If you read the headlines of the Arkansas Democrat Gazette last week, you might have noticed the front page story of the exploits of the wise and beneficent Gov. Mike Beebe, and of his able accomplice Rep. Bobby Pierce. These champions of good government, to hear the paper tell it, found an elegant solution to the problem of funding the fire fighters that the State Forestry Commission had to cut in an emergency lay off.
They found some extra money in the Department of Agriculture that they can transfer to Forestry to tide it over. Hurrah for the good ole’ boys! All hail the governor. Never mind that the problem was originally precipitated when one of Beebe’s guys misappropriated money from a federal grant.
Also, pay no attention to the fact that the solution that they supposedly “discovered” looks exactly like that proposed in HB 1004, a bill filed some days before by Rep. Donna Hutchinson and Rep. Lori Benedict.
Hutchinson was our state representative in Pea Ridgeand surrounding area until the recent redistricting. An inquiry to Rep. Benedict revealed that these two ladies went to Rep. Pierce in an effort to try to get him to co-sponsor the bill.
They were both Republicans and they felt like if they brought a Democrat on board it would help with the bill’s passage.
From there, Pierce appears to have gone to Gov.
Beebe with the idea. This would not be bad in itself if all he was trying to do was to get the governor to go along with the bill.
But that is not how this thing turned out. Beebe decided that rather than give due credit to the female GOP legislators who proposed the bill, he would go straight to the Democrat-Gazette and announce that he, Pierce and Robert Moore have found the solution. The result?
The governor and his good ole’ boys wind up on thefront page. They get all the credit for solving the crisis (that his administration’s sloppy accounting created). The two Republican ladies who did all the work get no credit for it.
Really, I know quite a bit about Gov. Mike Beebe, but all you really need to know about him is contained in this little report right here.
What was the Democrat Gazette’s role in all this?
We don’t know what they knew or when they knew it, but don’t expect them to correct the story anytime soon. And I don’t say that because of the Democrat-Republican thing. In an atmosphere where both parties are rife with corruption that distinction is pretty meaningless to me.
That distinction is also almost meaningless to the guys who run that paper, for another reason. To them it’s all about being an insider or an outsider.
Those who challenge the status quo don’t get the publicity, even when they should.
Let me give you a recent example from the other side.
Sen. Jack Crumbly is a black Democrat from the southern part of the state.
He recently announced that he was suing the state because when they redistricted, his new district was not black enough to insure continued minority representation in the senate. No matter how you feel about that issue, a decent report on the matter would include the name of whoever is challenging the status quo. Incredibly, the story never mentioned Crumbly by name, saying only that “a black state senator” was challenging the new district lines. Can you imagine a story about a lawsuit where the official filing the lawsuit is not identified by name but rather only by race?
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Editor’s note: Mark Moore is the lead writer for an Internet blog on matters pertaining to Arkansas culture and government, Arkansas Watch, and on Tuesday nights is the host of an Internet-based radio program, Patriots on Watch. He can be reached through The Times at [email protected].
Opinion, Pages 4 on 02/15/2012