State directors picked for posts

Workers’ comp, assessment panels get leadership change

Gov. Asa Hutchinson has appointed Benton County Assessor Bear Chaney as director of the Arkansas Assessment Coordination Department, and the Arkansas Workers' Compensation Commission has named administrative law judge Barbara Webb as its chief executive officer after the governor asked the commission to consider the option, state officials said Thursday.

Webb's husband is Doyle Webb, who is chairman of the state Republican Party.

Chaney will replace Debbie Asbury as the director of the Assessment Coordination Department. Asbury's salary is $106,866 a year.

Asbury, who has been the department's director since 2001, said she was informed Wednesday that she would be replaced because Hutchinson thought it was time to make a change in the department's leadership.

Chaney, who has been Benton County's assessor since 2011, said he'll resign from his elected post, effective March 10, and start work as the department's director March 11.

"It will be a new challenge, but a great one," he said late Thursday afternoon. "I am excited about it."

The department supervises the valuation, assessment and equalization of all property for property tax purposes -- except for utility property -- as well as the collection of those taxes. It also directs assessors, equalization boards, tax collectors and other officers tasked with those duties in the states' 75 counties, according to its website.

Chaney said he would attempt to "make everything equitable and fair in the way we assess [property]."

Hutchinson said Chaney has decades of experience in real estate and as an assessor, and his knowledge of Arkansas real estate makes him "an ideal fit to lead this important department."

Chaney of Bella Vista has worked in the real estate field for more than 30 years, worked for three different Arkansas assessors' offices and owned his own appraisal business, according to the governor's office.

Then-Republican Gov. Mike Huckabee appointed Asbury as the department's director in March 2001, where she has worked since April 1989. She was a personal property supervisor for the Pulaski County assessor's office from 1985 until 1989, and she previously had been the office manager for almost three years for the Little Rock mass appraisal company Cole Layer Trumble.

Earlier in the day, Workers' Compensation Commissioner Karen McKinney told the Joint Budget Committee's Personnel Subcommittee that the commission appointed Barbara Webb as its chief executive officer this week.

Webb's annual salary was $98,852 as an administrative law judge for the commission, which is responsible for the administration of the workers' compensation laws in Arkansas.

She will make $126,572 a year as the commission's chief executive officer.

Webb has worked as an administrative law judge for the commission since 2005.

She previously was an attorney for Quattlebaum, Grooms, Tull & Burrow PLLC in Little Rock from 2003-05; prosecuting attorney in Saline County from 1999-2002; prosecuting attorney in Grant, Saline and Hot Spring counties from 1997-98; and an attorney for Eichenbaum, Scott, Miller, Liles & Hester P.A. in Little Rock from 1987-97. She also served as legal counsel for Southwestern Bell Telephone Co. from 1982-87, according to her resume.

Webb is a former Benton City Council and state Ethics Commission member.

The commission's former chief executive officer, James Daniel, retired Feb. 5. He was paid $127,572 a year, said Kay Terry, the state's personnel administrator.

Hutchinson "has asked us to look at Barbara Webb, and she has been with our agency for quite some time, and she is going to be an excellent fit," McKinney said after the personnel subcommittee's meeting. "It was the governor's request [and] it is our hiring."

She said the three-member commission made a unanimous decision to promote Webb to chief executive officer Monday. The two other members are commission Chairman Dale Douthit and Commissioner Philip Hood.

McKinney, who has served on the commission since 2003, said its decision to promote Webb to chief executive officer had nothing to do with her husband being the chairman of the state Republican Party.

Metro on 02/27/2015

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