Here are excerpts from recent editorials in Arkansas newspapers:
Texarkana Gazette, May 23, 2016
Little River County and Texarkana must face questions on expanded alcohol sales
Cities across Bowie County have been voting to allow retail beer and wine sales. And that has cut into the longstanding monopoly on alcohol that Texarkana, Ark., has enjoyed for so long.
No longer do area Texans have to drive across the state line for beer or wine. Nor, since Sunday sales of both are legal in Texarkana, Texas, do they have to plan ahead and stock up by Saturday to enjoy a cold one after church or during NFL games.
Indeed, some Arkansas residents now travel west if they fail to buy enough before Sunday.
Now it looks like the Arkansas-side could face even more competition. This time from within the state.
A group in Little River County is pushing for retail beer and wine sales there. Vote For Growth in Little River County is collecting signatures to put the matter before voters in November. They need 2,655 folks to sign on the line and they are just about 400 shy of that goal.
Retail giant Walmart and the E-Z Mart convenience store chain are big contributors to the petition drive. That just makes sense as they would be big beneficiaries of legal beer and wine sales.
Proponents say this is all about economic impact. And it’s true, beer and wine bring in both profit and sales-tax dollars.
But the bigger question- one that Ashdown and other Little River County residents still have the option to consider- is whether money should be the main concern. Will beer and wine sales add to or detract from the community and county?
Now is the time to decide. Because once beer and wine sales are voted in, it will be pretty near impossible to vote them out.
Of course, here in Texarkana money is the main concern in the alcohol game. We have had alcohol sales since the end of Prohibition. It’s been a lucrative franchise. And the city appreciates the sales-tax revenue, too.
Beer and wine are no longer exclusive to the Arkansas side and may well become even less exclusive, but right now the package stores still have a monopoly on hard liquor.
So while Little River County residents ask themselves whether beer and wine sales would be a plus or minus, Texarkana, Ark., package store owners and city officials need to ask themselves what happens when the monopoly on hard liquor goes out the window- and whether they have a plan in place for when that time comes.
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Camden News, May 17, 2016
Issues for some leads to law for all
Gov. Asa Hutchinson’s response and that of other Arkansas state officials were to be expected in reaction to the new federal guidelines on transgender use of restrooms and locker rooms in public schools.
Our public officials’ responses were as politically correct for this area as was the federal administration’s political correctness in issuing the guidelines.
This is not to say we do not respect the reasons for which each side based their stance on this issue. But, to mangle an adage, two right reasons don’t make a right result.
The U.S. Department of Education on Friday sent letters to school districts throughout the country directing educators to let transgender students use restrooms that correspond with their gender identities. The letter threatened withholding of federal school funding to districts that refuse to comply.
Hutchinson, Attorney General Leslie Rutledge, our Congressman Bruce Westerman, all Republicans, all railed at the directive out of the Democratic administration, while the state Department of Education reportedly urged Arkansas schools to ignore the directive.
Westerman was reported to have branded the threatening of withholding federal funds an empty threat and we hope he is right. Because we don’t think school districts should start jumping through federal hoops, at least at this point. This political hot potato might never had started baking if not for states such as North Carolina that have hit the transgender panic button by heeding that oft-heard advice, “There oughta be a law.” Well, now there is and the battle lines have been drawn although we haven’t heard of actual or perceived transgender bathroom invasion crises.
The situation boiled to the forefront because of the noise created by such legislation. Now it must be addressed despite the fact that it is probably not a problem in many, if not most, of the school districts in this state and other states. So the federal government says states started this wrangle and it is a civil rights issue so they have the authority to step in with the directive.
OK, but let’s carry it to what might seem to be a silly extreme today, but who knows about tomorrow? What about those who, as the directive stipulates, “commit” to the gender identity of bisexual? Would there be a directive to mandate use of male or female bathrooms based on the bisexual individual’s gender preference de jour for that particular day? And what about the civil rights of students who do not want to share bathrooms with individuals of the biologically opposite sex, regardless if those individuals “commit” to being otherwise gendered?
One solution might be, considering that most school buildings have multiple male and female restrooms, to designate one set of each as “male and transgender” and “female and transgender” for the non-transgendered who do not mind sharing bathroom space with transgenders. And transgender students would not be discriminated against because they would be using the facilities alongside those of the actual gender designation.
Supporters on both sides of the issue are passionate and sincere in their arguments so there probably will not be a solution acceptable to all. And, with politicians and bureaucrats making policy and law about the issue based on political correctness, we might never know or won’t for a long time if they got it right. In the meantime, instead of the federal government issuing a directive to embark in such uncertain waters, how about if school districts not facing the problem can say to the government, “We promise that, when we need your help, we’ll ask for it.”
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Arkansas Business, May 16, 2016
Suckers R Us
Here we go again. Yet another out-of-state company wants to get itself written, by name, into our state constitution as a protected casino monopoly. And people you’d expect to have more respect for their home state - lawyers, political consultants, economic developers - have signed on to help.
It would be bad enough to think that Arkansans would sell our state constitution to the highest bidder - but in this case, there isn’t even any bidding. The only thing that makes Arkansas Gaming & Resorts LLC (with its principal address in Branson, Missouri) and two related companies worthy of being included in our constitution is the fact that they wrote the amendment currently under consideration by the state attorney general and are prepared to pay to collect the signatures to put it on the ballot.
Can you imagine Texas or Wyoming writing the name of a private company into their state constitutions? It sounds like something only desperate suckers would even consider, yet operator after operator has concluded that Arkansas might be ripe for that kind of sell-out. (One of the amendments actually got on the general election ballot in 2000, and Arkansans were evenly split on that until its backers were charged with felony securities fraud just before the election.)
Let us be clear: Our objection to this “casino initiative” is not the casino part. An amendment that would allow the expansion of casino gambling would be a fair question to put to voters.
But the idea of creating constitutionally protected monopolies for specific companies and their investors is unsupportable. We’d feel that way even if the company actually were from Arkansas.
Eventually one of these persistent operators and their enablers-for-hire may succeed in getting voters to approve the ultimate in self-serving amendments. To prevent that, our legislature needs to propose its own amendment specifically forbidding any private organization from being named in or given any special advantage by our state constitution.
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