OPINION | EDITORIAL: Union labels Another bill lawmakers should pass

It's not hard to figure out why there is so much opposition to collective bargaining, specifically when that bargaining is being done by government employees’ unions. Imagine being able to elect your own bosses, and their jobs depended on making you happy in your job, and nobody is spending their own money. Regular civilian taxpayers don’t get that kind of deal.

A committee in the state Senate passed Senate Bill 341 by Bob Ballinger (R-Ozark) earlier this week. Michael Wickline’s story said the bill passed in a voice vote “with no audible dissenters.” Yesterday, it passed the full Senate almost as smoothly. Now it’s onto the Arkansas House.

Sen. Ballinger says the bill applies to state-level governments such as agencies, departments and universities. Also the courts and—note well—school districts. (It would not apply to cities or counties.) Frustrated taxpayers have long watched teachers’ unions elect school boards and then negotiate with the people who owe their positions to those very same unions. It’s like negotiating salaries and benefits with yourself. It’s a nice gig if you can get it. Most people can’t. But most people, being taxpayers, certainly foot the bill(s).

The executive director of the Arkansas Education Association spoke out against the bill, which surprised few people. She said SB341 “directly targets our educators who have shown up every single day at schools and in every way possible teaching students, transporting them and serving them meals since the beginning of the pandemic, knowing they are putting themselves and their families at risk. They should be respected, not attacked.” Put aside, if you can, all those stories about teachers who—well before the pandemic—were considered “chronically absent.” Pre-covid-19, the papers noted that a considerable number of core teachers at J.A. Fair, Hall High and others would miss five days or more in a single school quarter.

But put that aside. This bill doesn’t “target” educators, or even their unions. Only the power of collective bargaining, which smart school districts are getting rid of anyway: “They can have a union,” Sen. Ballinger said. “They have their association. But as far as collective bargaining, we are prohibiting it from a policy standpoint as a state.” That is, if the Arkansas General Assembly approves and the governor signs. And they should.

School districts should work for the students first, then the community as a whole. Teachers are an important priority, but collective bargaining too often makes them the first priority, if not the only priority.

It’s going to take bold, determined, courageous action to take on the unions, even now. But that’s the nature of leadership. And education. And life.

CORRUPTION, POLITICS, AND THE ART OF HEALING

I may be sleeping in the dog house for revealing this, but my wife has a medical fascination with grotesque pimples, boils, etc. She is not alone. “Dr. Popper” has 4.2 million subscribers on YouTube. Her videos commonly get more than 20 million views, and now she has her own TV show. I don’t get it, but for my wife and millions of others, it is entertaining and informative.

This somewhat unpleasant topic does provide a useful illustration for the corruption we recently uncovered in our State government.  A boil is a bacterial infection of the skin that if untreated will grow and fester over time. Boils are disgusting to behold (stay with me here, I’m going somewhere with this), but never more so than when they are treated and drained.

Our State was controlled by one political party for 138 years. Over time, accountability and transparency disappeared into a vacuum that reached its pinnacle during the Clinton administration here in Arkansas. Corruption permeated the entire system. Without some adversarial tension, without oversight, the path of least resistance, succumbing to temptation, became the norm.

The stench we are now experiencing is evidence that the system that created and sustained the boil of corruption has been lanced. Arkansans have responded with understandable revulsion. The healing process appears ugly, and it stinks, but it has begun. While perfection in unattainable, we would be fools not to learn from the painful experiences we have endured.

Unlike Dr. Popper’s fans who find value in the information she provides; the citizens of Arkansas experienced the revulsion of corruption without any compensatory benefits. If there is to be an upside to our recent governmental moral failures, it must be in our individual and collective responses. We let our guard down once and suffered a regrettable but predictable consequence.

I am reminded of an incident years ago. I met the brother of a good friend who had warned me, as an attorney, that his brother had “no use” for lawyers and politicians. When we shook hands, this stranger I had just met wiped his hand on his jacket. It was done in jest, but the gesture was not lost on me.

We know that power and money invite abuse. The neighbors we serve know that politicians and lawyers are often around both. It’s no mystery why constituents are angry, pundits are cynical, and partisans attack opportunistically with a broad brush. Dishonest players in State Government stink up the whole system and make us all seem guilty by association.

Recently I opined that “no one was benefiting from being in Little Rock.” It was my admittedly clumsy way of saying that in my experience, I have not found the legislators in Little Rock to be routinely corrupt.  Most are simply decent people trying to make a difference. Sadly, the dishonest few cast a shadow over all the rest.

These recent scandals do show us that honesty is not enough. The air of power and money that public servants breathe requires more than honesty. It requires a diligence that looks for signs of trouble. Politics is a minefield that can obliterate the most honest among us.

With the help of God, I am personally resolved to go beyond “merely” being an honest man. Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty. As public servants, we must be proactive. Civility and collegiality are important, but we must never forget that our first loyalty is not to fellow legislators. Our allegiance is to the standards we profess, the people we serve and the Constitutions we swear to uphold.

Andrea Lea, Auditor of State, Endorsement

I’ve witnessed Bob live out his convictions in the midst of immense pressure and stand strong on conservative principles while the political storms raged. I’m confident Bob will continue to stand strong for the conservative values we as Arkansans hold so dearly. I was proud to call him a house colleague but I am even more proud to call him my friend.

End the violence, not our freedoms

Very few events in our society produce the emotional reactions that school shootings elicit among us. Murdering innocents is something that ordinary people like you and I cannot relate to. Like a drowning victim, we seem to thrash about wildly trying to find the answer to our question: how do we save our children from a repeat of this horror?

We feel a compelling need to “do something now.” Our federal and state constitutions task government with the responsibility of apprehending criminals while protecting people and property. It seems logical to ask, “what can government do?”

Many people argue that if guns are used to perpetrate the violence, removing the guns from society would remove the violence. This narrow focus in the search for answers might be sufficient if we lived in a different world where men were angels, as the saying goes. Unfortunately, we do not.

As a legislator who believes in the value of our freedoms, I ask, how can we reconcile our solutions with the unalienable right of self defense? To get good answers, we must ask good questions. While we may ask what government cam do, we must also ask what we, private citizens, institutions, and organizations can also do. I believe the longterm answer we seek requires a fundamental societal change, not an increase in government.

Furthermore, if our society sanctions violence and barbarism, what delusion allows us to believe that as a people we will be spared the consequences of that glorified violence? Abortion, movies that feature grotesque violence and video games where teens and pre-teens compete to murder and decapitate their opponents are either a cause or a consequence of this violence in society. It is foolishness to pretend there is no corollary between violence itself and our willingness to blatantly profit from it.

In Parkland, Fla., we saw layer after layer of government institutions radically fail the children in that school. Why? How? These are not merely interesting questions, they are essential to determining causes and solutions. Many people who want to see guns removed from our society are also victims of myths and misrepresentations from the anti-gun extremists for whom the constitution and the Second Amendment are remnants from an earlier time and are outmoded. I believe they couldn’t be more wrong.

As your elected representative, know that I will continue to seek real answers to get real results that will offer effective countermeasures against those troubled individuals who would perpetrate this senseless violence on our children. I am convinced that Second Amendment protections are compatible with well-conceived defenses that end vulnerable “gun-free” zones (regrettably perceived as shooting galleries by lunatics). We absolutely can and will protect our children and end this terrible blight throughout our nation. And, we will do it while preserving our liberties.

http://www.mcrecordonline.com/opinion/article_ff5ef082-2213-11e8-a5a5-436918accbc4.html