Beebe to Obama: Let states tailor health act

WASHINGTON - Arkansas Gov. Mike Beebe on Tuesday urged President Barack Obama to let other states implement the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act in a way that works for them.

Beebe and five other governors from the National Governors Association Executive Committee spoke with the president in the Roosevelt Room of the White House for about an hour.

“We were not necessarily presenting stuff for ourselves. I mean, I can do that with a phone call. We were in effect, as the executive committee, representing 50 governors,” Beebe told reporters outside the White House after the meeting.

In Arkansas, Lt. Gov. Mark Darr served as acting governor while Beebe was away.

Beebe said he asked whether the Obama administration would let other states try new health-care ideas, like the “private option” approved by the Arkansas Legislature last year that uses federal Medicaid funds to buy private health insurance for poor people. The plan, which was cleared by the federal government through a special waiver, allowed Arkansas to extend health care to thousands of people in poverty without adding them to the state’s traditional Medicaid rolls.

“His reaction was, as long as you don’t violate the law in terms of the ultimate intent - whether it’s the people you cover or whether it’s the income criteria or any of that - as long as you don’t violate the law, he was totally open to flexibility for ways that states can best use it,” Beebe said.

Beebe said at least six Republican governors have contacted him about Arkansas’ plan, which has attracted more than 75,000 enrollees so far.

“Arkansas led the way. And now these other states are trying to do what we did,” Beebe said. “There was a lot of discussion about the ways the different states might approach and obtain waivers.”

Association Chairman and Gov. Mary Fallin, R-Okla; Vice-chairman Gov. John Hickenlooper, D-Colo; Gov. Mark Dayton, D-Minn.; Gov. Gary Herbert, R-Utah; and Gov. Scott Walker, R-Wis., also attended the meeting to discuss the federal budget, infrastructure, education, health care and regulations for hydraulic fracturing, a method of drilling for natural gas.

Walker told reporters afterward that all 50 states should have flexibility to implement the 2010 Affordable Care Act, often called Obamacare, in a way that best serves their residents.

Beebe was to return to Arkansas on Tuesday night, spokesman Stacey Hall said.

Darr spokesman Amber Pool declined to respond to questions about where Darr was and what he did as acting governor Tuesday. Hall said she wasn’t sure how Darr spent the day.

Darr has announced his resignation effective Feb. 1, after receiving a public letter of reprimand and an $11,000 fine from the state Ethics Commission for violations of state ethics laws and regulations.

When Beebe traveled to Washington, D.C., for a National Governors Association meeting in 2013, Darr signed into law a bill exempting all information about holders of concealed-weapon permits from disclosure under the state Freedom of Information Act, legislation Beebe was going to let become law without his signature.

Beebe expressed anger at the time, but said Tuesday that he didn’t take any precautions to avoid a repeat, as the Legislature is not in session.

“I didn’t do anything; we didn’t have any bills pending this time,” Beebe said.

Beebe called for Darr’s resignation more than two weeks ago over ethics findings against the lieutenant governor. On Monday, Beebe said he wasn’t sure whether Darr had submitted a valid resignation because the lieutenant governor said in a news release Friday that his resignation, effective Feb. 1, was issued “to the people of Arkansas, not an elected official.”

Pool said Darr “will comply with all formal protocols concerning his departure from office by Feb. 1, 2014.”

Also on Tuesday, Senate President Pro Tempore Michael Lamoureux, R-Russellville, said he plans to begin circulating draft legislation that would allow the governor not to call a special election if the lieutenant governor’s office becomes vacant in the same year of a general election when the lieutenant governor is on the ballot. Lamoureux said Beebe could save the state a few million dollars by not calling a special election for lieutenant governor after Darr’s resignation.

Lamoureux said he hasn’t heard from any lawmakers opposed to the draft legislation.

A two-thirds vote of the 100-member House of Representatives and 35-member Senate would be required to introduce the nonappropriation legislation in the fiscal session starting Feb. 10.

Sen. Joyce Elliott, D-Little Rock, said she would prefer that the Legislature enact such a measure as only a temporary fix to forgo a special election for lieutenant governor this year.

“We haven’t had the time to think about all the scenarios and time to think deeply about what we want to do,” said Elliott, who is first vice-chairman of the state Democratic Party.

In August 2006, then-Gov. Mike Huckabee declined to a call a special election to fill the remainder of Lt. Gov. Win Rockefeller’s term, after Rockefeller’s death in July 2006. Leaders from both parties had agreed to leave the office vacant through January 2007.

Beebe said Monday that he doubts that state law allows him to decline to declare a vacancy in the lieutenant governor’s office upon a resignation and not call a special election within 150 days of declaring a vacancy under state law. Both House Speaker Davy Carter, R-Cabot, and Lamoureux, who are attorneys, said they share that legal interpretation.