Personality aside--and I'm told that P. Allen Smith is a fine fellow who brings great credit to himself and his state--the broad concept offends.
A privately enterprising media celebrity hosts from his gorgeous property in this state a national and even international set of syndicated television shows on gardening and lifestyle. The state Parks and Tourism Department pays him via contract through its local advertising agency the amount of $200,000 a year--up from $77,000 a few years before.
It does so for the "influence" he wields that benefits the state by promoting it outside the state as a visitor attraction.
Now Smith proposes to jack that payment up by $645,000, to $845,000. He says that was the eventual remuneration the state talked about initially. He says he can demonstrate that he brings much more benefit than that to the state.
There has been some balking, as you might imagine.
Arkansas has always seemed pitiable in its desperation for contrived promotion directed at the outside world. Real and lasting promotion comes naturally from within. It occurs when you have interesting and appealing people like Smith doing interesting and appealing things like Smith is doing. It doesn't require that those people get a public bonus for their private success.
On this matter, at least, I seem to be a small-government conservative. I favor letting the free market work without government interference.
The New York Times has written that Smith's Moss Mountain Farm is "stunning." I submit that The Times wrote that for the reason that the property is indeed stunning, not because the taxpayers paid for the reference.
Consider state Sen. Mark Johnson's comment in this newspaper about his surprise upon meeting at Moss Mountain a woman from Fort Wayne, Ind., who told him she had been drawn by Smith's television show. He said that experience, along with his consideration of Smith's massive Internet presence and social media following, led him to fear what might happen if Smith pulled up stakes and went elsewhere.
But you can't live in fear. And you can't buy love.
Anyway, I haven't read or heard any such threat directly from Smith, only fear or speculation.
As it happens, the most earnest and exhaustive promotion of Arkansas of which I'm aware comes in this newspaper from Rex Nelson. But he's doing it for a private enterprise and is not getting any taxpayer subsidy. To do so would be a conflict of interest.
Likewise, I do not seek, nor would I accept, a state government check for Sunday's column about the wonder of the fresh summer Arkansas peach.
These are labors for a private employer. They are labors of love.
I get the difference with Smith, who is not a journalist for a company but himself a brand, an enterprise, an entertainer and public educator and influencer.
And he's not small-time like local newspaper columnists. He's worldwide.
That's why--conceptual lamentation aside--I'm not arguing about his getting $200,000. I'm not complaining that the amount is up from $77,000 a few years ago.
I'm thinking, though, that proposing to go from $200,000 to $845,000 all at once is the relevant story.
If the proposal was to boost him to $250,000, there'd probably be nary a peep. So this is not at all about the concept, but entirely the number.
A $645,000 raise from taxpayers is ... let us say not wise in terms of public relations, not smart in the political arena, and not empirically defensible as a budgetary consideration.
Gov. Asa Hutchinson and his secretary of the new agency covering parks, heritage and tourism, Stacy Hurst, get my endorsement in saying no to a $645,000 raise.
Both the governor and Hurst say they want to keep an arrangement with Smith.
The state's tourism ad agency, CJRW of Little Rock, says the demonstrated rate-of-return on what the state now pays Smith does not justify the booster-rocketed uptick.
Actually, booster-rocketed uptick was my phrase, not theirs.
For that matter, what else is the ad agency going to say when it works for a governor and a parks and tourism secretary whose views are publicly declared?
Any sudden quadrupling of anybody's pay would be difficult to justify on a rate-of-return basis.
I couldn't produce four times as many newspaper readers even if I turned pro-Trump and got cloned from Wally Hall.
Maybe it's so that, if we gave Smith a quadruple-plus raise, and if the state senator went back after that to Moss Mountain Farm, the senator would encounter four women from Indiana instead of one.
But I'd recommend at the very most that, before any quadrupling, we merely double the contract and check to see if there are two women visiting from Indiana next time.
John Brummett, whose column appears regularly in the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, is a member of the Arkansas Writers' Hall of Fame. Email him at jbrummett@arkansasonline.com. Read his @johnbrummett Twitter feed.
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