The turtle on the fence post

      King

Sen. Dale Bumpers used to say that when you see a turtle on a fence post, always keep in mind that it didn’t get there by itself.

Whenever government does something good, remember that it happened because people made it happen. Always keep in mind that politicians love to take credit for anything good.

Remember too that during a crisis, politicians love to blame others and deflect blame from themselves. That is happening now in criminal justice.

The governor, the attorney general, legislators and members of the Board of Correction are fighting over the sit of a new prison unit. Like the turtle on the fence post, the current crisis in our criminal justice system didn’t get there by itself.

It started in 2010 when then-Gov. Mike Beebe overspent and overbudgeted, and did not prepare for the financial recession. That created a financial crunch in state government, but Gov. Beebe was able to rely on a bailout backed by federal debt.

In order to continue paying for this financial mismanagement, Gov. Beebe proposed a law called the Public Protection Act, which sounded great but in reality provided for the early release of hardened criminals. Why? To salvage the sinking state budget. The bill sailed through the legislature, thanks to the typical political strategy of “mislead and deflect.” Many legislators who voted for the bill didn’t know, or didn’t care, that it was soft on crime.

The impact was disastrous. Crimes committed by repeat offenders increased. Then Gov. Beebe’s successor, Gov.Asa Hutchinson, made even worse decisions. So did the legislature. Gov. Hutchinson asked for solutions from his nephew, state Sen. Jeremy Hutchinson and from the Speaker of the House, Rep. Matthew Shepherd.

Their solution was to study the issue. Delay and deflect through study — that’s usually a waste of taxpayer dollars. We pay highly priced consultants for information that is readily available from anyone with common sense.

Their recommendations wasted hours of manpower and made things worse. We got even more soft on crime legislation, which I call “catch and release” bills.

A huge flaw in their thinking was their failure to adequately fund prisons. As a percentage of the state budget, Corrections has remained near 8 percent of the total. I proposed raising that percentage to pay for more prison space and crime prevention. My plan was rejected by Gov. Hutchinson, and by many of the same legislators who today are so outspoken, and wrong.

I fought to transfer revenue from other state agencies in order to pay for crime prevention, while avoiding the need to raise new taxes. At the time Amazon had begun to voluntarily remit the Internet sales taxes they collected. Those sales taxes would easily have paid for crime prevention with raising new taxes.

But that idea was rejected by Gov. Hutchinson and his legislative allies, likely because they had misjudged the enormous impact of Medicaid expansion. They needed that revenue to shore up the state’s budget.

Regarding crime, the turtle didn’t get on the fence post by itself. It got there 14 years ago and has sat on that fence post because of laws that were soft on crime, promoted by past governors’ and legislators’ deceptive methods.

There are solutions, which I am pushing for in the 2025 session that just began.

••• Bryan King of Green Forest represents District 28 in the Arkansas State Senate. District 28 includes all of Carroll County.