OPINION
For the kids
E
arly voting is underway for the special election May 9 on extension of 12.4 property tax mills dedicated to debt of the Little Rock School District. It’s not a vote to increase the tax rate. But it IS a vote for more taxes — 14 more years of the tax, which currently produces more than $42 million a year. Since property tax assessments have risen 3 percent a year for the last 10 years, you could be looking down the line at authorizing $63 million or more a year for those 14 years, almost $900 million. The tax vote also perpetuates a silent tax for operations. As taxes rise, rather than devoting money to a building fund, the district can draw on the surplus, currently $31 million a year, to operate. A sophisticated campaign financed by business establishment leaders is pushing the tax increase. Odds favor approval. It’s just refinancing a mortgage, they say. (The bankruptcy courts are full of people who know that people facing declining income probably shouldn’t refinance their credit cards and mortgages.) The pro-tax campaign boils down to an implicit insult: If you are against the tax, you are against kids. Baker Kurrus, a former Little Rock School Board mem-
ber, a man most responsible for new elementary and middle schools in Northwest Little Rock and a successMAX ful interim superinBRANTLEY maxbrantley@arktimes.com tendent, has written a fact-heavy, dispassionate explanation of why he’ll vote Tuesday AGAINST the school tax. Don’t tell me Kurrus hates kids. He avoids the discord about the state takeover and removal of the majority black school board, a sore point with the predominant black voting bloc in the district. Kurrus argues that there’s been no comprehensive planning for the future of the Little Rock district and the other public school districts in Pulaski County, likely to be reshaped in years ahead. It is not the time, he writes, to pour $300 million into debt (counting interest charges). Nice buildings, desirable as they are, don’t equal good education, Kurrus also says. The Little Rock district has done well, but is being decimated by the continuing proliferation of charter schools encouraged by state Education Commissioner Johnny Key. Those charters take achiev-
Danger to health
T
his is another perilous week for repealing Obamthe 30 million Americans, in- acare entailed, cluding some 550,000 Arkansans, “Nobody knew whose health and financial conditions health care could form a nexus that torments their daily be so complicated.” existence. Private insurERNEST That does not overstate the impor- ance, which is DUMAS tance of the quick little session of the how Obamacare Arkansas Legislature called this week by arranges for people to pay for their mediGovernor Hutchinson and also of Con- cal care, is indeed complicated — and too gress’ haste to give President Trump expensive, as Trump and other mental something — anything — that he can giants have observed. claim fulfills his pledge to repeal “ObamIt’s no simpler, but let’s deal with acare,” the disparaging nickname that Arkansas’s part of this little political criwas supposed to sink the health care sis. Leave the spectacle over repealing reform known as the Patient Protection or thwarting Obamacare to another day and Affordable Care Act. after it is clearer what mess the president Nothing that passes in the Arkansas and a feckless Congress make of it. Legislature or the U.S. House of RepreArkansas is a shining example of sentatives will actually repeal the law, Obamacare’s success. Some 400,000 but lawmakers will undermine it in the Arkansans were insured under some feaguise of preserving popular features ture of Obamacare, dropping the share of while shifting the blame to somebody people who are uninsured under 9 perfor all the eventual harm. cent. The market and premiums remain As Trump remarked in February after stable in spite of the Republican-consomeone tried to explain to him what trolled state government’s efforts to keep
ing Little Rock students disproportion- of flight tell us that buildings aren’t the ately. Left behind, disproportionately, are root of Little Rock student loss. Despite economically disadvantaged students. crumbling walls, Central High was a The district is already pinched finan- magnet to diverse students thanks to its cially. Between the available millage over- curriculum and faculty. A brand-new age of at least $8 million a year, budget junior high failed to attract new students cuts and state facility support, Kurrus (until converted to a magnet) because of had a plan to build the new Southwest a predominantly poor and black student high school and to do critical building attendance zone. improvements as able until enrollment Little Rock is about to lose $37 million stabilized. in state desegregation aid and $10 milAccountable leadership is an issue. lion to $12 million more a year in losses Commissioner Key, the ultimate district to charter school expansions already boss under state control, won’t talk to the approved, with another national charter public or press. But he supports contin- operator lurking in the wings. In addiued charter school growth. He fought for tion to welcoming all charters, the state legislation that helped charter schools allows poorly performing charters to and hurt the Little Rock School District continue. “These are the simple facts, in the last legislative session. He’s given but none of this has been discussed in no hint of flexibility on a return of local public,” Kurrus says. control. He killed a state Board of EduI credit people on both sides with cation proposal to provide at least some being “for kids,” even if the tax camhope. paigners won’t extend similar courtesy With more charters, Kurrus says, Lit- to opponents. But, as Kurrus illustrates, tle Rock enrollment will decline (along a “yes” vote on $600 million to $900 milwith state dollars) and the district will lion in new taxes might lead to a fiscally bear a disproportionate share of students distressed school district disproportionwith special needs, students in poverty ately attended by at-risk students. It’s a and students who don’t speak English as blueprint for districtwide privatization of the sort pushed in the past by Key’s a first language. Michael Poore, named superintendent friends at the Walton Family Foundation. after Key fired Kurrus for opposing char- Experience in New Orleans and Memter school expansion, thinks new facili- phis tells us this would not be a solution ties will bring students back. Forty years “for all the kids.”
people uninsured. Unlike Social Security, Medicare or your employment insurance, signing up for an “affordable” insurance plan is daunting, but the legislature in 2013 blocked the use of $10 million in federal assistance or any other funding to help people find a suitable plan and calculate the tax credits that would help them enroll. Still, some 350,000 poor Arkansans enrolled in the Medicaid feature of Obamacare, the vast majority in private plans where premiums are paid by government. To prove his conservative and Trumpian bona fides, Hutchinson wants to boot 60,000 and probably many more off insurance, to save some taxes down the road and because he is sure that lots of these poor people are layabouts who don’t deserve medical care. Good medical care should be reserved for solid Americans who can afford it or at least can hold a steady job. Obamacare tries to make insurance affordable by offering subsidies in the form of tax credits to people whose incomes are between 138 percent and 400 percent of the poverty line. Studies showed that people below 138 percent of poverty could not afford any premium
payment and those above 400 percent could begin to handle premiums without help. Those below 138 percent of poverty would be treated through Medicaid. The legislature is adopting Hutchinson’s plan to cut off help at the poverty line, forcing people up to the 138 percent threshold to buy the same pricey policies as those above it, probably with no extra federal subsidy. Few will be able to do it. Federal law does not permit the state to lop people below 138 percent of poverty off Medicaid, but everyone is sure the Trump administration will OK it anyway, because it achieves the goal of leaving more people without insurance, demonstrating Obamacare’s “failure.” The major goal of health care reform was to get more people insured, including the unemployed, people with mental or physical disabilities and pre-existing conditions, young folks with marginal earning capacities and people in the jobless countryside without the skills or wherewithal to seek their fortunes elsewhere. Hutchinson is setting up a worthiness scale — a regular job, which is popular with people who think the poor are irresponsible and undeserving of society’s succor.
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arktimes.com MAY 4, 2017
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