TIME: Almanac 1995

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<text id=92TT0772> <title> Apr. 13, 1992: How Clinton Ran Arkansas </title> <history> TIME--The Weekly Newsmagazine--1992 Apr. 13, 1992 Campus of the Future </history> <article> <source>Time Magazine</source> <hdr> NATION, Page 24 How Clinton Ran Arkansas </hdr><body> He won more battles than he lost but rarely upset special- interest groups in the process By George J. Church--Reported by Michael Riley/Atlanta and Richard Woodbury/Little Rock What kind of Governor has Bill Clinton been? That critical question has often been lost in the frenzy of inquiries about his character, inquiries that frequently produce the next day's tabloid headline but say little if anything about his ability to govern. After running Arkansas for 11 years, Clinton has amassed a rich record that deserves at least as much discussion among voters as anything else in his life. It is not, however, a record that lends itself to easy summary. As President, Clinton pledges, he would be an agent of "fundamental change," but in Arkansas he has been quite willing to reach cozy accommodations with corporate interests and to work within a regressive tax structure. His priorities have been clear but scarcely uncontroversial; for example, his aides readily concede that he has put job creation ahead of cleaning up the environment. His achievements in improving education have won justified, though a bit excessive, praise. His welfare reforms, on the other hand, while well conceived, have suffered from a lack of follow-through. In Clinton's defense, it must be said that Arkansas is peculiarly difficult to lead. It has long ranked near the bottom, if not dead last, among all 50 states in most measures of material and social well-being; so many things needed improvement that only Superman could have accomplished them all at once. And the state constitution ensures that no Governor will ever resemble Superman. The chief executive's powers are strictly limited by a weak veto. To get anything positive accomplished, he must win the consent of an often balky legislature and entrenched industries that are frequently intransigent. These restraints--and an early defeat for re-election in 1980 after initial liberal reforms had antagonized a number of interests, including the powerful timber and utility industries--have reinforced Clinton's natural bent toward conciliation and compromise. Critics charge that he has been unwilling to fight hard even for programs that he knows are needed if they encounter strong opposition. Allies say he has shown a shrewd ability to focus on the attainable while avoiding battles he could not win. In any case, his record is a mixture of major accomplishments and severe disappointments. Some specifics: ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT. This has perhaps been Clinton's top priority; only education could compete with it. The Governor has engineered a series of tax breaks for business that have totaled $150 million since 1983 (on top of already low taxes on corporations). Most important are provisions that permit manufacturers to claim 7% of their new investments against their sales-tax liabilities and that also exempt some of their equipment purchases from the sales taxes outright. The Governor's aides claim that the concessions have helped spur $8.2 billion of investment in new or expanded plants and have worked mightily to promote a 19% increase in manufacturing jobs. While luring new industry is certainly a defensible--indeed inevitable--goal for a dirt-poor Southern state, Clinton's relations with organized labor have at times been testy. Critics charge that Clinton has given away too much through the concessions, continued a tax structure that unfairly favors business over middle-class wage earners and fostered a low-wage, antiunion climate. In 1990 the Arkansas Industrial Development Commission, run by Clinton appointees, arranged a $300,000 loan for Morrilton Plastics, a company that made parts for Detroit automakers, enabling it to build up inventory in anticipation of a strike by the United Auto Workers. At the time, the loan outraged union activists. Bill Becker, head of the state AFL-CIO, bluntly accuses the Clinton administration of "union busting." ENVIRONMENT. Clinton has been notably reluctant to fight the state's industries on environmental issues. During his first two-year term, beginning in 1978, he tried to limit clear-cutting--the practice by lumber companies of chopping down all the trees in a stand of forest--but that aroused the antagonism of the timber industry, and its opposition contributed to his 1980 defeat for re-election. Since resuming office in 1983, Clinton has done virtually nothing to hinder clear-cutting on the 82% of Arkansas forest land that is privately owned. In the case of the Ouachita National Forest, he has backed a plan by the U.S. Forest Service that would restrict clear-cutting, but nowhere near enough to please such environmental groups as the Sierra Club, which has filed suit. Much more dangerous is pollution caused by the poultry industry, the most dominant in Arkansas. Growers have been dumping tons of dried chicken excrement, known as litter, on croplands in the northwestern part of the state. "We're well past the land's capacity to accept the waste," says Robert Leflar, a Sierra Club official; he and others fear the litter will seep through porous limestone and contaminate streams and groundwater. Clinton in 1990 appointed an animal-waste task force to look into the problem (a favorite tactic: his first move in almost any crisis is to appoint a task force or study commission), but it has yet to recommend any action. Some skeptics wonder whether the inactivity might reflect Clinton's friendship with poultry baron Don Tyson, chairman of mammoth (annual sales: $4 billion) Tyson Foods, the state's largest business employer. Tyson and his family have contributed heavily to Clinton's campaigns and provided free transportation to the Governor and his wife in company planes--an example of the frequent chumminess between Southern Governors and major industrialists. Environmentalists generally doubt that any crude payoff is involved. They think Clinton genuinely--though in their view, mistakenly--fears that strict environmental regulation will cost the state badly needed employment. Says Tom cKinney, director of Northwest Arkansas Guardianship, an environmental organization: "Jobs are paramount to him." EDUCATION. By now it has become a much more than twice-told tale, but familiarity should not dull the glow of Clinton's greatest accomplishment. In 1978 one study found Arkansas' schools to be the worst in the nation, bar none. Realizing that Arkansas could never break out of its cycle of poverty and backwardness without a drastic improvement in schooling, the Governor appointed his wife Hillary to head a panel that would recommend reforms, and this was one task force that got results. Acting on its advice, Clinton set tough standards, which every school had to meet, instituted competency tests for teachers over the initial opposition of teacher organizations, and eventually sharply increased state funding for the schools. As a result, the state has jumped from near dead last to third in the percentage of its total state and local budget earmarked for schooling. The proportion of Arkansas high school students going on to college has jumped from 39% in 1981 to 51% now, roughly in line with the national average. Today all school districts conduct high school courses in physics, chemistry and foreign languages--a point noted last week by the New York Times in a five-part series that reflects a general turning in the media from "gotcha" exposes to more substantive explorations of candidates' records. True enough, some of the state's educational accomplishments have been oversold; there are negative statistics too. The much touted competency test was not difficult, and teachers could take it again and again until they finally passed. Scores achieved by Arkansas high schoolers on standard college tests have remained stagnant, and a dismaying 60% of those who do get into college require remedial instruction once they arrive. But no one would deny that the state's schools have improved and that Clinton deserves much of the credit. WELFARE. Project Success, Clinton's program to offer schooling, job training and work experience to welfare recipients, aims in the right direction but has hardly had enough small success to justify its name. Since the program's start in 1989, 6,000 people have been taken off welfare rolls, but many have returned. Meanwhile, Arkansas' welfare case loads have been growing about as much as those of other states. The recession certainly has not helped open jobs for welfare mothers, but Clinton's critics say the program's troubles also reflect one of the Governor's frequent failings: he is a much better idea man than administrator and frequently does not devote enough attention to making sure that his ideas are carried out. In the case of welfare, says Brownie Ledbetter, a citizen activist, "he gathered a bunch of people together and said, `Go do it' and then disappeared." Among other administrative foul-ups, inadequate transportation allowances have prevented welfare recipients in some rural areas from reaching training centers located far from their homes. Critics contend that the program would have been more successful if the resources devoted to it had been more focused in problem areas along the Mississippi and around Little Rock rather than scattered over all 75 Arkansas counties. But Clinton calculated that for political reasons he could not leave anybody out; if he had, says Ledbetter, "that would have made people mad." TAXES. Liberals' loudest complaint against Clinton is that he took office in a state that already had a regressive tax system (it weighed more heavily on the poor and middle class than on the wealthy) and has gone along with making it more regressive still. The Governor has not been able to reform significantly the state's income tax structure. He has failed to raise the severance tax on timber, coal, oil and natural gas. To raise revenue for his education and other reforms, Clinton has requested and won two increases in the sales tax, which raises 40% of the state's revenue. A particularly objectionable feature: Arkansas is one of the few states to apply sales taxes to store-bought food (though not feed for chickens and pigs, which is exempt as an "industrial input"). Critics accuse Clinton of backing out of a deal they thought they had struck with him to rebate sales taxes on food to the poor when the tax was raised in 1983. Also, as part of an increase last year that was needed to pay for higher teacher salaries, the Governor agreed to apply a tax to used cars, a major expenditure for many low- and middle-income Arkansans. "This is the man out there telling everyone he's for the middle class," says John Robert Starr, managing editor of the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, "and he's hitting the middle class [in Arkansas] right square where it hurts." Clinton points out that sales taxes like the one on used cars require only a majority vote in the legislature, but the state constitution insists on a hard-to-obtain 75% vote to increase nearly all other levies. He backed a proposed constitutional amendment in 1988 that would have set the same requirement--a 60% vote--to raise any kind of tax, but it failed to make it out of a house committee for a full vote. Critics charge Clinton failed to put up the fight that would have been necessary to win passage for fear of offending his business supporters. RACE RELATIONS. Arkansas was once almost synonymous with segregation; President Eisenhower in 1957 had to call out the National Guard to protect black students admitted to Central High School in Little Rock over the opposition of Governor Orval Faubus. Clinton has sought with some success to bring blacks into the power structure: he has appointed far more blacks to state government departments, commissions and agencies than any other Governor in Arkansas' history. The Governor also has sought to foster black enterprise by directing state agencies to place at least 10% of their purchase orders with minority-owned businesses. Once again, follow-through has been less than vigorous, and it is estimated that only about 3% of state purchases have actually been made from minority businessmen. Though the state's success in attracting new industry has helped reduce black unemployment, from 19.5% in 1982 to 17.5% last year, the reduction has been smaller than in some neighboring Southern states; much of the industry has tended to cluster in the predominantly white northwestern part of the state. The most surprising part of Arkansas' racial performance is that the state is one of only two (Alabama is the other) that do not have a law banning racial discrimination in employment, and one of nine with no statute outlawing housing discrimination. Clinton supported a state civil rights bill in last year's legislative session, but opposition from small businesses that feared it would be too costly kept it from being passed. Most black leaders nonetheless have given Clinton credit for trying, and black votes have helped mightily to propel him to victory in important primaries this year. Though he certainly cannot claim to have worked any miracles, Clinton can point to some solid accomplishments. A common saying in Arkansas used to be "Thank God for Mississippi"--because if it were not for Mississippi, Arkansas would have been at the absolute bottom among all 50 states in many measures of wealth and social progress. Under Clinton, however, the state has begun inching ahead of some others too and acquiring a new self-confidence that it can be something more than a poverty-stricken backwater. "The state is far better off than before he came along," says Max Howell, who is retiring after 42 years in the Arkansas senate. "He has negotiated the most meaningful gains that anyone could have." Political scientist David England at Arkansas State University agrees: "He has been as effective as any Governor could be in Arkansas," partly because Clinton has shown a shrewd sense of what reforms were attainable and concentrated on them. Says England: "He has taken on only what he thought was possible. Pushing too hard on one thing would have blown others." Setting realistic priorities and putting together the coalitions to achieve them are obviously skills a President must possess. But some of Clinton's critics wonder if a President should not also be a bit more of a crusader than Clinton has proved himself. In their view, the Governor has been a bit too quick to settle for what he could get, a bit too reluctant to antagonize actual or posupporters. "He never wants to move until he takes a poll; he has retreated where he didn't have to,'' says Tom McRae, a Little Rock lawyer who challenged Clinton in the Democratic gubernatorial primary in 1990. And McRae is not the only one to ask a sharp question: Could Clinton take on the special interests that have been blocking needed legislation on a national level any more effectively than he has stood up to special interests in Arkansas? The situations of course are not fully comparable: Clinton would presumably come to power with a mandate for change and would wield far more power in the Oval Office than any Governor--and especially any Governor of Arkansas--ever can. Nonetheless, it is a troubling question that Clinton has not yet put to rest. </body></article> </text>