Gov. Asa Hutchinson unveiled a proposal Wednesday to reduce the number of cabinet-level agencies from 42 to 15, telling educators meeting in Hot Springs that it would be a "fairly massive" reorganization of state government.
The official announcement was made during a news conference in Little Rock, and prefaced by the governor hours earlier as he gave the welcome address to state educators gathered at the Hot Springs Convention Center for the Arkansas Public School Resource Center Fall Conference. While in Hot Springs, Hutchinson shared some of the details of how the reorganization effort would affect education.
"First of all, the Department of Education will be strengthened, will be broadened and will have a more comprehensive mission," he said.
The department would house K-12, higher education, the Arkansas School for the Blind and Visually Impaired and the Arkansas School for the Deaf, the Arkansas Martin Luther King Jr. Commission, career education and Pre-K, he added.
"What that should mean is it's going to elevate career education even to a greater extent. ... It will be strengthened," Hutchinson said.
"It will be a higher level of coordination moving into the broader Department of Education. Secondly, whenever you're looking at Pre-K and our ABC program, it sends a message that we are educating those young children at an early age that is integral to the success of education throughout the years and it will be easier to coordinate," he said.
"Going back to career education ... it's a little bit troublesome whenever you've got to get two different departments of state government in order to make a change in career education. This will streamline that process. It will have a higher level of coordination."
Higher education, he said, will not report to the state board of education and will "remain as an exclusive independent, but it will be within the broader department of education for greater coordination and greater utilization."
"But it will maintain the required constitutional independence for higher education at the same time," he said.
For educators concerned about the future of the Arkansas Teacher Retirement System, Hutchinson said it will remain an independent teacher retirement program not "swept under" or combined with any other system.
"In fact, we have a category of independent agencies that are important and teacher retirement program is within that," he said.
According to a news release sent out by the governor's office, Hutchinson said in the official announcement at the state Capitol that "this long-overdue and comprehensive reorganization effort will realign agencies to reflect a more modern and efficient way to operate state government without cutting any services."
"This will result in improved delivery of services and will ultimately save the state money and the taxpayer time. Additionally, as was the case in the creation of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security during my time as undersecretary, all reorganization efforts will be implemented using existing resources and without adding any additional staff," he said.
The proposal will address six key objectives, including reducing the number of cabinet-level agencies by nearly 65 percent, assigning more than 200 boards and commissions to a larger umbrella department, improve the delivery of services to Arkansas taxpayers by breaking down silos within state government, improve management control throughout the state government through the creation of the Department of Transformation and Shared Services, allow agencies to maintain their independent services, and create savings for the state and taxpayers beginning in the 2021 fiscal year.
Hutchinson told educators at the conference that the legislature "has been a great partner" in this plan, and his proposal will be a topic of the 2019 legislative session.
"I ask you to be forward leaning and understand how important this is to the delivery of education and services to the people of Arkansas, and how important it is from a management standpoint," he said. "As governor, it is the most comprehensive transformation of state government in the history of Arkansas and we will start that today."
The governor ended by saying he recently attended his 50th high school class reunion and assured those gathered that it was not who was in office at the time that made the greatest impact on those years of his peers' lives, but the teachers they encountered.
"Fifty years from now, (students) will be talking about what you're doing to impact their life," he said.
Local on 10/04/2018