The health and education of Arkansas children are at risk because of a new bill that would redirect billions of future state general revenue dollars that typically funds programs for children and families and put it towards highways and roads. This bill proposes to take a giant slice out of the main pool of money that gets distributed to state programs every year without any plan to replace these funds. Recent tax cuts that also reduce state general revenue make now a particularly dangerous time to take more funding away from the general fund. The end result will be major cuts to programs that help vulnerable children and families.Among the many services the bill would impact are K-12 education, higher education, Medicaid and health care services for our most vulnerable populations, services for abused and neglected children, juvenile justice, public safety and corrections, and pre-K and child care for our youngest children.

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This bill is essentially “robbing Peter to pay Paul.” Taking money from quality pre-K and education is an extreme and unacceptable way to fund highways. The transfer would increase incrementally, starting with $34.8 million transferred out of state general revenue the first year and ending with over half a billion dollars ($548.4 million) transferred out in year 10. The total amount that House Bill 1346 takes out of general revenue over the next 10 years is an incredible $2.8 billion. That is enough to pay the salaries of 6,000 teachers every year for the next decade.

While highways are certainly important to economic development, a well-trained and well-educated workforce is even more important.  We don’t have to choose between highways and education. By getting rid of some of the many expensive tax benefits that primarily benefit the wealthy, we could fund highways and roads without slashing other critical programs. Some alternative options for funding roads include reducing capital gains exclusions and closing corporate tax loopholes.

The poorest people in Arkansas have benefited least from the recent economic recovery, and the programs they rely on continue to go underfunded. Governor Hutchinson’s recent budget proposal, for example, does not provide the $16 million cost-of-living increase that our pre-K program needs to catch up after eight years of no new funding.  Siphoning money into highways will leave other critical programs high and dry at a time when state coffers are already weakened by $102 million in tax cuts. It will be difficult to impossible for these programs to catch up and find other revenue sources. Priorities like child welfare, juvenile justice and pre-K have already been flat funded for years. If we don’t pay for education and quality pre-K now, we will pay for it later in the form of a weak economy and underemployed workforce.

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This bill would undercut the educational progress we have made over the last 10 years and recklessly stifle our ability to educate our workforce in order to meet the changing needs of employers. Study after study shows that one of the things that businesses care most about is a well-trained workforce. In addition to preparing a strong workforce, the transfer money was already going to be used to create jobs: jobs in education, in health care, and jobs in other human service industries that serve our families. Taking money from programs that vulnerable children and families rely on is not the answer.