Sen. Bryan King, R-Green Forest (left), expresses frustration with the state’s hiring of out-of-state contractors for consulting work during the Arkansas Legislative Council meeting on Friday, November 15, 2024. At right is Sen. Gary Stubblefield, R-Branch. (Screenshot/Arkansas Legislature)
The Arkansas Legislative Council’s routine approval of a subcommittee’s monthly report hit a snag Friday for the second month in a row after a Republican lawmaker objected to the state’s regular hiring of consultants.
The council’s Executive Subcommittee approved an amendment on Thursday to a contract it approved last month between Perr & Knight, a Florida consulting firm, and the Bureau of Legislative Research. The $955,000 contract, which received final approval Oct. 18 from the full Legislative Council, concerns “a multi-year strategic path forward for the provision of property insurance for education facilities in the state of Arkansas.”
Sen. Bryan King, R-Green Forest, voted against accepting the Executive Subcommittee’s report and said Arkansas officials have directed too many taxpayer dollars to out-of-state consultants in the last decade. He made similar comments and voted against the same subcommittee’s report at the Oct. 18 Legislative Council meeting.
“When we send all these hundreds of millions of dollars to these consulting contracts, a lot of them just advise us on how to tie our shoes,” King said. “That wastes money that could be used for the needy [and] I just feel like, once again, it needs to stop.”
In October, lawmakers authorized a $331,500 contract with California-based Ikaso Consulting to study the state’s compliance with procurement laws and provide recommendations for improvement. The Executive Subcommittee and full Legislative Council approved both the Ikaso and Perr & Knight contracts simultaneously.
Perr & Knight has already done consulting work for the state, recommending the creation of a state-owned insurance company to alleviate the rising costs of insurance premiums for educational institutions, the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette reported in September.
The state previously hired Little Rock-based Meadors, Adams & Lee Insurance Inc. to study the rising insurance costs after a 2023 tornado destroyed a high school in Wynne. The firm also recommended that the state start its own insurance company.
Friday’s Executive Subcommittee report also included a proposed rule change that eliminates the Legislative Council’s Policy Making subcommittee and shifts its responsibility for approving some consultant contracts to the Executive Subcommittee.
Lawmakers noted during Thursday’s subcommittee meeting that the move would put on paper the way they already do business. The Policy Making subcommittee had only met twice a year since 2021, according to the Legislature’s website.
King said he had a problem with putting the hiring power over consultants in the hands of a subcommittee with only eight members when the Policy Making subcommittee had several more.
He also mentioned that Perr & Knight’s website says diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) is a priority for the firm. King is one of several Republican lawmakers who oppose DEI, including Sen. Dan Sullivan of Jonesboro, who has promised to introduce legislation in 2025 that would eliminate such initiatives at higher education institutions.
“If you’re going to, on one hand, say, ‘I’m not for these DEI contracts [with] these other people,’ but then we’re going to turn around and give contracts to these consultants, which are the biggest DEI people out there… we should be consistent if we vote that way,” King said.
YOU MAKE OUR WORK POSSIBLE.
He made a motion to reject the Executive Subcommittee’s report, and Sen. Linda Chesterfield, D-Little Rock, said she would vote against it. She expressed frustration with “the political games that are being played” regarding opposition to DEI but added that she believed King was “as serious as he can be.”
“I have told those who want to bring contracts or ask for grants, ‘Please don’t include [DEI] because you’re automatically doomed,’ because the people of this particular body do not recognize the necessity for inclusion,” said Chesterfield, who is retiring from the Senate in January. “…It’s just frustrating to me that after all these years, we’re having a conversation now in the state of Arkansas that says people who look like me don’t matter.”
King’s motion failed on a split voice vote, and a subsequent motion to accept the report passed on another split voice vote.
Other ALC business
The Arkansas Department of Human Services will administer food assistance for children over the summer for the second year in a row in 2025 after the Legislative Council greenlit two funding mechanisms Friday.
Summer Electronic Benefit Transfer, or Summer EBT, provided $120 in food benefits this past summer for each Arkansas child eligible for the National School Lunch Program, a U.S. Department of Agriculture service that provides free or reduced-price meals for low-income children.
Inaugural food assistance program offers grocery relief to Arkansas families
The Legislative Council gave final approval to two measures passed by a subcommittee Wednesday: $2.9 million from the state’s restricted reserve fund to cover about half of Summer EBT funding (USDA will cover the rest) and another $8.9 million in DHS spending authority.
The department estimates that Summer EBT will require more than $50 million in spending authority, most of which will be funded by the USDA. This appropriation “covers any carryover funding associated with 2024 Summer EBT” as well as next year’s funding, DHS spokesperson Gavin Lesnick said in an email.
Lesnick also confirmed that families will be able to apply for Summer EBT entirely online in 2025, which was not an option this year.
Summer EBT served more than 260,000 children statewide this year, with DHS providing a pre-loaded card for families to use for groceries.
Unlike some of her fellow Republican governors, Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders opted into the program “to give us another tool in our fight to make sure no child goes to bed hungry,” she said in a DHS press release Friday.
Another report approved Friday allows the state Department of Finance and Administration to distribute a $2 million taxpayer-funded grant to pregnancy help organizations, which encourage birth while discouraging abortion and are often religiously affiliated.
The Legislature instituted the $1 million grant program in 2022, continued it in 2023 and doubled the available amount earlier this year. In July, 35 applicants requested a cumulative $1.83 million, and most of them have received grant money at least once before.
The finance department will start distributing the funds now that the Legislative Council has approved the applicable rule, Doris Smith, head of the department’s Office of Intergovernmental Services, told the Rules subcommittee Thursday.
Additionally, the Arkansas Insurance Department gave its required monthly report to the Legislative Council on its efforts to monitor pharmacy benefit managers (PBMs), corporate middlemen that negotiate prescription benefits among manufacturers, distributors, pharmacies and health insurance providers.
Pharmacy benefit managers will have to pay Arkansas drugstores dispensing fees under new rule
Arkansas law requires PBMs to pay pharmacies at least as much as the national average of what drugstores pay wholesalers for the drugs, but the Legislative Council approved a rule in September requiring PBMs to include drug dispensing fees in their reimbursements to pharmacies.
The Insurance Department is still working on a bulletin with its proposed methodology for determining the dispensing fee amounts, department general counsel Booth Rand said Friday. He previously said it would be finished in October.
Pharmacies submitted more than 2,100 complaints to the Insurance Department in October, saying PBMs illegally paid them below the federally-set national average drug acquisition cost. The department made about 70 reimbursement adjustments in response, Rand said.
GET THE MORNING HEADLINES.