Arkansas Gov. Mike Beebe is scheduled to release his proposed fiscal 2015 budget on Jan. 14 - the last state budget before he leaves office - and it’ll include more money for schools and jails.
During an interview Friday, he wouldn’t talk in much detail about the document before its release to the Legislature, but said he does plan to ask for a few “moderate” spending increases above the $4.7 billion fiscal 2014 budget.
“The two largest areas of increase will be public education to meet adequacy [requirements] and prisons to address the changes that have taken place causing huge county jail backups -the changes in the parole system,” he said. “We already have additional facilities that have been constructed, what we need is additional operating money to staff prison beds.”
Also, for the past month in speeches to groups across the state, Beebe has been touting the importance of funding the state’s Medicaid expansion.
The private option, which enables low-income residents to get private insurance that’s paid for with Medicaid dollars, has attracted national attention. States like Tennessee and Iowa have modeled their Medicaid expansion programs after the one approved in Arkansas.
He said passing the private option took bipartisan cooperation to reach the necessary three-fourths vote in both houses of the state General Assembly.
And, he doesn’t think that lawmakers will derail that program when they convene in this year’s fiscal legislative session, which begins Feb. 10.
“I anticipate they will pass it,” Beebe said, referring to funding the plan.
Beebe said several legislators were worried when the plan passed last year that the federal government would not live up to its promise to provide the federal funding and waiver grants necessary to launch the private option. Now that both have been given, he said there’s no reason not to move forward with the program.
“If people change their mind on this, they’d be doing it for reasons other than any factual change in circumstance,” he said.
If the Legislature fails to approve the private-option funding, Beebe said, that would be “catastrophic” for the state’s hospitals. He explained that part of the federal plan for Medicaid expansion included reducing Medicare reimbursements. He said if the expansion stalls, the reimbursements will still be cut, costing hospitals as much as $28 million each.
While some Democrats are trying to distance themselves from the health-care debate, Beebe joked that he might be known as the healthcare governor because of the private option and Arkansas’ plan to replace the standard Medicaid fee-for-service health-care model with a new payment method that encourages doctors to treat patients more efficiently. Beebe said the state has been rolling out that program over the past few years, and it has helped slow the rise in health-care costs.
The two-term governor - who served for 20 years in the Arkansas Senate and another four years as state attorney general - said his motivation has always been to improve the state’s education system and increase economic development.
“I think what I’d like my legacy to be is that we created a renewed swagger among our people about Arkansas and what she can do,” he said. “We’ve climbed the rankings in education. We’ve increased the number of [academic] degrees. We have created job opportunities even in the midst of a terrible recession. We have raised our people’s per capita income … to higher than it’s ever been.”
He added, “If I have a legacy, I hope it’s that I have helped create an image that we can do anything as well or better than our sister states; that they could take a lesson from Arkansas and Arkansans.”
Over the course of his terms as governor, Beebe has had one of the highest approval ratings of any state’s governor. According to the Arkansas Poll, his approval rating was above 70 percent for all but one year of his tenure. It dipped to 66 percent last fall.
The University of North Carolina Job Approval Rating project, which collects data from numerous polls and tracks approval ratings for governors across the country, had Beebe topping out at an 82 percent approval rating in 2008 - a rating one political science professor said was almost unheard of. According to several polls on the project’s website, Beebe has had the highest approval ratings of any Arkansas governor in decades.
“He’s been the complete package in a lot of ways,” said Hal Bass, a political science professor at Ouachita Baptist University. “He’s maintained extremely high popularity in a very polarized environment and, in a way, in new territory.”
Bass said Beebe is the first Democratic governor to face a Republican Legislature in Arkansas in more decades than he could remember, or “maybe ever.”
“He has a management style of hiring good people but also supporting them. He gets high marks in executive management because he knows where all the bones are buried,” Bass said. “Beebe served for so long in the Senate, before term limits, that you can’t slip anything past him.”
But the high approval ratings aren’t enough to persuade Beebe, 67, to run for higher office in the future. The Democrat from Searcy has spent almost half of his life in elected office and said his plans don’t include Washington, D.C., or political campaigns.
“I truly believe, as elected office goes, this is the best job in America - being a governor,” he said. “You can get more done. You can effectuate more positive change for your people. You are responsible for your own faults instead of being painted with the brush of somebody else.”
“So, any other elected job after this would be downhill. We need good people to go to Washington, just don’t ask me to be one of them,” he said.
He said when the year is up, he plans to enjoy his Arkansas State University football season tickets, golf more, maybe fish or travel. He said he and his wife, Ginger, will move back to their home in Searcy.
“I’m somebody who likes a lot of folks around me and a lot of activity and a lot of action,” he said. “That’s what my wife said will occasion me to do more things than I plan to be doing. But we’ll see. I’m going to give her the opportunity to see if that’s true.”
Front Section, Pages 1 on 01/05/2014