Thread by @ForARPeople1

Gmorning folks! Returning to our efforts to cover some pre session budget meetings. We’re also planning on a live thread for Gov. Sanders’ announcement this afternoon at 2. Stay tuned! #arpx #arleg

First up, a bit out of agenda order: AETN, who runs Arkansas PBS. It's survived multiple attempts to reduce its funding over the last few fiscal and general sessions. We're expected a similar fight to occur in the upcoming session, so interested to see if that makes itself known

AETN is requesting a change to their treasury account, which deals with partnerships and grants. 11 mill total; requesting a reduction in salaries and increase in extra help funds, operating expenses, and travel/professional dev funds.

Also asking for increases for emergency notification systems, statewide broadband, and a couple other things. Exec recommendation agrees with salary reduction and ONLY increase to emergency notification system

AETN also requesting 7+ mil for state operations account, with some increases over the biennium to deal with increasing electricity and insurance costs. Exec recommendation agrees, but wants them to cut a few positions.

Rep. Collins: Do you agree with exec recommendations to not fund some of these positions, professional developments, and some of these educational initiatives (one being a special program for the country's 250 anniversary)

A: largely fine with this. We'll come back to ask for more money if we need it re: special programming.

Exec recommendation is passed.

Department of Education up next, everyone's favorite grifting Florida Man here to lie about LEARNS (we assume)

1.9 billion for Div. of Secondary and Elementary Education (not all from Ark taxpayers, lots from Federal).

First change: Medicaid admin appropriation, +5 mil to equal 45 mil annually. Billing structure has become more responsive and they need funding to maintain that. Exec agrees with request.

Professional licensure next up for changes: 1.4 mil, some minor equipment appropriations and staffing grade changes.

Missed subdivision now asking for changes, but minor staffing grade changes. Exec recommendation agrees with some minor staffing changes.

Next up: child nutrition, federally funded. School lunch among other things. About 400 mil. Exec recommendation agrees with some minor staffing changes.

Next up: early childhood, ESL, and special ed. 1.28 billion, which includes position transfers from early childhood division. Reallocation for some conference travel, moving professional development to salaries. Exec recommendation agrees with some minor staffing changes.

Alternative cert programs up next (nontraditional licensure): minor changes, exec agrees.

Agency has requested a few programs be discontinued: after school/summer grant appropriation, Boys and Girls club, Adult High school, and American Rescue Plan appropriation.

Sen Love: re: after school/summer program grants, asks Oliva for more insight why they're requesting discontinuation.

A: were never funded, there are other options for after school/summer programs. It's not a discontinuation of those funds full stop, just this specific avenue.

Rep. Richardson: same situation for Boys and Girls fund?

A: yes.

Motion passes with no discussion or dissents.

Public School Fund up next.

BTW, BLR prepared a spreadsheet detailing the education requests: arkleg.state.ar.us/Home/FTPDocume…

If a line item is green, that's a change. If blue, it got a mention in the adequacy report. Yellow is totals (key is at the bottom of the report).

First three pages were Secondary/Elementary Ed, last page is Public School Fund.

This fund is all state aid distributed to local school districts.

APSCN up, data sharing between state/districts. Slight increase, which exec agrees with.

Early childhood special ed up next: it's getting moved around with another early childhood special ed fund.

Education renewal zones up: collab between coops, districts, and colleges. Exec recommendation agrees with agency request.

Positive Youth Development Grants will be discontinued due to lack of funding sources.

Exec/Agency recs are approved.

Public School Facilities/Transportation up next.

Minor adjustments for salaries, but no major changes.

Facilities partnership program: 215 mil total, exec agrees.

Rep. Springer: Concerned about academic facilities has a balance of 73 million. Any pending requests for that funding?

A from Oliva: that balance is in the queue to be fixed. We'll send you a list of school districts.

Rep. McNair: Why does the partnership money not include safe rooms?

A: Safe rooms don't meet the definition of academic facility under current agency rules.

Q: what can we do to get some help there?

A: funding only available for spaces where academic instruction is going on. FEMA/Federal funding available for safe rooms. Intent is to protect academic spaces to prevent schools from using these funds for gyms or other non-essential spaces.

A, cont: legislature can certainly tweak that.

Rep. Springer: What if a school uses a safe room for classes? Could that funding then be used?

A: There's an application process to combine those spaces.

Rep. Ladyman: Re; possible FEMA funds, if we wanted to do state level, would Emergency Services/Management be the best route?

A: possibly, yeah. They definitely work closely with FEMA.

Q: how would that cooperation work then?

A: We could make safe spaces part of review process.

Rep. Wardlaw: We pay a lot of money to a guy named David (Braskomin sp?), why isn't he here?

A: he's here in spirit.

Wardlaw: yeah that's what I'm worried about.

Hammer: I'm worried about some of these numbers. Do you anticipate changes to the formula, how these numbers are reported?

A: not aware of those conversations, but we're open to working with legislature.

Q: demand vs. supply - can you give us a sense of budget vs. requests? Are we short?

A: we've funded all requests that we've had.

Exec recommendations are accepted.

Next up: newly established Office of Early Childhood, transferred from DHS mandated by LEARNS.

There's a big decrease in childcare grants, to align with reshuffling caused by LEARNS, among other things. Will need to follow up on that.

Rep. Ladyman: Some of these part time requests are nearly salary-level. Why is that? Can we reduce appropriation?

A: yeah could be reduced. Again, reshuffling/new agency causes some weird stuff.

Rep. Collins re: childcare care grants: 11 mil reduction just to match actual expenditures better. Why didn't we get to original 20 million request?

A: Not sure, honestly. This was a transfer from DHS due to LEARNS.

Rep Springer: she's had complaints about amount paid to childcare centers, supposedly increased for extra training.

A: different funding streams for different programs (students vs. teachers). Match from Feds. Childcare providers can earn additional funding based on quality of care. LEARNS established "local leads" that provide additional support for professional development.

Springer: would like some more statistics on amounts, participants, etc.

Hammer: y'all have inherited childcare. As far as transition, personnel turnover, training, etc, give us some insight?

A: we're all coordinating, no major bumps. We're getting a lot of support to get a handle on this.

A cont: we identified lots of duplicative programs with different funding streams. LEARNS consolidated a lot of this. IT teams have built new system that will keep track of all early learning providers that will result in a huge reduction in expenses.

Hammer is a non-profit president that runs an early learning center and is generally pleased with the progress on that front, but has "sensed a lack of communication" with some of these new programs/softwares. Wants to look at this next session, and Oliva agrees.

Hammer: some challenges in transition between old training and new requirements. Do current staff, despite turnover, meet current needs and give consistent messaging?

Oliva: we're really invested in establishing local leads that know communities. (this is not an answer to the question)

Nobody pats themselves on the back and avoids answering the actual questions like Jacob Oliva

Sen. Dotson: on virtually every line item, you're requesting a lot more than you've spent in the past.

A: turnover, several positions vacant, that's why budget is the same. We hope to fill those. We're also tweaking some other line items to make up for it. Some things were in the wrong division previously and we believe they've been fixed.

Dotson: in one of those divisions, you're asking for 2 mil but only spent a few hundred k.

A: yeah that's due to the restructuring.

Dotson moves to accept executive recommendation except for the extra help line item Ladyman pointed out.

Chesterfield: do you anticipate having to come back if we pass this?

Oliva: we stand behind these recs.

Motion accepted.

Career and Technical Services up next.

VoTech admin asks for 3.4 mil per biennium. Exec agrees, and also wants to eliminate 9 positions.

Agency wants a new 900k appropriation for a multiple grant program so they don't have to come back multiple times.

Missed a bit there, apologies.

Sen. Chesterfield: Just had a big win with Prop 1 (lotteries funding more vo-tech). How can we help people become aware of these programs so people can take advantage?

A: we have a small appropriation for advertising.

planning on more outreach to faith communities and civic orgs because they work so closely with families that tend to make use of these lottery scholarships.

Rep. McNair: Why can't we handle voucher management in state? There seem to be a lot of problems with vendors.

A: third party vendors keeps it cleaner for auditing purposes. We pay money into an account that's disbursed as schools and families need it.

(that is certainly one way to look at 3rd party vendors, but we gotta disagree)

Love: what are the admin costs for administering funds through the vendor?

A: we're in a little bit of a transfer between vendors, but it's roughly 2% per transaction.

2% of 97 million, anyone want to do some quick math?

Stubblefield: after the election, there was talk of doing away with federal Dept. of Ed? How would that affect us?

A: even if states control majority of the education money, a lot of federal money comes in, especially re: special education and low income students.

A cont: hope is that DOE elimination still lets us use those monies without the red tape feds put on the money (this is an absolute pipe dream).

Stubblefield: so it would affect services?

A: it may. Would depend on Congress. If we could get direct appropriation, might increase efficiency.

(there are some bridges for sale, if anyone's buying)

Chesterfield has some real concerns here. We have to be careful when people are telling us stuff, especially when multiple divisions are all tied together like this. Education is always first thing to be cut.

She motions for executive rec, and it passes.

Higher Education up next (remember Gov Sanders has targeted higher ed reform in the upcoming session).
(apologies had to dip out for a few moments, so missed some of the changes)
Rep Collins: are we finding that no institutions want to expand/create nursing programs? We're cutting some funding to grants/scholarships.

A: we've had a big investment in nursing through Dept. of Commerce. Big investment, seeing continued growth.

Collins: but we have a need for more grants because of big need for nurses.

A: we have to balance available resources, so yes, relying on other investments.

Richardson: what's up with reduction in TANF funding?

A: reduction in our funding, more need for these funds and less money to go around. Reductions in funding may affect some families.

Dalby: There's some math that isn't adding up for me re: some positions/internship.

A: yep, cutting some internship funds.

Q: so cutting internship funds?

A: No, we're not requesting an increase. We're not going to cut individual intern pay, we're trying to make sure we can pay them properly. (Was a confusing exchange)

Rep. Paynor (sp): We're budgeting a lot less for National Guard scholarships.

A: we're looking at changes to make sure we can maintain adequate funding.

Q: So you'll have to come back for more appropriations later?

A: Oversubscription of National Guard Scholarship is a good thing, this is a good recruiting tool. We'd like a more sustainable funding source.

(note: they're planning on recessing at 11 and coming back at 1, so we might miss the second half of this due to Governor's announcement this afternoon)

Chesterfield: deeply concerned about cuts to TANF funding. It's too spread out/too siloed. How can we lose so many GE programs? Make me feel better about this.

A: Career pathways program is one of our best. Adult Ed is under Commerce

A cont: while they might not see funds directly, we have reached out directly to make sure no programs under Career Pathways lose money.

Executive recommendation approved.

Missed funding details, but Northwest Technical Institute gets its funding request approved. Next up: schools for the blind + deaf.

5 positions are discontinued, with more extra help funding coming in. Campus and equipment upgrades requested, along with therapy needs for students.

Rep. Fite: would like to issue a thank you to Oliva, Schools for Blind/Deaf have already improved dramatically and morale greatly increased.

Rep Collins: we're cutting some positions for the School for the Deaf, but we had more positions than you're requesting filled. Are we about to fire some people?

A: no, we're now under that number.

Q: why make this so close then? If you're just under what you're requesting, why cut this close?

A: hard to run a school under a state agency, but happy to consider asking for more salary $ if enrollment increases.

Quick side: Oliva doesn't reallyyyyy care about Schools for Blind and Deaf if he can't control them. onarwatch.org/an-update-on-s…

Oliva notes there's a problem with centralizing this highly specialized education in LR. Families need more regional support centers in the corners of the state so they don't have to move/come here.

Unfortunately we need to go ahead and dip out. As a reminder, they'll be in recess from 11-1, but we're likely to miss the second half due to the Governor's announcement this afternoon. Thanks for following along!

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