Education a focus in House District 60

Ratliff floats forgiving teachers’ loans; Cavenaugh calls for technical training

Ideas on how to improve Arkansas’ rural school districts have become the key component in two campaigns for state House District 60, one of northeast Arkansas’ few remaining Democratic seats.

The incumbent, Rep. James Ratliff, D-Imboden, is a former high school agriculture teacher who says that if given a fourth term he will pitch a statewide plan to bring teachers to smaller districts by offering to pay off their college loans.

His challenger, Republican Frances Cavenaugh of Walnut Ridge, who owns a car dealership with her husband, says the lack of technical education and degrees for high school students is helping to drive up unemployment and low-wage jobs in the district. The election is Nov. 8. In her first bid for public office, Cavenaugh follows in the footsteps of her brotherin-law, Ronald Cavenaugh, a Republican who unsuccessfully challenged Ratliff in 2012. In 2014, Ratliff fended off Republican Blaine Davis by a total of 50 votes out of 7,952 votes cast.

The state representative job pays a salary of $39,400 a year, plus per diem and mileage expenses for attending legislative meetings.

Representatives are elected every two years. The 100-member chamber currently has 62 Republicans, 34 Democrats and independent Rep. Nate Bell of Mena. There are three vacant seats.

Ratliff, who touts his endorsement by the National Rifle Association and opposition to medical marijuana proposals, said voters in his district value his six years of experience on the job instead of just looking at his Demo-

cratic Party label.

“I’m retired and do the job full-time,” Ratliff said, “When I first came in here, they kept saying it’s a part-time job, and I never figured out where the ‘part’ came in at.”

But voters in the district are not looking for a “career politician,” Cavenaugh said, arguing that her personality and potential spot with the majority party would put her in a better position to influence other representatives and pass legislation.

“I’m a little more aggressive, I’m a little more bulldogish, and that’s how I usually describe myself,” Cavenaugh said.

In an interview at the state Capitol, Ratliff offered praise for several of Republican Gov. Asa Hutchinson’s policies, including a reduction in the state income tax and a revision of the state’s private-option Medicaid expansion, which Hutchinson re-branded as “Arkansas Works.”

Arkansas’ private-option program uses federal funds under the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act of 2010, commonly known as Obamacare, to purchase private insurance for people earning up to 138 percent of the poverty level, about $16,243 for an individual

or $33,465 for a family of four.

Hutchinson is seeking a waiver from the federal government this year for revisions to the program — which began in 2013 — with changes that include charging premiums of up to $19 a month for enrollees earning above the poverty level and incentives to receive coverage through work.

The private-option program covers about 300,000 Arkansans, and next year the state will have to start paying 5 percent of the total costs, rising to 10 percent by 2020.

“I support it whole-heartedly, 100 percent. There are 17 rural hospitals that we would have lost in Arkansas if we hadn’t passed that Arkansas Works, and one of them happened to be in my district,” Ratliff said, referring to Lawrence Memorial Hospital in Walnut

Ridge. “It is a really good thing. They save lives there. If we didn’t have [the private option coverage] we’d be 45 minutes from the nearest hospital and you stand to lose lives.”

Despite opposing the federal law, Cavenaugh said she hoped to add more changes to the private-option program in order to ensure that it is sustainable. If elected, she said she would need more time to review Arkansas Works before offering her support for its present form.

“As a state, we have got to find a way to live with the current Affordable Care Act

in a way that, No. 1, doesn’t bankrupt the government, and that it doesn’t take away much-needed federal funds from us,” Cavenaugh said.

Cavenaugh’s caution extended to further tax cuts that have been proposed by Hutchinson.

While she said she was generally supportive of reducing taxes, she expressed concerns that it would weaken the state’s ability to meet its minimum funding needs.

Increasing the 1 percentage point income tax cut for Arkansans earning between $21,000 and $75,000 a year, passed in 2015, would be a boon to his constituents, Ratliff said, and could be afforded if the state cuts “duplicative” services uncovered during annual audits. Ratliff does not serve on the Legislative Joint Auditing Committee.

The governor has estimated the state could afford another $50 million-a-year tax cut beginning in fiscal 2018, though general revenue collections have fallen short of projections in the first three months of fiscal 2017, which started July 1.

If he is re-elected, Rat- liff said he would push to authorize a new program similar to the Arkansas Rural Practice Scholarship program, which help pays medical-school bills for doctors who agree to practice in rural communities, in order to bring better-qualified teachers into low-income school districts.

“If you’ll teach seven years in an economically disadvantaged school district, we’ll forgive your student loan,” Ratliff said. “I think that would really be an asset that would make people go to these schools that are not paying the best.”

It’s not just pay that’s keeping people from becoming teachers, Cavenaugh said, but government regulations on school districts.

The state should support more programs on technical training and certificate programs for high school students, she said, so that they can enter in-demand careers that do not require a fouryear college degree.

“My biggest thing is if we cannot keep these children and get them to graduate, we can never get a livable wage here and they will do nothing but live in poverty because they are forced to by circumstances, because they don’t have training for anything but the minimum-wage jobs,” Cavenaugh said.

The Republican challenger said the biggest difference between her and Ratliff was on abortion.

Cavenaugh said Ratliff “did not help to defeat [thenGov. Mike Beebe’s] veto on ban to abortion,” in 2013, which would have banned such procedures after 20 weeks of pregnancy.

Ratliff voted in favor of the ban when it passed in the House, but did not cast a vote in a successful override of the governor’s veto.

Ratliff said he is opposed to abortion in all instances except to save the life of a mother.

He said he was taking his mother to an eye doctor’s appointment in Memphis when the vote to override Beebe’s veto was cast.