Commentary

JOHN BRUMMETT: Not enough to fight over

State government has spent more money since I started typing a few short words ago--and I have world-class typing speed--than Gov. Asa Hutchinson wants to cut from War Memorial Stadium.

The approximately $450,000 he proposes to extract in the fiscal year beginning July 2018, which would cut a $900,000-a-year subsidy in half, would not quite cover the state's Medicaid payouts to nursing homes for the care of 40 old or disabled people for two months.

It's a piddling amount, and it's about a football field. Yet it's the state government issue people are most talking about.

Some Little Rockians are saying Hutchinson surely has it in for too-liberal Little Rock, considering that he has taken over the local public schools and hails from a far-away Northwest Arkansas white-hill-people nook more a part of nearby Oklahoma, Kansas and Missouri than Arkansas.

Maybe he does. Maybe he doesn't. He seems to like spending liberally for the Governor's Mansion, which is in Little Rock, though I suspect that's less a matter of personal philosophical contradiction than an understandable marital hostage situation.

Maybe the only way to avert the cut at War Memorial is to send Mrs. Hutchinson to the stadium to sniff for rats. If she smelt any, the stadium might wind up with gold-plated urinals.

Since the cut is inconsequential in the grand scheme, it indeed amounts to a good question as to why Hutchinson is proposing it. I suspect it's an effective high-profile and superficial way to make a fiscal conservatism feint to the gullible right wing.

I think Asa is trying to oblige state Sen. Bart Hester, the arch-conservative Koch-brothers' agent from Cave Springs who loves right-wing superficiality, but gave the governor a bailout vote for Medicaid expansion last year.

On this issue, Little Rock and War Memorial are abjectly pitiful, all long-faced, imploring a team of adolescents from Northwest Arkansas representing a college infested with kids from Dallas, and which lost to Auburn by 53 points last week, to keep favoring their Third World with the missionary attention of a football game every fall.

I say $450,000 is not enough to fight over. If that amount of money is the issue, then it's a worthless edifice indeed that can't inspire enough fans, veterans--remember, this a war memorial stadium--and old Razorback football stars who found glory there to ante up for a private foundation and replenish that sum.

I pledge $5 right now in honor of that hail Mary pass against LSU producing that headline: "Jones to Birmingham to Atlanta." I'll pledge $5 more if an old offensive guard from Rose City in North Little Rock who played in this arena on a national championship Hog team in 1964 will pledge $5 million.

You know who I'm talking about. He pays more than that for a Dallas Cowboys' quarterback who doesn't play.

Little Rock should tell the Razorbacks to do them a favor and not bring any more games its way. A cold-turkey weaning has never seemed as appealing as this week.

My colleague Rex Nelson has kind of a plan. It's to transform War Memorial into a post-Razorback beehive of youth sports activity.

He would take out some seats and build a track. He would increase the high school football action in the stadium. He would get behind the professional soccer already played there. He even proposes UALR football, which I find laughable and, if regrettably undertaken, more appropriate for the Forest Heights field than a stadium.

He would convert some of the covered space to other youth-sports and multi-event uses.

Building on his idea, I'd have some of the covered space converted to a catered convention hall for rent-generating purposes including the regular meetings of the Little Rock Touchdown Club.

In that hall, they could stage an annual foundation fundraiser that features programs such as, say, the previously referenced Jerry Jones joining quarterback Fred Marshall and punt-returning ace Ken Hatfield to relive the national championship year of 1964.

I'd put David Bazzel in charge of getting all that done. He made a lot of tackles in this old stadium back in the early '80s. And everybody but me loves him.

Rex speculates that his plan would require that Little Rock voters pass a sales tax and that the city then sign a memorandum of understanding for operating the state-owned property.

It's interesting that the governor announced Wednesday that he wanted to switch the stadium to the oversight of the Parks and Tourism Department, now run by Rex's old newspaper pal, Kane Webb. Maybe those two could work together.

Let Asa have his penny-wise stadium budget. Let Dallas have the Hogs. Little Rock will take care of itself.

Things change, and smart people and smart communities adapt.

------------v------------

John Brummett, whose column appears regularly in the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, was inducted into the Arkansas Writers' Hall of Fame in 2014. Email him at jbrummett@arkansasonline.com. Read his @johnbrummett Twitter feed.

Editorial on 10/27/2016

Upcoming Events