Beebe pledge shifts vote

Senate President Pro Tempore Michael Lamoureux, R-Russellville, said Tuesday that the Senate has sufficient votes to authorize federal funding for the private option in fiscal 2015, after Sen. Jane English, R-North Little Rock, said she’ll vote for the measure after opposing it last year.

English said “a lot of folks are going to hate me” because she switched sides in exchange for what she called “a game changer” for the state - an agreement with Gov. Mike Beebe to restructure and increase funding for the state’s job-training programs.

English said she told Beebe that she would only vote to authorize federal funding for the private option if the state’s workforce training system was overhauled “because what we are doing now is not working and I can’t support continuing to just add more people to poverty programs and social-welfare programs without some kind of a change there, and, surprisingly, the governor was all for it.”

She said the agreement wasn’t designed to help a single senator’s constituents or a single community, adding, “This is about everybody here in the state of Arkansas.”

Beebe said he’s agreed to provide about $5 million more in one-time and ongoing state funds for workforce training activities, though “she was wanting to get this done without a whole lot of specific amounts.”

English had been one of nine senators who have declined to commit to vote for funding for the private option in the fiscal session - a sufficient number to kill funding for the program.

Lamoureux said the Senate now has 27 votes to pass a bill authorizing the use of $915 million in federal funds for the private option.

Supporters of the private option contend the state should continue to tap federal funds for insurance coverage for 100,000 people who have enrolled in the program so far, while foes argue the debt-ridden federal government can’t afford to provide such coverage.

The 2010 federal healthcare overhaul law required states to expand Medicaid to cover adults with incomes of up to 138 percent of the poverty level, but the expansion became optional after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in 2012 that the state mandate was unconstitutional.

In Arkansas, the expansion made an estimated 250,000 people - those with incomes of up to $15,860 for an individual or $32,500 for a family of four - eligible for insurance coverage.

Under the private option, most of those who enroll receive coverage through a private plan on Arkansas’ health-insurance exchange, with the Medicaid program using federal dollars to pay the premiums. The healthcare overhaul law also created the insurance exchanges.

About 10 percent of enrollees - those who are found to have exceptional health needs - are assigned to the traditional Medicaid program.

Under her deal with Beebe, “basically, we are really looking at turning the whole system upside down,” said English, who was a senior project manager for Arkansas Industrial Development Commission from 1984-1999 and director of the state Workforce Investment Board from 2001-2004.

“We are going to look at every single program that has to do with any kind of workforce training, including K-12,” she said. “We are not going to start another program at a two-year college or anywhere, in high school or anything if it doesn’t meet industry standards. We are not going to have one every five miles.”

Beebe spokesman Matt DeCample said a written summary of the proposed overhaul of the state’s workforce training activities was not available late Tuesday afternoon because “there could still be some adjustments before [this morning].”

Beebe told reporters that under his agreement with English the state’s workforce training activities will be consolidated with the state’s existing workforce training funds of $24 million, along with about $3.8 million in rainy-day funds and about $1.2 million in ongoing general revenue already in his proposed budget.

“The whole workforce thing has been fragmented among a bunch of different agencies and it hasn’t been performance-based,” he said, referring to the state Department of Workforce Services, the Arkansas Economic Development Commission and the state’s two-year colleges. “Folks are going to have to be able to actually … show what their programs are doing. Jane has been trying to do that for a long time. Nobody ever listened to her, she told me. She said the previous governor [Republican Mike Huckabee] didn’t listen to her.”

Beebe said English is not asking for anything for her or her Senate district.

“This is a statewide deal and she is wanting to make sure our workforce training actually train workforce,” the governor told reporters.

English said she also wants to develop an alternative path for students who have been dropping out of the public schools so that they can earn a high school diploma and learn skills in order to get a job.

Sen. Bryan King, R-Green Forest - an opponent of the private option - said Tuesday afternoon he’s disappointed.

“I would have hoped she would have stayed with [her original vote]. I think it is such an important decision about the financial part of this and how this is going to affect the state,” he said.

King said, “The governor has a lot of money and a lot of bully tactics, and he is used to using it to get his way.”

Beebe said this proposal “is part of what we have been preaching all along.

“This is negotiating for all sorts of things,” he said. “I don’t buy votes. That’s not to say that we haven’t agreed in the past to throw my support for certain things in exchange for a vote.”