Tax collections up again
Posted on Friday, September 5, 2008
August 2008 tax collections in Arkansas were 6. 4 percent above those for August 2007, the state Department of Finance and Administration said Wednesday. I mention this lest you missed the story we ran about it on Wednesday. In the edition that came to my house, it appeared on the front page of the B section below the fold. That’s understandable, really, what with all the political and hurricane news crowding just about everything else off of Page One. But then there’s this: The collection of tax money in excess of what the state has projected and budgeted isn’t really news anymore. Happens all the time, at one point exceeding a billion dollars. Gov. Mike Beebe did a laudable thing when he persuaded the General Assembly to cut the sales tax on groceries in half. Now it’s time to prepare for tackling the other half. (The actual tackling can wait till the Legislature convenes in January. No need to waste money on a special session. ) As a state revenue official pointed out, a large part of the overage was due to the high cost of electricity and the taxes that accompany it. Taxpayers could use a little relief on their milk and bread. Milk and bread never should have been taxed in the first place. Broken precedent The University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences is in the market for a new chancellor, but you won’t know about the prospects until the powers-that-be are good and ready to tell you about them.
So heralds the landmark decision by B. Alan Sugg, president of the University of Arkansas System, to use a private head-hunting firm instead of advertising the position publicly. Donations made to the University of Arkansas Foundation, a private, not-for-profit concern, will pay for the search, to be performed by a firm called Witt / Kieffer for a reported $ 150, 000. We’ll have to take UA’s word for that, of course, since officials claim that foundation records are not open to the public.
Fewer and fewer things are open to the public anymore, and I hate to see public officials within the UA System making a conscious effort to circumvent the Arkansas Freedom of Information Act. As a colleague of mine observed, just because it’s legal doesn’t make it right.
If it is legal, about which there is some debate among diehards.
Sugg was quoted saying that the decision to use a private firm was based primarily on the need to attract a “quality” chancellor. Surely he didn’t mean to imply that other UA System chancellors, all of whom had to withstand public scrutiny in their quest for employment, are something less than “quality,” although we who pay their salaries—OK, augment their foundation-padded salaries with our hard-earned tax dollars—may be forgiven for making that short leap. Never too old To no one’s surprise, a federal appeals court panel has upheld last year’s ruling that the Watson Chapel School District violated the First Amendment rights of students who wore black armbands to class to protest a new uniform policy. The district had argued that it disciplined the students in October 2006 because they violated the dress code they were protesting by wearing the armbands. The American Civil Liberties Union quickly filed suit in their behalf. As our story on the appellate decision noted, the trial court found that although there was no evidence that wearing the armbands substantially interfered with the work of the school, there was evidence that the discipline was imposed to suppress a particular viewpoint. My colleague Linda Satter reported that the district’s uniform policy allows students to wear things such as wristbands as long as they don’t overlap any part of the school uniform, and the armbands worn in protest did not. They were worn on wrists, forearms and biceps. Smart kids. They could read the dress code. Too bad school officials couldn’t. Remediation, anyone ? Welcome sight The whole time I’ve been sitting here compiling these odds and ends, I’ve had a nagging feeling that something wasn’t quite right. Finally, the persistent noise of some type of outdoor work being done nearby—it sounded rather like a chain saw—made me look outside, where a crane could be seen poking above the trees on the other side of the wall. It took a moment to realize what I wasn’t seeing: rain. Can something you don’t see still be a welcome sight ?
—–––––•–––––—Associate Editor Meredith Oakley is editor of the Voices page.
FEEDBACK:
Something to say about this topic? Submit a Letter to the Editor online