State Rep. Debra Hobbs said Tuesday that she’s running for the Republican nomination for governor because grass-roots people are “sick and tired of politics as usual.”
Hobbs of Rogers, who has served in the Arkansas House of Representatives since 2009, said the state doesn’t need to raise taxes but does need to be a better steward of tax dollars.
For example, she said, the state’s Health Services Permit Agency has only five employees and its director is paid about $100,000 a year.
“I think we can probably find another house for that state agency and save some expenses that way,” Hobbs told about 50 people attending a breakfast meeting of the Political Animals Club in Little Rock.
The agency, with direction from the nine-member Health Services Permit Commission, is responsible for issuing permits of approval for nursing homes, residential care facilities, assisted-living facilities, home health and hospice agencies, psychiatric residential care facilities and intermediate care facilities for the mentally retarded, according to its website.
In response, agency Director Jim Luker, who is a former Democratic state senator from Wynne, said later that Hobbs believes the agency shouldn’t exist. He said she takes the libertarian view that the government shouldn’t be issuing permits for facilities such as nursing homes, hospice agencies and assisted-living facilities.
Luker said that his agency also provides administrative services for the state’s Developmental Disabilities Council, which has five employees, and that Hobbs would like the council to be its own agency.
Hobbs said later that she wants lawmakers to study whether the state should continue to issue permits for nursing homes and several other facilities before the 2015 regular session because she favors free enterprise.
She said she doesn’t believe that the Developmental Disabilities Council can be its own agency.
Earlier, Hobbs said she’s worried that “we are incentivizing poverty.
“People that learn how to work the system are actually making more money probably than some of us in this room and that’s wrong,” Hobbs said. “We need to reinforce that independence.”
Afterwards, Hobbs said she believes that people seeking unemployment benefits or welfare benefits should be required to submit a job application, if they are “able-bodied.”
Currently, people filing a claim for unemployment benefits in Arkansas must register for work in the state Department of Workforce Service’s Arkansas’ Job Link, said Ron Calkins, the department’s assistant director of unemployment services.
When people are determined eligible for the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families program, they are required to participate in activities leading to employment as a condition of receiving time-limited services, said Phil Harris, the program’s assistant director.
They are required to search for and obtain paid employment, but if they cannot find immediate paid employment, they can participate in approved activities that focus on developing skills and experience that lead directly to employment, he said.
Hobbs is vying for the Republican gubernatorial nomination, along with former 3rd District Congressman Asa Hutchinson of Rogers and businessman Curtis Coleman of Little Rock.
Former 4th District Congressman Mike Ross, who now lives in Little Rock, is the lone Democratic candidate for governor.
Democratic Gov. Mike Beebe is barred from seeking re-election under the state’s term-limits amendment.
Arkansas, Pages 10 on 08/21/2013