Governor's spending is out of control

State Sen. Bryan King

The governor’s reckless spending is out of control, and the long-term consequences are yet to come. 

The LEARNS voucher program is  clearly financially unsustainable.

I have proposed an alternative to the LEARNS voucher program, with the following points: 

• If a student was previously enrolled in private schools, they will no longer be eligible to be enrolled in LEARNS. 

• Homeschool LEARNS enrollees will go to performance-based and not front-end voucher payments. This would be much like how the ACT college test works. If you score proficiently or excel, you receive a performance payment. 

• If you are enrolled in a D- or F-rated public school, you would be eligible for a one-year voucher. Then the next year would go to performance-based payments. 

• There will be one standard test for public, private and home school students. Currently the LEARNS program has different testing requirements, which fails in fairness and being able to have a clear understanding when comparing results. 

• Extend mandatory sexual assault or abuse reporting that is required in public and private schools to home schools. Sexual assault and abuse with children should be reported and investigated, no matter if the child is in public schools or homeschooling. 

The governor’s budget doesn’t reflect the real impact being felt by everyday Arkansans. 

Local sales taxes are collected and then sent to Little Rock. Then those locally collected taxes are distributed back, in turn, through the Revenue Stabilization budget bill. When I first came into the state legislature, the turnback percentage was about 5 percent of revenue stabilization. In the last three years, the percentage has been an anemic 3.4 percent. 

The last three years of the governor’s budgets have severely neglected the ability of local communities to fund basic infrastructure and critical services like public safety, fire, ambulance and police.

The County Equalization Turnback Fund would be transformational in that the fund would provide a clear, sustainable funding source to essentially provide a way out of the local government funding crisis caused by the governor’s irresponsible and wasteful spending. 

This program would collect the first $150 million of sales tax and then distribute $2 million to each county. That’s $2 million to every county, every year.

This would essentially fund new roads and road repairs, bridges and bridge repairs, personnel, police, fire, and community services, and even help with debt retirement.

This could help avoid tax increases or save millions in bond interest payments. 

There is a crisis right now. As Ronald Reagan said, “Government isn’t the solution, it’s the problem.”

The governor’s irresponsible, reckless, wasteful, fraudulent and abusive spending must be reversed, and we must provide what the people deserve, not what Little Rock political profiteers want for their own benefit. 

• • •

Bryan King holds the District 28 seat in the Arkansas State Senate. The district includes all of Carroll County.