House Speaker-designate Jeremy Gillam, R-Judsonia, says boosting state funding for the University of Arkansas’ Division of Agriculture is one of his top priorities in the legislative session that starts Jan. 12.
State Rep. Joe Jett, D-Success, who is backing Gillam’s bid for increased state funding for the division, concedes that “this is one of these things that is not sexy.”
Gillam, a blackberry farmer, and Jett, a rice and soybean farmer, are among 16 farmers in the Arkansas House of Representatives, according to a House spokesman.
The division’s $62.8 million budget is a small slice of the state’s $5 billion general revenue budget in fiscal 2015. It is requesting an increase of $3.5 million in fiscal 2016.
Gillam said the division’s state funding has been relatively flat for a decade, and despite federal budget cuts “they have done a marvelous job of still providing a level of services they have, given the funding levels they’ve been at.”
But that doesn’t mean it’s a cinch that the division will get increased funding during next year’s legislative session.
“That is a priority, but it’s got to be weighed against the other priorities,” said Senate President Pro Tempore Jonathan Dismang, R-Searcy, whose district includes Prairie County and parts of Arkansas, Lonoke, Monroe, White and Woodruff counties.
The additional money would be “directed specifically to personnel costs that will allow us to maintain a presence in every county following five years of very little new revenue from the state,” said division spokesman Mark Scott.
“As a division of the University of Arkansas System that does not have students, we cannot rely on student tuition and fees to maintain staffing levels,” he explained.
The division has about 1,400 employees, about 300 fewer than it had in 2009, Scott said. “We currently have approximately 25 county agent positions that are unfilled, and we are waiting to fill them pending the outcome of the session,” Scott said.
The UA Division of Agriculture receives about 57 percent of its funding through state appropriations; 11 percent from federal grants; 10.8 percent from private grants and contracts; 9.1 percent from federal appropriations; 7.8 percent from sales, fees and royalties; 2.4 percent from county appropriations; and 1.9 percent from state grants, according to Scott.
State appropriations have accounted for 55 percent to 60 percent of the division’s budget during the past 10 years, he said.
Gillam said his bid to increase state funding for the Division of Agriculture in the fiscal year that starts July 1 stems from his meeting with division officials before this year’s fiscal legislation session when they asked “us to at least take a look at their funding because of the federal cuts that have taken place.
“Simultaneously, we had members that had been coming to us here to the speaker [Davy Carter, R-Cabot], to myself and Rep. [Matthew] Shepherd [R-El Dorado], … about issues with their county extension services as far as the funding and staffing issues,” Gillam said Friday in an interview.
“We just really got to the ballgame a little too late” in this year’s fiscal session, he said.
“It has been on my horizon since that point looking at ways to help them get back on their feet because they do play such a critical role in industry as a whole. Since it was our No. 1 economic engine in the state of Arkansas, I felt it was a very important issue that we needed to take up and look at,” Gillam said.
Farmers statewide use the research and extension service, he said.
“If we have a virus that pops up in our blackberries or something like [that], the extension service is able to help us identify what it is,” Gillam said.
“I don’t know of a single agricultural entity in Arkansas that doesn’t use and benefit from the extension service in the Division of [Agriculture]. I can’t think of a single farmer that doesn’t use them and is not better off for it.”
With the agents’ help, farmers create not only more “food but jobs, and the dominoes all fall to where it’s just the win-win scenario for the entire state,” he said.
Jett said many farmers have their own crop consultants to diagnose problems on their farms, “but if you want a third opinion, you can pick up the phone and call the extension agent.”
“I liken it to like if you are a doctor, you’ll call UAMS to get a backup opinion,” he said, referring to the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences, which is based in Little Rock.
But state Sen. Larry Teague, D-Nashville, co-chairman of the Legislature’s Joint Budget Committee, said it’ll be hard to find extra dollars for the Division of Agriculture in the fiscal 2016 budget. “I don’t think there is any money to be had,” he said.
Teague said he expects that “we’ll give” Gov.-elect Asa Hutchinson his proposed $100 million income tax cut for the middle class in the coming session, and most of the increased tax revenue will likely go to public schools.
Hutchinson’s proposal would cut the state’s income tax rate from 7 percent to 6 percent for people earning between $34,000 and $75,000, and from 6 percent to 5 percent on those earning between $20,400 and $34,000.
Hutchinson, a Republican, has said his proposed income tax cut would reduce state general revenue by $50 million in fiscal 2016 and $100 million in fiscal 2017, and would be financed through growth in state general revenue.
Departing Democratic Gov. Mike Beebe and Hutchinson have disagreed on whether Hutchinson’s tax-cut plan would affect essential state services, such as nursing homes, colleges and prisons.
Teague noted that Beebe’s proposed budget for fiscal 2016 is “pretty tight” for state agencies if the Legislature doesn’t follow Beebe’s recommendation to delay two tax cuts approved by the Legislature in 2013 and set to go into effect in July.
Last month, Beebe recommended that lawmakers delay implementation of the two previously approved tax cuts projected to reduce tax revenue by $29.4 million in fiscal 2016 and $24.5 million in fiscal 2017. Those cuts would reduce the sales tax on natural gas and electricity used by manufacturers, lower income taxes on capital gains and increase the standard income-tax deduction.
The UA Division of Agriculture would receive a $628,001 increase in state general revenue in fiscal 2016 under Beebe’s proposed budget with the two tax cuts delayed, but a $639,916 cut in state general revenue in fiscal 2016 if the tax cuts aren’t delayed, according to state budget administrator Brandon Sharp.
Hutchinson has said he plans to propose his state budget for fiscal 2016 next month.
State Rep. Tommy Thompson, D-Morrilton, who lost in the Nov. 4 election and is a retired division employee, advised the chief of the Division of Agriculture, Mark Cochran, in an email dated Nov. 17 to include several representatives, such as Gillam and Jett, “as an Agri Caucus to be sure it gets in budget up front.
“There are other members [to work with] but this should start NOW and be kept low key,” Thompson wrote to Cochran in emails obtained through a public records request.
“Use your retired folks. Budget will be very tight,” he wrote. “I wish I could do more and will help where I can.”
Others are also working to increase support for the division.
Noble Strategies of Little Rock, led by lobbyist Ben Noble, is a contract lobbyist for the Agricultural Development Council of the University of Arkansas Foundation, and is already urging lawmakers to increase funding.
In addition, the Arkansas Farm Bureau strongly supports “using all available means to preserve the integrity, mission, resources and the present structure of the U of A Division of Agriculture,” said Stanley Hill, vice president of public policy for the Farm Bureau.