Residents in Franklin County, Arkansas, rebel against Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders' prison plans for their community

The proposed Franklin County prison would sit on land south
of the Arkansas River, above. (Wikipedia photo)

Franklin County, Arkansas, might be small and red-leaning, but some of its residents are ready to duke it out with Republican Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders over a $825 million, 3,000-bed prison she has planned for 815 acres of rocky Franklin County land, reports Cameron McWhirter of The Wall Street Journal. The state quietly purchased the large track of property for the proposed prison to avoid a bidding war.

When news of the planned prison began to circulate, many Franklin County residents were shocked and angered. "Marc Dietz, 55, a businessman and rancher who operates a family-owned radio station in Ozark, said many locals felt blindsided," McWhirter writes. Dietz told him, "We’re a small county, not enough votes, and she thought she’d run roughshod."

Location of Franklin County in
Arkansas (Wikipedia map)

The resistance in Franklin County, where Sanders received 76% of the vote in her 2022 gubernatorial bid, dealt her a major setback in fulfilling her campaign promise to address the state's prison overcrowding problems. Sanders told the Journal, "Some people want this to be a fight over the money and different things. But what it really is is, do we care about the safety and security of our citizens, or do we not?”

The battle between Franklin County residents opposing the prison and state officials and lawmakers pushing to get it done "has seeped into Board of Corrections appointments, state budget discussions, a GOP primary — and some odder places," McWhirter explains. One resident has lined his farm fencing "with plastic skeletons and placards reading, 'This Prison is Going to Kill Arkansas.' Other residents joined RASH, or 'Republicans Against Sarah Huckabee.'"

Since Sanders announced the prison plan, "funding for it has stalled in the state Senate, blocked by a handful of Republican senators," McWhirter reports. "State Sen. Bart Hester said he and most GOP legislators back the Franklin County location, but a few holdouts. . . are blocking the move."

USDA closes 125 of 131 Farm Service Agency offices as planned

The United States Department of Agriculture announced its decision on consolidation of its Farm Service Agency county offices, moving to combine 125 of the 131 offices with other USDA service centers, as required by the 2008 Farm Bill. Public meetings were held within 30 days of the original announcement in every county affected by the proposal. In the USDA announcement, the department states that FSA will provide farmers and ranchers affected by consolidations an opportunity to choose the most convenient neighboring county office to conduct their future business. In addition, all employees in a closing office will be provided an opportunity to continue their work with FSA. Under the USDA's Blueprint for Stronger Service, the agency will also close or consolidate 259 other domestic and seven foreign offices.

The six proposed county offices that will continue operating are: Lafayette County, Ark.; Boulder County, Colo.; St. Mary Parish, La.; Pamlico County, N.C.; Mayes County, Okla.; and York County, S.C. A complete list of FSA county offices affected by this decision can be obtained by clicking here.

Arkansas works to attract home-grown teachers

Community Foundation of the Ozarks has launched an initiative to hire rural teachers. Ozarks Teacher Corps provides scholarships of $4,000 for two years if college juniors and seniors chosen for the corps agree agree to teach in a rural school district for three years after graduation, reports Susan Atteberry Smith for the News-Leader. Funding from new private donors to CFO will double the number of scholarships offered to incoming students.
 
CFO President Gary Funk came up with the idea of providing scholarships to "grow their own" teachers, said CFO Executive Director Julie Leeth. When students come back to their home communities, Leeth calls it a "major coup." Said student Missouri State University Mykie Nash about returning home to teach, "Everybody goes to the Friday night football game. I've always loved that, and I've always thought that was important in education and in raising my own kids." (Read more)

Rural entrepreneur Don Tyson dies at 80

Donald J. Tyson, "an aggressive and visionary entrepreneur who dropped out of college and built his father’s Arkansas chicken business into the behemoth Tyson Foods," died Thursday of cancer, Robert D. McFadden writes for The New York Times. "Don was known by all to work hard, but also to play hard," Tyson President and CEO Donnie Smith said in a statement.  Tyson, who was 80, died at his residence in Springdale, Ark., reports Gavin Lesnick of the Arkansas Democrat Gazette. (Photo by University of Arkansas)

Tyson was born in Olathe, Kan., and grew up in Springdale, where he helped his father haul chickens. In 1957, the company built its first poultry-processing plant, and in the 1960s began buying farms and competitors. It went public in 1963, McFadden reports. Tyson became president in 1966 and chairman in 1967. For the next 30 years, the company "grew exponentially. It bought beef, pork and seafood companies, built 60 processing plants and diversified into 6,000 products. It supplied fast-food chains and secured markets abroad. When Mr. Tyson surrendered day-to-day control in 1995, the company ranked 110th on the Fortune 500 list, with sales of $5.2 billion."

Tyson, often "likened to fellow Arkansans Sam Walton, the late Walmart tycoon, and former President Bill Clinton," made his company a household name by successfully marketing Rock Cornish hens. He also helped develop McDonald's chicken McNuggets. (Read more)

Tyson spoke proudly of his father's humble business beginnings, recounting in speeches and to reporters over the years how his father  "came to town in 1932 with 11 cents and a half a load of hay" and started to build a company that would swell into an industry giant, Lesnick reports. The Democrat Gazette has a timeline of Tyson's life. (Read more)

Arkansas' Lincoln, strong subsidy backer, replaces Iowa's Harkin as chair of Senate Ag Committee

Sen. Blanche Lincoln, D-Ark., has accepted the chairmanship of the Senate Agriculture Committee, vacated by Sen. Tom Harkin, D-Iowa, who took over the Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions, vacated by the death of Sen. Edward Kennedy. The promotion of Lincoln, a strong supporter of farm subsidies, has clouded the future of some issues before the committee and brightened that of others, reports Keith Good of FarmPolicy.com. Good has assembled several reports about Lincoln's new role, writing that cap-and-trade legislation appears to have taken a hit with her promotion, but the cotton and rice industries have received a major boost. (Read more)

"Lincoln's opposition to passing a climate bill this year could have a significant impact on the legislation's future in the Senate," Lisa Lerer of Politico.com writes, noting that Lincoln plans to revisit the renewable-fuels standards in the House version. Despite environmentalists' concerns, Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Cal., chair of the Environment and Public Works Committee, told Lerer the move was good news because of Lincoln's agricultural expertise. Lincoln's voting record on cap-and-trade has been far from consistent, Environment & Energy Daily reports, adding senators and lobbyists said her new role may not significantly alter how the Senate deals with farm concerns in the climate bill.

Cotton and rice, two of the largest industries in Arkansas, stand to benefit from Lincoln's new power as she runs for re-election in 2010. Republicans have targeted Lincoln because of her sagging poll numbers, Rachel Kapochunas of CQPolitics.com reports. Lincoln, the Democratic chair of rural outreach, has been active on other rural issues, speaking at the National Rural Assembly in 2008 and announcing the Democratic rural agenda in March.

Bill Clinton tells foundations their philanthropy in rural America is 'woefully inadequate'

Foundations' help for rural America is "woefully inadequate," but rural advocates need to make better arguments to get more foundation help, former President Bill Clinton said today at a conference on rural philanthropy at his library in Little Rock, sponsored by the Council on Foundations.

Clinton said the national poverty rate can't be reduced without focusing on rural development, and suggested that alternative energy, anti-obesity and reforestation programs should be included in the mix. "We can beat up on people and say they should give more money in rural America, but we should give them some new ideas," he said, adding that rural and urban charities should find ways to cooperate.

Andrew DeMillo of The Associated Press reports: "The 42nd president, who was born in Hope and raised in Hot Springs, said that he believed that charities that work in rural areas should find more ways to work with charities that work in urban areas. When asked about the state of rural areas, Clinton said that charities in those areas should find ways to create hope for the people living there." (Read more)

Memphis-area initiative aims to develop crops as feedstocks for industrial products

The Memphis Bioworks Foundation is promoting a "future in which farmers throughout the Mid-South [will] ship crops to Memphis, where chemical companies convert them into everything from paint to plastic bottles," writes Daniel Connolly in The Commercial Appeal.

"The nonprofit, which focuses on building up science-based businesses and creating highly paid jobs, is planning a big push into industrializing agriculture. They're calling the initiative AgBio. 'The long-term trend says that a bio-based economy is going to develop,' said Bioworks leader Steve Bares. 'That opportunity for job growth is something we want to be positioned for.' Bares and associates emphasize that the effort goes beyond bio-based fuels. The foundation envisions farmers growing special crops for industrial purposes and using non-edible 'biomass,' including leftovers like corn stalks, to make products such as lubricants, fibers and coatings."

"Bio-based products are a dramatically growing part of our domestic and the global economy," Bruce Scherr, head of Informa Economics, a Memphis-based agriculture consulting firm that focuses on agriculture, food and energy, told Connolly. Some time may pass before bio-based fuels take hold in the United States, he said: "The science for creating fuel out of cellulose remains crude, he said. But there's lots of potential to create lubricants, fibers and other products from biological sources."

A strategic plan for building up the agricultural industry in the Memphis area "should by ready by early 2009, and while it's being developed, the group plans to draw farmers throughout the area into the planning process," Connolly writes. Bares told him, "The message to farmers is this is clearly an opportunity for farmers to make money and to leverage the assets they have in hand."

Globalization, housing bust, changing tastes make historic bad news for hardwood mills, landowners

"Global economics and the housing bust are throwing a relentless string of problems at the mom-and-pop sawmills and logging companies that make up much of the nation's hardwood lumber industry," much of it in economically struggling Appalachia, writes Tim Huber of The Associated Press, reporting on the fallout of furniture-factory closures and a change in homeowners' tastes. (AP photo by Randy Snyder: Harley Yoder feeds boards into a laser-guided saw at Twin River Hardwoods Inc. in Southside, W.Va.)

The decline in lumber production is historic, U.S. Forest Service economist Bill Luppold told Huber. "I don't even think the numbers demonstrate how bad it is," Luppold said. "We haven't seen this amount of decline year in and year out since the early part of the [20th] Century." In 1999, the industry produced 12.6 billion board feet; this year, Luppold expects 10.5 billion. "Timber jobs nationwide fell almost 13 percent to 8,790 in 2006 from 9,910 in 2000," Huber notes. "The number of logging equipment operators has declined more than 17 percent to 28,300 in 2006 from 34,180 in 2000."

As if globalization and a housing bust weren't enough, homeowners have lost their taste for red oak, "the most common hardwood in much of Appalachia" and Arkansas, Huber reports. "Now, lighter- grained species, especially maple and poplar, are in vogue," and the price for red oak lumber has fallen 35 percent. That translates to lower timber prices for woodland owners.

Virginia Tech professor Urs Buehlmann told Huber that sawmills in Western Europe are surviving by getting into manufacturing of made-to-order furniture and cabinets. "They're pretty much customizing the kitchen to your specifications," he said. "I strongly believe this will be the guide." (Read more)

Virginia makes a felony of cockfighting, so West Virginia could see more of the illegal fights

Recently, Virginia joined the 36 other states that make cockfighting a felony. Since cockfighting remains a misdemeanor in West Virginia, officials with the Humane Society of the United States warn that the crime could be on the rise there, reports Tom Searls of The Charleston Gazette.

"The national Humane Society rates West Virginia's laws among the most lax, along with neighboring Ohio and Kentucky," Searls writes. John Goodwin, the national Humane Society's manager of animal fighting issues, told Searls that the majority of cockfighting goes on in rural areas — such as the mountainous region along the Virginia-West Virginia border — where locals know what's going on. Thus, there need to major deterrents, Goodwin said.

Two bills dealing with cockfighting failed to gain traction in the West Virginia Legislature, one of which would have made any participation in cockfighting a felony. Ohio and Tennessee have considered strengthening cockfighting laws, but Kentucky has not. (Read more)

This week, a bill making cockfighting a felony passed the Tennessee House Criminal Practice Subcommittee, reports Tom Humphrey of the Knoxville News-Sentinel. "The bill, HB2143, would increase the penalty for active participation in cockfighting from the current Class A misdemeanor, punishable by up to a year in jail and a $2,500 fine, to a Class E, punishable by up to a prison term of between one and six years and a fine of $3,000," Humphrey writes. "A spectator at a cockfight can now be punished for a Class C misdemeanor, which has a maximum penalty of up to 30 days in jail and a $50 fine. The bill would raise the crime of being a spectator to a Class A misdemeanor."

Leighann McCollum, Tennessee state director of the Humane Society, told Humphrey that supporters of cockfighting have been lobbying legislators to oppose the change. "We feel like they are cowering to the loud voices of the minority of people in this state who enjoy cockfighting," she said. (Read more)

The Humane Society ranks the states in order of cockfighting laws, with Arkansas, Kentucky, Idaho, Mississippi and Alabama at the bottom.

Rural Democrats feel pain of 'pay as you go' as another Farm Bill deadline looms this month

David Rogers of Politico writes:

Could “pay-go” mean “no-go” for a new farm bill this spring? That’s the question that tortures rural Democrats who pressed hardest in Congress last year for the tougher anti-deficit rules but now find themselves tied in knots, trying to write a plan for producers at home. . . . Failure to meet the next deadline, April 18, will surely increase pressure to punt past this growing season. And the next few weeks could see a desperate endgame in which each side plots to jam the other on how to pay for new spending. If it weren’t so embarrassing, it would be laughable: a Washington comedy of errors that stars warring Senate committees, a farm lobby stubbornly resistant to change and a set of budget baselines that seem to change all the time.

"Pay-go" is short for pay as you go, a rule that requires "Congress to come up with new revenues or savings to pay for any new funding above the baselines prepared by its official scorer, the Congressional Budget Office," Rogers explains. When the House used a "relatively modest tax provision" to pay for its version of the bill, that set off a jurisdictional battle in the Senate, one piece of which is over whether to give disaster benefits as tax credits.

Here's our favorite paragraph in the story: "Government’s whole role in agriculture begins with the notion that the very unpredictability of farming justifies some safety net to help producers manage their risks. Pay-go begins at the opposite end: demanding predictability and requiring detailed cost forecasts five or 10 years in advance from CBO. The task is that much harder, given the ethanol boom and swings in commodity prices."

There's a lot more good stuff that explains a complex topic, with a cherry on top: Rogers writes about proposed tax breaks for "timber interests, farm machinery sales and, yes, race horses." Hey, since the tobacco program was repealed, horses have been Kentucky's No. 1 farm product! But Republican Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky has allies on the measure, such as Sen. Blanche Lincoln (D-Ark.), Rogers notes. His 1,250-word story is a fine read.

Arkansas town's scholarship program sends 81 percent of high school graduates to college

Only 18.2 percent of Arkansans had a bachelor's degree in 2000, the the lowest among the states except West Virginia (16.5 percent). In the town of El Dorado, Ark., a local oil company's scholarship program is trying to improve that by offering to send all local high school graduates — regardless of grades or income — to college, Steve Brawner reports for The Christian Science Monitor. (Brawner also took the photo of an El Dorado High School classroom above.)

The program has helped spark growth in the town of 22,000 near the Louisiana border. Brawner explains the renaissance:

The percentage of graduating seniors attending college has risen from about 60 percent to 81 percent. Families are moving into the school district to take advantage of the program after decades of population decline. The student body has risen by at least 140 students to more than 4,500, and this year's kindergarten class is 12 percent larger than the last. In 2007, the town passed a property-tax increase to replace its 45-year-old high school and created a local sales tax to fund economic development.

The program, called El Dorado Promise and sponsored by Murphy Oil Corp., is the latest in a line of similar community programs that are springing up around the country. (We recently mentioned one sponsored the Rotary Club in Hopkinsville, Ky.) The El Dorado program was inspired by Kalamazoo Promise in Michigan, but it has some differences, Brawner writes. In the El Dorado program, students must enroll in the fall after high school graduation, and they can attend any college anywhere, while receiving tuition and fees equivalent to Arkansas' most expensive state school. Students who have been enrolled in the El Dorado district longer receive more money, with ninth grade being the final time to enroll to be eligible for participation in the program. (Read more)

Citing climate change and costs, feds suspend loans for rural electric cooperatives' coal-fired plants

Concerns over climate change, and the prospect of limits on greenhouse gases, recently prompted major banks to add to stricter emissions standards to any financing for coal-fired power plants. Now those same worries are complicating public financing for rural electric cooperatives, which get 80 percent of their power from coal.

"The federal government is suspending a major loan program for coal-fired power plants in rural communities, saying the uncertainties of climate change and rising construction costs make the loans too risky," reports Matthew Brown of The Associated Press.

Since 2001, $1.3 billion in loans had been issued for new plant construction, but "none will be issued this year and likely none in 2009, James Newby, assistant administrator for the Rural Utilities Service, a branch of the Department of Agriculture, said Tuesday," Brown writes. Projects in Arkansas, Illinois, Kentucky and Missouri had been seeking a total of $1.3 billion in loans at the time of the suspension. (Read more) We reported on cancellation of the Missouri plant yesterday.

UPDATE, March 13: Steven Mufson of The Washington Post catches up, and expands, on the story. To read his report, click here.

Why did Obama lose Calif.? Look to its heartland

As Super Tuesday approached, Barack Obama's momentum in California strongly indicated that he would carry the state and become the Democratic front-runner for president. But Hillary Clinton won the state by almost 10 percentage points, and analysts focused on her strength among women and Hispanics. But there was another reason: Her strength in the state's interior.

"Obama, for all the interest he generated in wealthy coastal precincts, was failing in a frantic effort to gain traction in the California heartland: the Inland Empire counties of San Bernardino and Riverside, and the Central Valley stalwarts, Fresno and Kern counties," Joe Mathews writes in the Los Angeles Times. "There lies a different Democratic California, less known to outsiders than the gilded coast but no less important . . . the unofficial capital of the working class."

Mathews begins his piece with a Dust Bowl-Depression ditty: "Dear Okie ... if you see Arkie .. . tell 'im Tex's got a job for him ... out in Californy." He seems to argue that The Grapes of Wrath are still producing political juice. "We're two states: a coastal blue state and an interior red state," he writes. "The phrase that used to describe this phenomenon is 'California, 50 miles inland, is Arkansas.' It is, politically speaking, Oklahoma and Tennessee too. And while inland California is conservative and mostly Republican, there are millions of Democrats there as well. They cast their ballots in a way that closely resembles the voting patterns of the conservative Dust Bowl states whose job-seeking migrants settled the interior of Californy." Mathews, a grandson of Dust Bowl migrants, notes that Clinton's vote in those states (allowing for her roots in Arkansas) was similar to those in the four big interior counties. He acknowledges the Hispanic factor; the counties have very high Latino populations.

California's interior was once mainly rural, but no longer. By the Daily Yonder's county-by-county calculation, 96.7 percent of California's vote is urban, with 0.8 percent exurban and 2.6 percent rural. Clinton's margin over Obama in the state's rural counties was only 1.1 percent. The National Election Pool exit poll, based on precinct location, has it 50 percent urban, 42 percent suburban and 7 percent rural. Clinton's support in the poll showed no statistical difference among those categories. Her standout poll numbers were among Latinos (67 percent), women (59 pct.) and the poor and less educated, which supports Mathews' theory. Income categories below $100,000 all went for Clinton; those higher went for Obama. They tied among college graduates; he won those with postgraduate education and she won the rest, with increasing majorities as the level of education declined.

The Yonder's latest cut of the data says "Clinton has pulled more votes from counties that voted for George Bush in 2004 — while the Obama campaign has done best in the bluest of blue communities."

L.A. Times examines Huckabee deal to write book on school shootings, refusal to donate any of fee

Days after two teenagers shot and killed four classmates and a teacher and wounded 10 others in Jonesboro, Ark., in 1998, then-Gov. Mike Huckabee, left, got a $25,000 advance to co-write a book on youth violence -- then said he had the idea before the killings and refused to donate any of the money to the victims or the school. But in the next election, he carried Jonesboro, a city of 55,000.

The story of the book Kids Who Kill is widely known in Arkansas, but not around the country. Today, Richard Serrano writes it for the Los Angeles Times and voters in the Republican presidential primaries, where Huckabee hopes evangelical and rural voters will help him overcome his campaign's financial disadvantage.

Serrano reports that survivors "told Huckabee they wanted assurances the killers could not write books or sell their stories to Hollywood, and that Huckabee looked them both in the eyes and said: 'That would be blood money.' " At a second meeting, he said, "No one should profit."

"Dogged about why he declined to donate any of the book proceeds to the scholarship fund, Huckabee said he planned to use the money for his own children's college education," Serrano writes. "Later Huckabee stayed in his private office in the Capitol in an attempt to evade further questions. Then he rushed to his state car and slammed the door on reporters." (Read more)

Ark. town hopes rare bird, prosperity reappear

Three years ago, a research team from Cornell University and the Nature Conservancy said it had made a big discovery in Arkansas: a sighting of the ivory-billed woodpecker, last seen in the U.S. in the 1940s. The large, yellow-eyed bird put Brinkley, Ark., on the map and put tourist dollars in locals' pockets — for a little while. Since the bird has not been seen again, the short boom has ended, reports The New York Times. (Encarta map)

"The patch of Arkansas bayou where the researchers said they spotted the bird is in the heart of Monroe County," Lara Farrar reports. "Once an agricultural and manufacturing center, the county is now one of the poorest places in Arkansas. For its roughly 10,000 residents, the reported rediscovery of the ivory-billed woodpecker fired hopes of an economic turnaround not seen since the soybean boom of the 1970s."

Ivory-billed themed souvenirs are gathering dust, but locals such as David Baxter (in a Times photo by Kate Medley) are on the lookout for the bird and waiting for the boom it inspired to return. (Read more)

Looking in the mirror at its teeth, W.Va. putting more limits on sugary drinks, snacks in schools

West Virginia's school board approved a nutrition policy Thursday that would ban from schools drinks with caffeine, and those with more than 200 calories, 200 milligrams of sodium or35 percent sugar (excluding fruit).Earlier in the week, a legislative committee recommended "that the state ban all soft drinks and sugary snacks" from schools, reports Davin White of The Charleston Gazette.

"After learning recently how bad residents’ oral health has become, the legislators believe the ban also could decrease obesity rates in addition to improving dental health in the Mountain State," writes Shelley Hanson of The Intelligencer in Wheeling.

The school board's policy would also "nearly ban all trans fat [and] limit saturated fat to less than 10 percent of total calories," White reports. "The policy, which goes into effect July 1, would not keep students from bringing in soft drinks they bought at a convenience or grocery store."

The legislative proposal is expected to face opposition from lobbyists for the soft-drink industry, and even from some educators. "Some high-school principals also enjoy the revenue that soft drink sales bring their schools," White notes. "During the school day, middle and elementary school students already cannot buy caffeine and sugary soft drinks." (Read more)

The legislative committee pushing the bill also called for creation of a state Office of Oral Health. "The office would be charged with promoting better oral health throughout West Virginia, including supporting efforts to require dental inspection for students in elementary school," The Intelligencer reports. "According to the Centers for Disease Control, 61.4 percent of adults across West Virginia visited dentists in 2006, down from 62.5 percent in 2004. The state ranks 47th, with only three states reporting fewer visits: Oklahoma, Mississippi and Arkansas." (Read more)

Do Huckabee's GOP critics think he's too rural?

Republican establishmentarians thinks Mike Huckabee is "a rube straight out of Dogpatch" but most of them speak in code because "Class war is forbidden in the Republican playbook," Tim Egan writes in Outposts, his blog for The New York Times. (Photo of sign on Iowa 92 by Joshua Lott)

"Huckabee, despite an inept last week of campaigning, has forced the Republican Party to face the Wal-Mart shoppers that they have long taken advantage of," Egan writes. "He’s here. He’s Gomer. And he’s not going away. Huckabee revels in the class war. He’s Two-Buck Huck, and darn proud of it. He likes nothing better than playing the Hick from Hope. He and his wife lived in a trailer for a while, he points out. His son killed a dog one summer, 'a mangy dog' at that, as Huckabee explained to the befuddled national press corps. He said he used to eat squirrels, cooking them up in his popcorn popper. Ewwwwhhh!"

More from Egan, who once covered the rural West for the Times: "It’s okay to have faux rubes, a la Bush senior and his pork rinds, or George W. and his Midland malapropisms. But when something that looks like the real thing comes along, the Republican royalists get apoplectic. They were appalled at the recent YouTube debate because it looked like a parody of one faction of their party – complete with Bible-waving wackos, trigger-happy gun nuts and Confederate-flag enthusiasts." (Read more)

Huckabee's legacy as Arkansas governor included closing scores of small, rural school districts

"Mike Huckabee produced a legacy like few other Republican governors in the South, surprising even liberal Democrats with his willingness to upend some of Arkansas' more parochial traditions," including small, rural school districts, two reporters for The New York Times write from Little Rock, apparently having been dispatched after the surge in Huckabee's presidential campaign.

"He drove through a series of changes that transformed education and health insurance in Arkansas, achievements that were never tried by most of his predecessors, including Bill Clinton," write Adam Nossiter and David Barstow. "But he is also remembered in the state for a style of governing that tended to freeze out anyone of any party who disagreed with his plans."

They add: "Mr. Huckabee is a son of small-town Arkansas, yet he deeply angered many in his rural constituency, touching the third rail of the state’s politics by shutting down money-draining, redundant school districts in the hinterlands. Protesters rallied at the state Capitol, fearful of losing schools, football teams, and age-old identities, but the governor insisted his way was the best and the schools were closed."

The reform was prompted by a state Supreme Court decision that found the Arkansas school system to be inequitable. Closing dozens of small districts, which Clinton had avoided, was "the path of greatest resistance," Nossiter and Barstow write. "The fight went on for over a year, and Mr. Huckabee’s staunchest allies proved to be the most liberal Democrats in the Legislature." He had proposed cutting the 310 districts "by well over half," and refused to sign or veto the resulting law, which cut his plan by almost two-thirds. (Read more)

Arkansas trooper who arrested journalist covering fire is taken off law-enforcement duty

An Arkansas state trooper who arrested a weekly newspaper reporter-photographer at a fire has been taken off law-enforcement duty and assigned to office work, and the charge he filed against the journalist has been dismissed. (See Rural Blog item from Dec. 14.)

Trooper Thomas Weindruch arrested and handcuffed Bill Lawson of the Maumelle Monitor, a suburban Little Rock weekly with a circulation of 3,200. His charge of misdemeanor obstruction of governmental operations was dismissed at the request of Pulaski County Prosecutor Larry Jegley, The Associated Press reports.

"After we reviewed the incident report and the videotape (from a camera in Weindruch's vehicle) and looked at the relevant statute, we didn't feel as though the charge was appropriate, given what we read and saw," Jegley told Stephens Media, owner of the Monitor. (Read more, from the First Amendment Center) For Lawson's account of the arrest, which indicates the trooper was angered by flash photography, click here.

State police investigate arrest of Arkansas reporter

On Monday, Bill Lawson, a reporter for the Maumelle Monitor, set out to cover a house fire. While walking toward the fire with a camera, he was stopped by Arkansas State Police Trooper Thomas Weindruch (at left in a flash photo by Lawson) and handcuffed so that he faced away from the fire, the Monitor reports. The Monitor is a suburban Little Rock weekly with a circulation of 3,200.

"Bill Lawson, 59, a reporter and photographer for the Maumelle Monitor, said Trooper Tom Weindruch arrested him and placed him in handcuffs at the scene of a chimney fire on High Timber Drive about 7:50 p.m. Monday," John Lyons wrote. "Lawson said Weindruch kept him in handcuffs for about 30 minutes before releasing him. Weindruch issued Lawson a citation ordering him to appear in Sherwood District Court on Feb. 26 on the charge of obstructing governmental operations."

Lawson said that firefighter Perry Hopman saw him and told Weindruch that Lawson was not a problem. “I believe my exact words were, ‘He’s not bothering us. He’s no problem at all,’” said Hopman, who is the son-in-law of Dennis Byrd, publisher of the Maumelle Monitor and chief of the Arkansas News Bureau. (Read more)

The Monitor ran a first-person account from Lawson in its Wednesday edition. Arkansas State Police are investigating the arrest, reports Editor & Publisher. A conviction on the misdemeanor is punishable by up to 30 days in jail and a fine up to $100. (Read more)