How to avert a crisis

WITH the Legislature finally being called into special session to address the crisis in the state’s health-insurance system for those who work in its public schools, here’s hoping the proceedings will now be short, efficient and to-the-point.

So that our teachers, and all the other public-school employees who depend on this vital system, won’t be hung out to dry next year. Because unless our lawmakers do something, and something good, the folks covered by this insurance could see their premiums soar come next year.

Those who depend on this system for their health insurance aren’t only schoolteachers but janitors and cafeteria workers and all their families. That’s some 47,000 people in all, and they don’t deserve to be left in the lurch.

Under the rates okayed by the board that oversees such insurance, the premium for the most popular insurance plan would go from the present $226.70 a month to $336 a month.

Yikes.

To call that kind of hike in folks’ health insurance a crisis, certainly for them, is no exaggeration. The state can’t be expected to provide these folks with the kind of lavish subsidy that Congress has given itself and its staffs as Obamacare envelops them, but the people who teach and look after our kids should be able to count on health insurance that really is affordable, and not just billed as such. The Ledge, and the taxpayers, should waste no time providing it.

Once this chore-and simple act of justice-is addressed, the Ledge needs to turn its attention to another urgent matter: making it clear that Arkansas’ retirement system is Arkansas’-not the sole purview of the bureaucrats who run it.

The auditors who reviewed the fiscal structure of the state’s pension plan for local police and firefighters made it clear enough that some things, and people, need to be set straight. They reported that the system’s executive director, David Clark, seemed to resist legislative oversight, and even sought to limit their access to fiscal information. Staffers who run the system had to be subpoenaed before the auditors could finish their work.

This is not acceptable.

There should be no question that this retirement system is the public’s, not some empire-builder’s realm beyond state auditors’ authority. The state’s Game and Fish Commission, or at least those who confused it with their own little kingdom a while back, had to be taught that lesson. And it was a painful education.

Director Clark claims he’s been working with the Legislature in a “harmonious manner,” which is nice. But you couldn’t tell it by reading the auditors’ last review of his operation.

As soon as politically and legally feasible, the Ledge needs to clear up this small but irritating disagreement. Because, among other reasons, you know that, should the system face a crisis in the future, it’ll be turning to the Legislature and taxpayers to bail it out. Such a risk can be minimized by having the system welcome auditing now-instead of having to be audited when and if a scandal breaks.

There’s a lot Mr. Clark and associates could learn from the example of the University of Arkansas at Fayetteville-an example of how not to manage a fiscal crisis. A little openness now could save a lot of embarrassment later.