Announcing his intent to streamline state government, Gov. Asa Hutchinson said Monday that he will seek legislative approval to centralize a couple of state programs.
Offering two examples from a bill he plans to present next month, Hutchinson said in a late-morning news conference that he will seek to eliminate nearly two-thirds of the regional units tasked with inspecting local jails and to have the Arkansas Energy Office moved under the authority of the Department of Environmental Quality.
More proposals may be included when the governor releases an efficiency-oriented legislative package in mid-December, said spokesman J.R. Davis. Hutchinson has previously touted the idea of putting Little Rock's War Memorial Stadium under the jurisdiction of the Department of Parks and Tourism.
One of Hutchinson's two proposals announced Monday aims to significantly slim the Criminal Detention Facilities Review program, which monitors state-required standards on inmate welfare at roughly 119 local detention centers.
Arkansas' 28 review committees, with their 144 members, operate inefficiently by tracking only a handful of lockups in their communities, Hutchinson said Monday.
By eliminating 20 committees and cutting the number of members to 40, Hutchinson said, the state would have more resources and training for members, who would gain experience by building their caseload.
Under the current system, adopted in 1983, each of the state's judicial circuits has a governor-appointed committee of at least five members who are required by law to review and submit reports on each of the district's city and county jails and juvenile detention centers.
Judicial circuits range in size from one to six counties. Most counties have at least one jail operated by a sheriff's office.
Committee members are not paid, but they are reimbursed for travel costs, as well as clerical and typing expenses for the reports they submit to the circuit's chief circuit judge and other local authorities.
If poor conditions reported by the committees are not corrected within six months, the committees have the authority to ask a circuit judge to close the jail.
"They do have an important role, and that role is to oversee, to inspect detention facilities to make sure they are up standards," Hutchinson said. "But we can do that efficiently with reducing that to eight committees vs. 28 committees."
Hutchinson said the reduction would save money. Davis later said the savings amount had not been determined.
Problems identified during committee reviews have led to the closure of seven detention centers since January 2015, according to Sterling Penix, the state's full-time coordinator overseeing each of the committees.
At least 20 cities and counties are making improvements or conducting updates on the basis of committee reports, and four are building new lockups, according to data from Penix's office.
Penix referred to the governor's statements Monday when asked how the proposed cut would affect monitoring.
"I think you increase the expertise of the committee members, their responsibility; they can be more meaningful for them, and yet they'll be able to fulfill their mission," Hutchinson told reporters Monday.
Newton County Sheriff Keith Slape, who also serves as the president of the Arkansas Sheriffs' Association, credited his local committee with helping to persuade voters to pass a half-percent sales tax to fund the construction of a new, 30-bed lockup after shuttering a century-old facility for unsafe conditions in 2009.
Slape said that while he supports the standards the state imposes on jail conditions and inmate well-being, other sheriffs become disgruntled when they have to get their facilities up to code.
"There are some sheriffs who don't" like the committee inspections, Slape said. "They make you serve two hot meals a day, and [the sheriffs] can't afford the standards."
Cutting the number of committee members who conduct the inspections could save money for the state, Slape said although he questioned whether the remaining units would be able to keep up the pace of the work.
"That would be my concern. Would they be able to do a yearly review?" Slape said.
The governor intends to continue having annual inspections of the state's detention center and will likely to continue appointing review committee members, governor's spokesman Davis said.
According to Davis, Hutchinson has not yet found a lawmaker to introduce his proposed legislation to the General Assembly, which will convene for a biennial general session in January.
Neither of the leaders of the House or Senate judiciary committees could be reached for comment Monday.
A Section on 11/22/2016