LITTLE ROCK — Gov. Mike Beebe said Tuesday that a conservative group is “trashing” Arkansas with a television ad that says job opportunities in the state “are being eroded” by an increasing government debt and the taxes needed to support that debt.
Americans for Prosperity’s ad says many people are leaving the state to seek “greater opportunity elsewhere” as the cost of everyday living becomes too much.
Backed by billionaire brothers David and Charles Koch, the group says it has about 63,000 members in Arkansas, including about 1,000 Arkansas donors, and helped conservative state Senate hopeful Bart Hester of Cave Springs and state Sen. Bruce Holland of Greenwood defeat moderates in the May 22 Republican primary.
Teresa Oelke of Rogers, the group’s state director, said it’s spending about $175,000 from its Arkansas donors to air the ad in the 1st, 2nd and 4th congressional districts for about 20 days, starting last Saturday.
The ad for which she wrote the script “simply talks about what we aspire” and isn’t trashing the state, she said.
Beebe, titular head of the state Democratic Party, told reporters Tuesday that the ad isn’t “telling the truth.”
The ad is “blaming us for high taxes,” yet he’s proposed and the Democrat-controlled Legislature has enacted cumulative tax cuts totaling $1.260 billion, along with cumulative tax increases of $530 million from cigarette and severance taxes, leading to a net tax cut of $730 million since he has been governor, Beebe said.
Oelke said the Washington, D.C.-based Tax Foundation now ranks Arkansas’ state and local tax burden as 14th in the nation compared with 31st in the nation in 2000, and “this shows it is a nonpartisan problem.” Prior to Beebe, Republican Mike Huckabee was governor from 1996-2006.
Arkansas’ 2009 state and local tax burden is 9.9 percent of per capita income — $3,281 of $33,238 — and ranks 14th in the nation, according to the tax foundation’s website. This year, the foundation also ranked the state’s business tax climate as 31st in the nation.
John Shelnutt, the state’s chief economic forecaster, said the state Department of Finance and Administration uses U.S. Census Bureau information compiled by the Federation of Tax Administrators for comparing state and local tax burden. That information shows the state’s per capita state and local tax collections at $3,254 in 2009, ranking 42nd in the nation, and the collections are 10 percent of personal income, ranking 28th in the nation.
Beebe said the state has lost thousands of jobs, but “we have also created over 27,000 new jobs in the midst of the worst recession,” and that Wall Street — not Arkansas — caused the recession.
He later acknowledged that the state just announced plans to create more than 27,000 jobs, but said he doesn’t know the number of jobs actually created.
Arkansas’ unemployment rate in August was 7.3 percent, compared with the United States’ rate of 8.1 percent, according to the federal government.
Beebe spokesman Stacey Hall later noted that the state’s civilian work force was 1,379,400 in August, compared with 1,362,300 in August 2007. It dipped to 1,352,300 in August 2009 and has increased each August since then.
Beebe said that Americans for Prosperity is “trashing” school teachers, parents, business people, banks, hard-working Arkansans and “our Legislature, both Republicans and Democrats, who have managed to have us as one of the four states that never went through a budget shortfall throughout the course of this recession when others were having to raise taxes.”
But Oelke said, “By no means are we trashing the state of Arkansas.”
She said state government’s number of employees is growing too fast, noting it has the third-fastest growing number of state employees in the nation based on U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics figures.
Shelnutt said those figures reflect gains in government enterprises such as the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences and the success of universities in grant funding and gains made relative to other states. State employment in “core government positions” has not grown except in cases of mandated service additions to state government, he said.
In the fiscal year that ended June 30, 2011, the number of people in full-time jobs on the state payroll went down, something that hasn’t happened in at least 24 years, according to state officials.
“The irony here is they are talking about us losing jobs,” Beebe said. “The people who fund the Americans for Prosperity” announced in October 2011 that they would be closing a plywood and wood fiber supply operation in Crossett with more than 700 workers. Hall later said Beebe was referring to the Koch Industries-owned Georgia Pacific plant.
But Oelke said the group’s Arkansas chapter is funded by more than 1,000 donors in the state — not by the Koch brothers. She declined to disclose any of the group’s donors in Arkansas.
While the ad doesn’t mention the governor, Beebe said, “I am sure it is aimed partly at me, and I am sure it is aimed partly at a Democratic majority in the Legislature.”
But Oelke said the ad is not aimed at the governor or a particular party.
“If we are aiming it at a particular party, we would limit the information to certain years. If you look, we cover a decade — not an administration,” she said.
Oelke estimates that Americans for Prosperity will spend about $400,000 on issue advocacy mailers on targeted legislative races this year.
Senate Democratic leader Robert Thompson of Paragould said Americans for Prosperity seems to be spending more on mailers and ads than other groups so far, and whether that work is effective will be determined in the Nov. 6 election.
Senate Republican leader Michael Lamoureux of Russellville said Americans for Prosperity will have an effect on the election, but he’s not sure whether it will be decisive.
He noted that Beebe contributed about $900,000 of his leftover campaign funds to the state Democratic Party in December 2010 and the party is using the funds to help Democratic legislative candidates.
The combined effect of various groups “will probably make a lot of races close,” Lamoureux said.
Republicans are aiming to gain majority party control of the House and Senate for the first time in more than 150 years, while Democrats are striving to maintain their majority. Republicans have tried to link Democratic candidates to President Barack Obama, and Democrats are attempting to tie themselves to Beebe.
The Senate is composed of 20 Democrats and 15 Republicans. The House is made up of 54 Democrats and 46 Republicans. A majority is 18 in the Senate and 51 in the House.
Arkansas, Pages 9 on 09/26/2012