The Arkansas Educational Television Network's executive director defended the network's operations Thursday before a legislative panel, after state Sen. Bart Hester, R-Cave Springs, targeted the network for a budget cut.
"There is a lot of misunderstanding by some people as to what we are," AETN Executive Director Allen Weatherly told the Legislative Council's Higher Education Subcommittee.
Hester said last month that "the state expended $5.4 million last year on government television (AETN), while cutting our support for local libraries by 18 percent [from $5.6 million to $4.6 million]," and "that is not a wise trade-off, especially at a time when the free market offers such an ample array of choices in telecommunications."
Hester said Wednesday that he plans to propose cutting the network's state budget, ranging "from all of it to a little bit of it," during the Legislature's fiscal session starting April 13. "Until we fully fund the needs of our foster care system, how can we be paying for government TV?"
Subcommittee Co-Chairman Rep. Greg Leding, D-Fayetteville, said Hester's call for cutting AETN's budget "spurred us to move a little bit more quickly" to have Weatherly educate the subcommittee's members about AETN's role in education in the state.
The network has a budget of about $15 million a year, including $5.3 million a year in state general revenue to pay for its operations and a $3.5 million a year grant from the state Department of Education to provide online professional development for educators, Weatherly told lawmakers. The network also receives funds from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, pledge drives, and from other sources, and has 110 employees, he said.
AETN has been on the air since December 1966. It includes six transmitters covering the entire state of Arkansas, plus some small areas of Louisiana, Missouri and Oklahoma, and broadcasts four channels, he said.
"We do every week on our main channel 40 hours of vetted educational programming for children and families, and, if you add in that third channel, that's 60 weeks a week. Compare that to my friends in commercial television," Weatherly said. "They voluntarily agreed 10 years ago that they would present educational programming three hours a week and they get to choose what that educational programming is. That's fine.
"But ours is a different ballgame. That's a huge part of what we do. I've always said my hero is Fred Rogers, Mister Rogers, who is no longer with us. He sets the model for what we are trying to do," Weatherly said.
But Sen. Blake Johnson, R-Corning, wondered whether AETN "could help their funding model" by selling advertising.
Weatherly replied, "My short answer would [be] probably not because it would change the type of programs that we do."
After Thursday's meeting, Weatherly said that if the state's private option program isn't reauthorized by the Legislature in the fiscal session starting April 13 then "we are all kind of worried" about state budget cuts to their state agencies. Under the private option, the state uses federal Medicaid dollars to purchase private health insurance for low-income Arkansans.
Republican Gov. Asa Hutchinson has warned that the Legislature's failure to reauthorize the private option program that he wants to change and call Arkansas Works would create a more than $100 million "hole" in his proposed $5.3 billion general revenue budget in fiscal 2017, which starts July 1.
Hester, who is an opponent of the private option, said Wednesday that he also plans to propose a 3 percent across-the-board cut in state general revenue for the state's higher education institutions in fiscal year 2017.
Such a cut would reduce the state's higher education institutions' general revenue, totaling $733.5 million, by $22 million, said Jake Bleed, a spokesman for the state Department of Finance and Administration.
Hester said he also intends to propose eliminating state funds totaling about $850,000 for managing War Memorial Stadium in Little Rock in the fiscal year starting July 1 because it's not a good use of taxpayers' money.
He said his proposal isn't aimed at forcing the University of Arkansas at Fayetteville to play all of their football games in Fayetteville because it doesn't matter if one game is played in Little Rock or in Fayetteville. The high school football championship games played at War Memorial Stadium could be played instead at Arkansas Tech, Arkansas State University, the University of Central Arkansas or the UA at Fayetteville, he said.
Kevin Crass of Little Rock, chairman of the War Memorial Stadium Commission, declined to comment Thursday about Hester's proposal.
Metro on 04/01/2016