs. I just don’t happen to share the racially infected negative view of Little Rock schools, which my own children attended. But we continue to reward people who harm the community. The Little Rock City Board is just about to renew $300,000 in taxpayer subsidies (from the pennies of a city whose taxpayers are predominantly black and poor) to the same Little Rock Regional Chamber of Commerce that worked to end local school control. Their pennies will help pay salaries of people who also lobby against decent benefits and job protection for working people. The city dole to the chamber is being restored thanks to a constitutional amendment crafted by the now-indicted former Sen. Jon Woods. City Manager Bruce Moore gave so little thought to the fact that some might object to another giveaway to the fat cats that he initially placed the vote on the corporate welfare on the board’s “consent agenda.” Even if the board has a perfunctory discussion, be assured the chamber will get its money, just like it got the school board.
ming, but when gas replaced coal as the cheap fuel and Independence and White Bluff were idled, Entergy found itself with vast stockpiles it could not use and more coal coming. It found buyers for 1.25 million tons of its stockpiles but at $7.1 million less than it paid for it. Ratepayers of Entergy and other power companies will make it up. But that was not an aberration, as most everyone but Trump should know. Gas is now so overabundant and cheaply accessible that exploration companies are pulling up rigs. Coal is not coming back. Coal accounted for half of the nation’s electricity in 2000. Now it’s 16 percent and it will continue to decline, though perhaps more slowly, even with the Clean Power Plan neutered. Arkansas, which was one of the states most under the gun, owing to its continuing to build coal capacity after the rest of the country stopped, was moving rapidly toward meeting its goal for reducing atmospheric carbon. Entergy bought a giant gas plant near El Dorado and is venturing into solar and wind power. But Arkansas’s entire congressional delegation, the state attorney general and the State Chamber of Commerce wanted the Clean Power Plan crushed, the Environmental Protection Agency neutered and coal’s dominance celebrated, even though no one in Arkansas, even if they own coal shares, would benefit.
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arktimes.com APRIL 13, 2017
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