EDITORIAL >> Capitol follies

You can never underestimate the public spiritedness of the average politician in an election year. If self-interest clashes with the public good, look out public.

The state is in dire straits, too little revenue chasing expanding needs. Trying to plug holes in the budget, Gov. Beebe proposed a patchwork of fund transfers to protect the schools, counties, prisons and medical services to the needy. He wanted to take $10 million from the slush fund that legislators reserve for vote-getting projects back home in their districts and use the money for desperate state needs. If revenues pick up by the end of the year, he would restore the money to the lawmakers.

But the Joint Budget Committee would have none of it. That money reminds voters back home that their lawmaker is getting lagniappe for them and they could not take a chance on losing it. Instead, the committee voted to take most of the money from perilously strapped funds regardless of the risk to solvency. Richard Weiss, the state’s longtime chief fiscal officer, warned that they were “pushing the envelope.” Sen. Jim Luker of Wynne, sometimes the lone sane voice, told his colleagues they were begging for trouble. He could not understand why they were so anxious about losing their little pork projects.

We thought this was resolved a couple of years ago when Mike Wilson of Jacksonville took them to court and won a decision that the individual earmarks were unconstitutional and a misuse of the taxpayers’ money. They were taxpayer-funded re-election slush funds and violated the prohibition against local and special acts. We should have known they would find a way around a prudent but inconvenient law. You can’t write a law that will compel politicians to put the public interest first.

EDITORIAL >> Halter doesn’t need a staff

A meanly conceived idea is not necessarily a bad one. Take state Rep. Keith Ingram’s idea of eliminating three of the five jobs in the office of the lieutenant governor, which would leave the alternate governor with a single assistant. (The legislature’s Joint Budget Committee didn’t take it.)

Had he searched, Ingram could have found more needless jobs in the government than the lieutenant governor’s scheduler, liaison and communications director. And he could have found agencies that needed those three jobs and more to get the job done. Child welfare services comes to mind.

Ingram was not concerned with waste but with embarrassing Bill Halter, the lieutenant governor, who is supposed to be contemplating a race against U.S. Sen. Blanche Lincoln in the Democratic primary. Ingram, who supports Lincoln, tried to amend Halter’s appropriation to give him a single employee, which had the salutary effect of getting some attention in the media and planting the idea that Halter is a spendthrift. Government waste is the catchphrase of the season.

We think Halter might make a pretty good senator in spite of his paternity of the state lottery, which may be the worst idea of this generation. But that would be immaterial at any other time. As spiteful and petty as Ingram’s little artifice was, he was right. The lieutenant governor doesn’t need a staff at all. He has two functions under the Constitution, and one of them is so archaic that one day we will be rid of it.

The lieutenant governor presides over the state Senate for some 45 days a year if he wants to — the Senate does not miss him in his absence — and gets to be governor when the real governor steps over the border. The latter duty is a relic of horse-and-buggy days when there was no one to call out the militia in an emergency if the governor had vanished to the far reaches.

The president of the United States is still the president if he is in Malaysia, but if the governor of Arkansas dines in Memphis, the lieutenant governor is invested with his powers for a few hours. When that happens, the governor’s staff and all the forces of government are his.

Mike Huckabee began to build the office staff when he was lieutenant governor, and Win Paul Rockefeller inflated it further.

The lieutenant governor needed to feel important. We remember when Lt. Gov. Joe Purcell had a part-time secretary and she twiddled her thumbs.

Once the election season has passed and perhaps a new lieutenant governor is to be sworn in, Ingram or someone should renew the idea. Then it could rest on its merits.

SPORTS >> Cabot sets new marks in state run

Ariel Voskamp set a Cabot school record in the pole vault at the state indoor.

By TODD TRAUB
Leader sports editor

The Cabot Panthers had a few firsts and set a slew of school records at the state large-school indoor track and field championships at the Tyson Track Center in Fayetteville on Saturday.

UALR signee Brendon Tucker won the boys 1,600 meters in a school record 4:27.62 while Ariel Voskamp cleared 12 feet, 1 inch to win the girls pole vault and set a Cabot record and Sabrina Antimo won the 200 meter dash in a school record 26.81 seconds.

The girls finished third overall out of 23 teams and the boys were fifth out of 24.

Antimo was also second in the long jump at 16-8, second in the triple jump (35-6) and third in the 60-meter dash in 8.19 seconds. Antimo set school records in the triple jump and the 60 meters.

Antimo helped the 1,600-meter relay team to a seventh-place finish and a new Cabot indoor record of 4:22.92 and Joe Bryant tied the Cabot 400-meter dash record in 51.80 seconds.

In other field events, T.J. Bertrand was second with a shot put of 50-6½; Brittany Briswalter took fifth in the girls shot (33-2) and Julia Gairhan was seventh in the pole vault.

Tucker was sixth in the boys 3,200-meter run at 9:57.99, EmKay Myers was eighth in the 1,600 meters and Voskamp was sixth in the 60-meter girls hurdles in 9.84 seconds.

In the relays, the 3,200-meter team of Colton Johnson, Zach White, Chris Dunbar and Phillip Treat took second in 8:26.49 and the 1,600-meter team of Joe and Powell Bryant, Clint Cates and John Wheatley took third in 3:34.00.

Fayettevile’s boys won the team competition with 86 points, Fort Smith Southside had 49 points to finish second, Bentonville (46 points) was third and Bryant (45) was fourth. Cabot scored 42 points for fifth.

Bentonville’s girls scored 105 points to take first and Fayetteville scored 79 points for second. Cabot took third with 54 points while Camden Fairview scored 46 points to finish fourth and Springdale Har-Ber rounded out the top five with 44 points to finish fifth.

SPORTS >> Scribner is weekend’s big warrior

By JASON KING
Leader sports writer

The Lonoke Lady Jackrabbits show no sign of slowing down.

The Lady ’Rabbits backed up their unbeaten run through the 2-4A Conference regular season with a sweep of the district tournament at Stuttgart over the weekend.

Lonoke (24-5) sent tourney host Stuttgart packing in the semifinals with a 43-29 victory Friday and claimed its second straight district championship the following day by beating Clinton 62-44.

Lady Jackrabbits senior post player and future UALR Trojan Asiah Scribner was a standout both nights with 15 points against Stuttgart and a 25-point, 12-rebound performance against Clinton in the finals on Saturday.

“Asiah just dominated in the post,” Lonoke coach Nathan Morris said. “They played behind her, and she took it one-on-one to the basket. Our guard play was also strong, which we needed once they started coming back on us. They made three threes in the fourth quarter and had six for the game.”

Senior guard Ashleigh Himstedt also had a consistent weekend for the Lady ’Rabbits with 16 points against Stuttgart and 12 against Clinton. Lonoke was aided by another double-digit performance Saturday when junior Cara Neighbors began to shake off a recent slump with 15 points.

“Even then, we’re talking about mostly lay-ups,” Morris said of Neighbors’ late-season funk. “Shooters are going to go through that, they just have to keep shooting. And that’s what she has to do, is keep shooting and keep a good mental attitude. The thing is, when you have four scorers, one of them can have an off night and you can still be successful.”

5-2A NORTH BOYS

The old coaches’ saying that it is hard to beat a team three times in a row proved true for Abundant Life in the finals of the 2A District 5 tournament at White County Central on Saturday.

The Owls beat Conway St. Joseph twice during their unbeaten, regular-season run through the 5-2A North Conference, but the Bulldogs got the last laugh with a 63-56 victory in the district finals.

Senior post player Garrett Southerland led the Owls with 19 points, while point guard Mike Stramiello scored 16.

The Bulldogs jumped out to a 14-9 lead at the end of the first quarter and stretched that to 29-20 at the half. Abundant Life (29-5) began to close the gap in the third quarter until a seven-point outburst by St. Joe’s Tyler Jones in the closing seconds put the Bulldogs up 45-33 and forced the Owls to try and play catchup in the final period.

“That killed us,” Owls coach Tim Ballard said. “Same kid, just bam, bam, bam. We missed a bunch of threes that we normally make. When we beat them at their place, we actually got down by seven and hit three threes in a row. We had some of the same looks in this one and just couldn’t get them to fall.”

Jones went on to lead St. Joe with 15 points.

White County Central will also be the site of the 2A East Region tournament this week. The Owls will be the No. 2 seed out of the 5-North and will play 6-2A No. 3 seed Clarendon on Thursday at 5:30 p.m.

The Bulldogs will be the 5-North No. 1 seed and will face 6-2A No. 4 seed Augusta today at 8:30 p.m.

SPORTS >> Riverview beats rival in district

Tyler Colvin handles the ball against Harding Academy in regional action.

By JASON KING
Leader sports writer

ROSE BUD — Harding Academy stuck around just enough to keep Riverview honest in the 2-3A District tournament final on Friday night at Rambler Arena.

Riverview beat Harding Academy 56-49 and dominated the first half just as it had in the two previous meetings between the conference and cross-town rivals, though the Wildcats attempted yet another of their furious comebacks in the second half.

They were successful at cutting into the Raiders’ lead, which was 20 points in the first half, but ultimately fell short.

“At the end of the third, we just rushed some shots,” Raiders coach Russell Stumpenhous said. “We thought it was all going to be easy and thought they were going to lay down. They showed a lot of heart and a lot of fight. I give credit to them — it’s hard to beat a team three times in a row.”

Raiders junior post player D.J. Teague imposed his will inside early against the Wildcats, taking advantage of his four-inch height advantage on Harding Academy’s Daniel Stevens. Teague got a dunk in the first two minutes of the first quarter and went on to score 12 points.

“He was able to get in good position,” Stumpenhous said. “We were able to give him the ball, and some of his seals were really working early. Later on, he kind of got a little flatter, and they started being a little more physical with him. The refs weren’t necessarily cooperating on that end.”

Junior guard Taylor Smith took over for Riverview (24-5) once Teague began to draw extra attention. Smith closed the first quarter with a pair of three-point baskets for six of his team-high 15 points.

Freshman Will Francis came alive for the Wildcats (16-7) in the second quarter with six of his game-high 18 points. But after Francis, there was not much else going on offensively for Harding Academy in the first half.

Teague got back in the mix to open the third quarter while Keanan Lee, Jordan Perry and Tyler Colvin each added a three-pointer as the Raiders pulled away to a 42-22 lead with 2:18 left in the period.

But when both teams reached the double bonus in the final two minutes of the fourth quarter, the remainder of the game was played out at the free-throw line. There were 11 trips to the line in all, with the Raiders making eight.

Riverview went 10 of 17 at the line in the fourth quarter, which proved to be the difference after a three-pointer by Francis with 37 seconds left and a three-pointer by Raymond Dailey at the buzzer.

“We knew it was going to be tooth and nail in parts, but we were hoping it was going to be early and not late,” Stumpenhous said. “But it ended up being late and not early. But you take a win however it is.”

Colvin added 14 points and Perry scored 10 for Riverview. For Harding Academy, Jordan Smith scored 10 points.

The victory completed a 14-game sweep of the conference regular season and the district tournament for Riverview, but Stumpenhous says there is still work to do with regionals and state beginning.

“You want to be playing your best basketball right now, but I still feel like we’ve got a little bit of room for improvement,” Stumpenhous said. “There are some inconsistencies that we have at times. Maybe it’s just a lack of focus. It’s kind of hard to put your thumb down when you’re winning. You don’t want to critique too much, but at the same time, you don’t want to let things go.”

Riverview will be the No. 1 seed and the host for the 3A Region tournament this week. The Raiders will open the boys side of the bracket against 5-3A No. 4 seed Jessieville today at 5:30 p.m. while the Wildcats will be the No. 2 seed and play 5-3A No. 3 seed Episcopal on Thursday at 8:30 p.m.

SPORTS >> Panthers fan tourney flames

Cabot’s Darin Jones makes a move between defenders in a recent Panthers game. Jones hit the go-ahead basket against Bryant on Friday.

By TODD TRAUB
Leader sports editor

There were no head coaches in sight when Cabot and Bryant tipped off in a 7A-Central boys game at Cabot on Friday.

Not that there wasn’t a lot of coaching to be done.

Cabot, led by assistant Mike Tucker, denied Bryant a trip to the state tournament and enhanced its own chances with a 37-33 victory.

Panthers junior Darin Jones hit a three-pointer from the left corner with 2:53 left to break a 31-31 tie, and Cabot stayed in front to eliminate Bryant, led by interim coach Ron Marvel, from postseason contention.

Tucker was filling in for suspended Cabot coach Jerry Bridges, who by rules had to sit out because he drew two technical fouls and an automatic ejection in the Panthers’ previous game at Little Rock Central.

But Tucker is a veteran who spent 19 years as head coach of North Little Rock’s girls.

“I’ve been at this a long time,” Tucker said. “I’ve coached in a lot of basketball games. And I’m real proud of them tonight; they did an excellent job. Especially when you’ve got a guy like coach Marvel, who is a legend in his own self, coaching over there.”

Marvel, the long-time women’s coach at Central Arkansas University, stepped in this season when the Bryant job became vacant and the school didn’t have time to mount a search.

“Tonight was for the trip to the state tournament obviously,” Marvel said after the Hornets fell to 6-16, 2-10. “If they beat us we’re eliminated. That put them in a pretty good position to go, and they will go, so it was a big game.

“We didn’t execute real well. We played hard; we stayed in the ballgame obviously. We had a couple chances to tie the ballgame up, couldn’t knock the shot down. It’s kind of been the story of our season.”

While Bryant will miss the state tournament, Cabot (10-13, 4-8) kept its postseason hopes alive.

“That gives us four,” Tucker said. “One more victory would assure us of being in the state tournament. But we had to win tonight.”

Cabot led 31-25 on Alex Baker’s baseline jumper with 5:31 left in the game, but after the Panthers threw it away on a bad pass, Brandon Parish made a three-pointer from the right wing with 4:00 to go, and he tied it with another three-pointer on the Hornets’ next possession.

Jones hit his go-ahead shot for Cabot, but Parish, the only Bryant player to score in the fourth quarter, came back with a jumper from the top of the key to pull the Hornets within 34-33 with 1:20 to go.

K-Ron Lairy fouled Baker, who made both free throws for the 36-33 lead with 26.3 seconds left.

Cabot’s Christian Armstrong missed a free throw after a Parish foul, and then Cabot fouled to force Bryant to inbound the ball with 7.3 seconds left. Dontay Renuard’s three-pointer caromed out and Jones got the rebound, then made a free throw with 2.6 seconds left for the final margin.

“We spread the floor on them a little bit and we were closer to the bonus situation than they were and we had some fouls to give,” Tucker said of his late-game strategy. “I felt like if we could spread the floor and get some opportunities to get into the lane that we could pick up some fouls.”

“It just came down to mistakes,” Marvel said. “We made some mistakes at crucial times. It just happened to get us at the wrong time.”

Marvel praised his players for the way they responded to him this season and promised Bryant would play out its remaining games with effort.

“The kids adjusted fine and I’ve enjoyed the kids,” Marvel said. “They’ve been a pleasure to work with. We’ve got two more ballgames and we’re going to go play those and I told them if we lost them all we’re going to try to win the last one so we’re still going to try to win the next one.”

Jones made four three-pointers and got the rest of his points on free throws to finish with 19. Parish led Bryant with 16 points, with four coming on three-pointers.

The biggest lead for either team was six points. Bryant was up 19-13 in the second quarter and took a 20-16 halftime lead and Cabot held its 31-25 lead before Bryant fought back to tie in the fourth quarter.

“When you’re at home you’ve got to control the tempo, which we did,” Tucker said. “We kept the game at a low score and tried to keep the last possession, tried to keep the ball in our hands to the end.”

SPORTS >> Wrestlers grab state championships

By TODD TRAUB
Leader sports editor

North Pulaski came home with two individual medals and Cabot and Beebe grabbed one each at the state wrestling tournament at the Jack Stephens Center in Little Rock on Saturday.

North Pulaski’s Jonathan Buzzitta pinned Gentry’s Barney Cheney at the 3:40 mark to win the 125-pound classification in the small school, 1A-5A division and the Falcons’ A.J. Stephens defeated Gentry’s Shawn Johnson by a 19-4 technical fall in the 171-pound class.

Beebe’s David Day, top seed in the 1A-5A 160-pound class, beat Valley View’s Kyle Adams 16-12 in the finals. Cabot 112-pounder Tyler Kurtz, wrestling in the large-school, 6A-7A division, defeated Searcy’s Devonte Miller on points, 13-12.

North Pulaski, last year’s state runner-up in the 1A-5A division, this year sent a team of 14 and four No. 1 seeds including Buzzitta, Stephens, 140-pounder Tony Mongno and 119-pounder Jacob McClain.

McClain beat Ashdown’s Cody Ford by technical fall, 16-0, in the third-place finals and Gentry’s Kolby Rankin beat Mongno 6-0 in the finals.

In other finals action, top seed Connor Frederick, of Little Rock Christian, pinned North Pulaski’s Mariah Mongno, the No. 2 seed, at the 2:40 mark for a victory in the 103-pound match. No. 1 seed Nicholas Kurfess, of Little Rock Christian, pinned
Beebe’s Al Sharp at the 1:30 mark for a victory in the 112-pound class.

In the 134-pound small-school final, top seed Andrea Johnson, of the Little Rock School for the Blind, pinned Beebe’s Mykel Bain at the 2:26 mark. Gentry’s Robert Henderson, top seed in the 189-pound class, outpointed North Pulaski’s Vinnie Osmun 4-1.

In the 6A-7A, 285-pound class, Brad Ball, of Rogers Heritage, beat Searcy’s Patrick Bingham 11-5.

SPORTS >> Lady Wildcats standing tall

Harding Academy point guard Molly Koch drives inside for a shot against England in the 2-3A District final on Friday at Rose Bud. Koch scored a season-high 13 points against the Lady Lions.

By JASON KING
Leader sports writer

ROSE BUD — Getting big resulted in a big victory for Harding Academy on Friday at Rambler Arena.

The Lady Wildcats lost their two previous 2-3A Conference matchups with the England Lady Lions, but came up big, literally, when it counted most in the district finals with a 59-57 triumph to earn the No. 1 seed for this week’s 3A Region 2 tournament at Riverview.

England overcame a six-point, fourth-quarter deficit to get within 58-57 in the final two minutes. McKenzie Miller made a free throw with 26 seconds left and Janeka Watkins missed a last-second shot for England as Harding Academy held on.

The Lady Wildcats take on 5-3A No. 4 seed Bauxite in the regional today at 4 p.m.

Harding Academy senior post players Megan Pack, 5-11, and Ariel English, 6-1, alternated frequently through the first half, but both graced the court at the same time two minutes into the third quarter and remained a package deal for the duration.

That took away second-chance opportunities for the Lady Lions (24-4), and allowed the Lady Wildcats (18-8) to control the interior.

“From the middle of the third quarter on, we went to two post kids,” Lady Wildcats coach Rusty Garner said. “We were getting beat inside; getting killed in the paint. We couldn’t seem to grab a rebound. I thought Ariel English and Megan Pack both rebounded it really well.”

Pack scored 12 points inside, while English pulled down four critical defensive rebounds in the second half and found open teammates for three assists. English also pulled Harding Academy even with England on a pair of inside baskets in the final minute of the third quarter, including a third-attempt shot with 15 seconds left to make it 42-42.

The Lady Wildcats got the biggest lead of the game for either team with 2:38 left to play when Pack hit a pair of free throws to make it 56-50, but Lady Lions sophomore guard Jameka Watkins, one of England’s talented Watkins twins, hit two foul shots and followed that with a jumper in the lane to cut it to two.

Molly Koch then went the length of the court on the inbound for Harding Academy to score two of her season-high 13 points, but a three-pointer by Janeka Watkins cut it to 58-57 with 1:24 left.

The Lady Wildcats kept possession for close to a minute before McKenzie Miller was sent to the free-throw line with 26 seconds left. Miller hit the first free throw but missed the second and Tanesha Wiley grabbed the rebound for England.

The Lady Lions put the ball in Janeka Watkins’ hands for their last shot, but she burned valuable time on the perimeter looking for openings and could not shake pressure from Koch. That resulted in an off-balance shot that fell short off the rim and into Pack’s hands as the buzzer sounded.

“Really, we caught a break, because they were out of timeouts,” Garner said. “Janeka’s up top with the ball, and I think she kind of panicked with eight seconds left. I saw her look up, and it was late in the clock. I thought Molly Koch for us defensively did a good job of defending her, because that girl’s going to score.”

Harding Academy senior Anna Bangs was another key inside for the Lady Wildcats. Bangs led all scorers with 25 points, including six straight points starting with 2:05 left in the third quarter that cut England’s lead to 40-38.

“It validates that we’re who we hoped we were,” Garner said. “We played them in early January at home and got beat by three.

We missed a bunch of free throws, thought we should have beaten them. Went to England, got destroyed, so we had it in the back of our mind that we thought we could beat those guys. Now we can walk out of here and say that now we know on a good night, we can play with England.”

Janeka Watkins led England with 18 points and Wiley had 12.

The Lady Lions are the No. 2 seed out of District 2 and will play 5-3A No. 3 seed Mayflower Thursday at 7 p.m.

SPORTS >> Area teams advance, fall in district games

Harding Academy senior Megan Pack scored 11 points against Rose Bud.

By JASON KING
Leader sports writer

Double-double hardly begins to describe Lonoke senior post player Asiah Scribner’s effort, especially rebounding, during the Lady Jackrabbits’ 43-29 semifinal victory over host Stuttgart in the 2-4A district tournament Thursday.

Scribner grabbed 19 rebounds, most of them defensive, and scored 14 points, as Lonoke (23-5), already qualified for regionals, advanced to Friday’s final round against Clinton.

Scribner’s rebounding work gave the Lady Ricebirds few second-chance opportunities and helped the Lady ’Rabbits control the tempo despite early foul trouble that limited playing time for leading scorer Cara Neighbors.

“Their guards are known for shooting the deep three,” Lady Jackrabbits coach Nathan Morris said. “So we were fortunate that a lot of them didn’t fall, and Asiah was there to grab some long rebounds, and she also got some put-backs from her rebounds on the offensive side.”
Ashleigh Himstedt added 16 points for Lonoke.

2-4A boys

Lonoke will move on to regionals courtesy of a 31-29 victory over Southside Batesville in the first round of the 2-4A district tournament at Stuttgart on Wednesday.

But the Jackrabbits suffered a 59-46 loss to Heber Springs in Thursday’s semifinal round. It was the Jackrabbits’ second loss to the Panthers in six days.

T.J. Scott led the Jackrabbits (12-11) with 13 points Thursday. Lonoke battled to a 30-30 tie at the half, but was outscored 18-4 in the third quarter.

“We talked about defensive transition and picking our guys up early,” Jackrabbits coach Dean Campbell said. “And for the most part, we did that in the first half. But we got behind and started taking quick shots in the third quarter, and that usually leads to points on the other side.”

2-3A boys

A strong defensive effort helped Harding Academy beat 2-3A district tourney hosts Rose Bud 59-44 in the semifinals on Thursday. The Wildcats (16-6) entered the tournament as the No. 2 seed, while the Ramblers were No. 3.

Daniel Stevens led Harding Academy with 18 points, and was 9 of 9 from the free-throw line. Jordan Smith and freshman Will Francis each scored 12 points.

“The keys were that we took care of the ball and didn’t give them turnovers that led to easy baskets,” Wildcats coach Brad Francis said. “Then we defended them well.”

Riverview

After an unbeaten run through the 2-3A Conference in the regular season, top seed Riverview got more than it bargained for in the semifinals matchup with No. 5 Barton in the 2-3A district tournament at Rose Bud High School on Thursday.

Senior Jordan Perry hit a 25-footer at the buzzer to help the Raiders secure a 59-56 victory, a trip to the finals and a fourth meeting with cross-town rival Harding Academy.

The Bears kept themselves in the game with solid outside shooting that included eight, three-point baskets from five different players.

“Any win is a good thing,” Raiders coach Russell Stump-enhous said. “Do I wish we won every game by 30 points? Sure, it makes my job a lot easier, but we’ve managed a lot of close games this year. When you go through the conference 12-0, you have a big target on your back.”

Taylor Smith led the Raiders (23-5) with 19 points while Perry had 14.

2-3A girls

After an uneventful first round, Harding Academy provided the drama in the 2-3A district tournament semifinals at Rambler Arena against host Rose Bud Thursday.

Anna Bangs hit a buzzer-beating turnaround shot in the lane for a 48-47 overtime victory that sent the Lady Wildcats to Friday’s championship with top seed England.

Harding Academy (17-8) found itself trailing 27-20 at the end of the third quarter but outscored Rose Bud 21-14 in the final period to tie the game 41-41 at the end of regulation.

“We stole that one for sure,” Lady Wildcats coach Rusty Garner said. “I haven’t had a legitimate buzzer-beater win since I’ve been here, so the kids were really excited to get that one.”

The Lady Wildcats, who entered the tournament as the No. 3 seed, easily advanced in the first round against No. 6 seed Brinkley in a mercy-ruled 53-24 rout. Bangs led Harding Academy with 14 points while senior post player Megan Pack scored 11 points.

Riverview

The Lady Raiders’ season ended at the hands of Pangburn, which won 53-46 in the first round of the 2-3A district tournament at Rose Bud High School on Tuesday.

Riverview sent Pangburn to the free-throw line in the late going to stop the clock, but the Lady Tigers hit six consecutive free throws in the final minutes to clinch the victory.

Queen Banks led the Lady Raiders with 21 points while Brianna Harris scored 10.

5-2A North

Bigelow ended the Abundant Life Lady Owls’ season with a 48-46 overtime victory in the first round of the 5-2A North district tournament Thursday.

Carmyn Sharp led the Lady Owls with 12 points while Sidney Venus scored 11.

With the loss, the Lady Owls (18-13) did not qualify for regionals, which means no repeat trip to the 2A state tournament after they qualified for the first time last season.

But the good news for Abundant Life is, with the exception of senior post player Erin Miller, the Lady Owls will return all of their key players next season, including Sharp and Venus.

“We had a good year, 18 wins is a good amount, and it’s more than a lot of teams have,” Lady Owls coach Justin Moseley said. “We had a couple of games that we would love to have back, but seven of those losses were against ranked teams. We have a lot coming back next year, and we have a good group of ninth graders coming in.”

The Abundant Life boys earned the No. 1 seed in their bracket and did not play until Friday night.

SPORTS >> Falcons fighting to keep pace

North Pulaski’s Kryon Ware was involved in a key inbounds play in Tuesday’s loss at Little Rock McClellan, which evened the season series between the teams entering the stretch run of the season.

By TODD TRAUB
Leader sports editor

North Pulaski had four games left entering Friday night, but the Falcons were already looking at the very real possibility of a coin flip deciding their state tournament seeding.

Little Rock McClellan handed North Pulaski its first 5A-Southeast Conference loss, 67-64 on Tuesday, to avenge the loss at North Pulaski that knocked the Lions from the No. 1 spot in the state.

McClellan’s victory evened the season series, and with both games decided by three points, the first tiebreaker, which is head-to-head competition, would go out the window.

The next tiebreaker, North Pulaski coach Raymond Cooper said, is margin of victory over conference opponents up to 10 points. Since North Pulaski and McClellan had both beaten all their other 5A-Southeast opponents by 10 or more, that tie breaker was also irrelevant entering Friday.

“So if it remains the same it would go down to a coin toss,” Cooper said.

The state tournament begins March 2 at Alma.

The Falcons played Monticello in a regularly scheduled game at home Friday, then play a makeup with Sylvan Hills tonight. North Pulaski wraps up the season with consecutive games against White Hall with the scheduled home match-up Tuesday and a makeup at White Hall on Thursday.

McClellan, which had fewer weather-related cancellations, was 23-3, 11-1 entering Friday. North Pulaski was 18-5, 9-1, making the remaining regular-season games more important in assuring a favorable state tournament schedule.

“If we win the coin toss or however it turns out, if all things remain the same, the first-place team will play Tuesday, Friday and Saturday,” Cooper said. “The second-place team plays Thursday, Friday and Saturday.”

The latest North Pulaski-McClellan showdown ended on a three-pointer by Lions senior guard Tevin Hammond, and the furious finish revealed the hard-fought nature of this season’s series.

North Pulaski saw its lead whittled away in the final three minutes as the Falcons scored just four points while the Lions scored on every possession in that span. North Pulaski still led with 14.5 seconds left and, anticipating McClellan’s press, tried to inbound the ball over the top.

That led to a series of physical plays, with Cooper thinking a foul should have been called when Kyron Ware was knocked down taking the inbounds pass at half court. The Falcons controlled the rebounding but had to fight through crowds for three missed shots before the Lions rebounded and Hammond hit his game-winner.

“We didn’t play defense down the stretch,” Cooper said. “We had the lead and we started playing not to lose instead of not to win.”

Cooper said the Falcons, who led by 18 at one point during their first meeting with McClellan, might have been overconfident entering the rematch and he thought that showed in practice.
But it was better to lose now than in the single-elimination state tournament, and Cooper, who led his team to a state finals loss against Greene Co. Tech last year, said he was going to try to manage his time during the stretch run and was not afraid to give his veteran team time off if needed.

“I’m just trying to make sure that we keep fresh going into the tournament,” Cooper said. “One thing I did last year, and I think just from me having experience, is last year I think I over practiced going into the deal. As a coach you want to make sure you prepare for every little thing you can possibly think of.”

Cooper wouldn’t handicap the chances of North Pulaski and McClellan meeting one more time — in the state final at Hot Springs. He just wants to make sure the Falcons hold up their end of things.

Cooper recalled getting a scare from No. 4 seed Central Arkansas Christian in the first round of the state tournament last year.

“I try not to look too far ahead because the thing about the tournament is it has a tendency to never work out the way people think it should,” Cooper said. “And very rarely do you have two teams from the same conference. We’re just trying to make sure that we don’t look ahead.”

SPORTS >> Sylvan Hills beats Beebe, stays in first

Kamisha Wright gets away from the Beebe defense in Tuesday’s victory.

By JASON KING Leader sportswriter

What a difference a year makes.

The Beebe Lady Badgers and Sylvan Hills Lady Bears fought for the No. 1 seed in the 5A Southeast Conference last season, and Beebe took the top spot with an unbeaten league run.

This season, the Lady Bears are on top of the conference standings, and a deflated Beebe team did little to slow that momentum Tuesday as Sylvan Hills won 47-26 at Sylvan Hills.

Sylvan Hills (16-5, 9-1) took advantage of Beebe’s struggle to handle the ball and lack of team communication to grab 18 turnovers, which resulted in a number of transition opportunities.

“I was glad about that one; we needed one like that,” Lady Bears coach Bee Rodden said. “Maybe we’re getting back in some rhythm. We came in on Sunday afternoon and practiced. We just felt like we weren’t where we needed to be. We spent a lot of time on our defense.”

That extra work paid off with a 13-0 run in the second quarter that took the Lady Bears from a modest 15-8 lead with 5:48 left to a dominant, 28-8 advantage in the final minute of the first half.

Of Beebe’s 18 giveaways, 13 were a result of steals by Sylvan Hills. Terica Kendrick led in that department with three and was also the leading scorer for the Lady Bears with a season-high 18 points.

“Our shooting is getting better,” Rodden said. “T.K. shot the ball extremely well, I thought. She’s one of those kids that if she can get into a rhythm, she can light it up. She made her first three; she was too excited.”

Kendrick’s three-pointer with 1:59 left in the third quarter put Sylvan Hills dangerously close to triggering the mercy-rule and its fast-moving clock at 42-15, but Rodden began a heavy rotation of substitutes. All 11 players on the Lady Bears roster saw action before the end of the game.

“That was nice. The other night, we didn’t get to do that,” Rodden said. “It kind of keeps the underclassmen, those other kids motivated. This is the time of year that you want to be hitting your peak.”

With only one victory all year, it has been a trying season for the Lady Badgers after an unbeaten conference run and 5A state semifinals appearance last year.

With Beebe school officials looking on Tuesday, dispirited players bickered with each other on the way to the locker room at halftime and sources are speculating about coach Lora Jackson’s future in a season in which the roster has been cut in half by player departures.

Kendrick capped off the first quarter with a basket and free throw that gave the Lady Bears a 10-4 lead. Post player Ashley Johnson extended the lead in the second quarter with an inside basket assisted by Kendrick, followed by a free throw with 3:39 left that made it 22-8.

Senior Dee Dee Lewis tacked on two more free throws a minute later, and Kamisha Wright got a steal that she took all the way for a layup and the 26-8 lead with 1:59 left in the half.

A basket by Beebe’s Kelsie Walker with 4:41 left in the third quarter was the only interruption in another second-half Sylvan Hills scoring run.

SPORTS >> Stingy Bears keep Badgers’ baskets to bare minimum

Sylvan Hills’ Demetric Gross (15) tries to block a shot by Brandon Fuller, of Beebe, during the Bears’ victory Tuesday.

By JASON KING
Leader sportswriter

Beebe never gave up, but from the closing minutes of the first quarter the Badgers were never in the game against Sylvan Hills on Tuesday.

The Bears put up one of their strongest defensive efforts of the season and slowed down Badgers standout junior guard Devonte Young to win 47-23 at Sylvan Hills.

The Badgers made a charge mid-way through the first quarter after falling behind early, but the Bears (12-9, 3-7 5A-Southeast) regrouped and slowly pulled away over the remainder of the half. They held the momentum in the second half and finally enacted the timing/sportsmanship rule when they took a 30-point lead with a little over three minutes left to play.

“In the last few games, we’ve really tried to harp on our defense,” Bears coach Kevin Davis said. “We’re trying to get better and better at it — that and our rebounding. I thought the guys really responded. They did a good job.”

Young finished with 11 points to lead Beebe (3-20, 1-11), but Sylvan Hills’ stiff zone defense denied him inside driving lanes. He hit three, three-pointers and added a pair of free throws in the third quarter for his totals.

Davis said his players carried out the defensive scheme as he had drawn it up.

“I thought they executed our game plan really well,” he said. “Seniors played like seniors need to play. But just from an overall game plan, I could see things in all facets. I saw great wing play, great post play and really good guard play — all within the confines of what we try to do every day in practice.”

Young hit his first three-pointer with 5:58 left in the first quarter to cut the Bears’ lead to 5-3. He then followed a Demetric Gross score for Sylvan Hills with a basket and free throw to make it 7-6.

“I thought Beebe came out and really played us hard right out of the gate,” Davis said. “So it was good to see them play with the heart and intensity early, and our guys having to match that.”

Badger sophomore Braden Jones added some points in the lane in the first half. He took an assist from Young with 32 seconds left in the first quarter and scored, then hit a shot assisted by Brandon Fuller to start the second quarter to make it 16-14.

“They were getting the pick-and-roll in early and getting some buckets inside,” Davis said. “We switched it up and threw a little zone at them, and that seemed to slow them down just a little bit and get them out of their rhythm that they were trying to do.”

Gross had a strong night inside for the Bears with 10 points and four rebounds, and teamed with Archie Goodwin to take over the game in the third quarter. Goodwin led with 21 points.
“He knows what to do with that basketball when you get it in there to him,” Davis said of Gross. “He’s got a few moves inside. If you give him a little space, he’s tough to guard. He throws several different moves at you.”

Trey Smith and senior Ahmad Scott each scored seven points for the Bears. Point guard Bruce Mack had only a pair of free throws, but his seven assists and team-leading six rebounds proved to be some of the biggest differences for the Bears.

“He’s tough to guard, and he’s elusive,” Davis said. “I thought he did a really good job once Beebe extended pressure of breaking that down and finding guys. That’s when we pulled away in the first half, when he was making those moves inside.”

SPORTS >> Wrestlers state bound

By TODD TRAUB
Leader sports editor

Six area schools, including last year’s state runner-up North Pulaski, are represented at the Arkansas High School State Wrestling Tournament under way at the Jack Stephens Center on the UALR campus in Little Rock.

The tournament, which began Friday, features wrestlers from Cabot, Beebe, North Pulaski, Searcy, Sylvan Hills and Riverview competing in 14 weight classifications. Cabot and Searcy are in the large-school, 6A-7A bracket and the others are in the 1A-5A bracket.

After filling just eight weight classes last year and finishing second to Central Arkansas Christian, North Pulaski has one of the largest teams, at 14, and can boast the most seeded wrestlers, 10, from the area schools competing.

The Falcons have four No. 1 seeds: Jacob McClain in the 119- pound class, Jonathan Buzzita in the 125-pound class, 140-pounder Tony Mongno and A.J. Stephens in the 171-pound class.
Buzzita, son of North Pulaski soccer coach Tony Buzzita, won first in the 119-pound class last year and Mongno, son of head wrestling coach Tony Mongno Sr., finished first in the 130-pound class. North Pulaski’s Vinnie Osmun, who won the 189-pound classification last year, is the No. 3 seed at the same weight this week.

The only other No. 1 seed from the area is Beebe’s David Day, who is No. 1 in the 160-pound classification. Beebe has 12 wrestlers in the tournament and also has a No. 3 seed, Jason Ferguson, in the 285-pound class.

Cabot and Searcy sent the most wrestlers, 14 apiece. Tyler Kurtz, a 112-pounder, is the highest of Cabot’s four seeds at No. 3 and Micah Wilson is the No. 4 seed in the 171-pound classification.
Riverview sent a team of nine and Sylvan Hills has five wrestlers at the tournament.

TOP STORY >> Cabot school to go without textbooks

Workers are installing the metal roof at Mountain Springs Elementary School.

By JOAN McCOY
Leader staff writer

The new Mountain Springs Elementary School, which opens this fall in Cabot, will be the first in the state not to use textbooks.

Harold Jeffcoat, director of curriculum for the district’s elementary schools, told the school board Tuesday evening that instead of paying $250,000 for math and social studies books, the district will pay $1,000 for software that will let teachers choose and share instructional material tailored to the state standards to which they must teach.

Textbooks are written to a national standard and don’t necessarily contain the lessons that Arkansas policy says students must be taught.

As an example, Jeffcoat said Arkansas requires that fourth-graders learn about major mountain ranges. But the $45 social studies book adopted by the district barely mentioned some of them and didn’t contain a full lesson about any.

“It’s our state standard we’re held accountable to and our students are tested on,” he said.

If the materials they need are not in their textbooks, teachers have no choice but to search out other sources. So they are already building their own programs.

The new software will make it easier to find what they need. Digital instructional material also will be more varied with videos available and maps enhanced by Google Earth that will, for example, show students what a real mountain in the Andes looks like.

The teachers will select the content of the Web site that the program will use, he said. That process will start when the teachers for the new school are assembled.

After that, if the program works as touted, the teachers will share their best finds and the program will continue to improve.

Although the school will have no textbooks, paper worksheets may be printed from the digital lessons. Students will still have homework and work to take home to show their parents.

In other business, principals from the junior highs and high school talked about what they are doing to improve scores on open- response questions to test reading comprehension before testing starts next month. The principals said low scores in the past could be attributed in some cases to lack of interest.

The students don’t seem to care about the scores. But part of the the problem is the lack of experience with answering questions that require reading an essay and making inferences based on the information it contains.

To get them ready, principals and teachers have been working with students in small groups, teaching them how to think on a higher level and also how to recognize the cues that will help them really understand the questions they are required to answer.

TOP STORY >> PCSSD superintendent to be chosen in March

By NANCY DOCKTER

Leader staff writer

Interviews with the two finalists for Pulaski County Special School District superintendent are planned around the first of March, with a decision to come soon after.

The interviews will be closed to the public.

But a forum for school patrons to talk with the candidates will take place around the same time, said board president Tim Clark.

“We hope to have this finalized in the next 10 days,” Clark said.

The school board at a special meeting Thursday selected the finalists for the district’s top post. Acting superintendent Rob McGill and Vashti Washington, associate superintendent for Charleston, S.C., public schools, had emerged as the clear favorites during a discussion of candidates the day before, board members said.

“I am excited to be a finalist for this position,” said McGill in a prepared statement. “As the acting superintendent since last March, I have spearheaded many programs, projects and plans that I want to see to fruition for the betterment of PCSSD students and their families.”

Board member Bill Vasquez of Jacksonville said that any of the four candidates considered for the post “would be great for the district,” but that a strong leader is what is needed most.

“I want someone who is a team builder, a good communicator and someone who can involve all the stakeholders, but be the ultimate authority,” Vasquez said. “The board tends to be the final decider, and that is not the design. The superintendent runs the district, the board has oversight. Our board is much too active.”

Clark said in the next round of interviews he’ll probably ask questions “outside of the box, more in depth” on an array of topics that might include the upcoming federal court desegregation case or the candidate’s stance on school discipline.

“Whoever gets it, I am going to be happy with it,” Clark said. “Both have good experience and a good educational background.”

The board will not make a decision for the superintendent’s job until after the conclusion of an investigation of allegations that McGill made racially insensitive comments on more than one occasion. Attorney Jack Lassiter is expected to complete his investigation in a few days, said board member Charles Wood on Wednesday.

Dale Charles, president of the Arkansas chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, presented a letter to the board at its regular meeting Wednesday that alleged McGill had commented, regarding the state Board of Education’s granting of a charter to an all-black school, “They gave the blacks something, and didn’t give the whites nothing.”

In his letter, Charles said that McGill “lacked the necessary skills” to lead the district and end its long-running desegregation case.

A hearing on the PCSSD’s adherence to its desegregation plan is scheduled to start in federal court Feb. 25.

Rizzelle Aaron, representative of the Jacksonville chapter of the NAACP, said at the board meeting Wednesday that he would not air “other complaints” against McGill until after the board’s pick of a superintendent in order to counter rumors that the timing of the allegations was “politically motivated.”

At the meeting, Marty Nix, president of the Pulaski Association of Classroom Teachers, and Emery Chesterfield, president of the Pulaski Association of Support Staff, chided the school board for not including them in discussions about candidates for the superintendent position. Inclusion of union representatives has been past practice, Nix said.

“PACT represents the majority of teachers in the district, and we are still under contract,” Nix said.

Before taking on the job of acting superintendent a year ago, McGill was principal at Sherwood Elementary School for six years and at Pine Forest Elementary School for four years. Prior to that, he was assistant principal at Landmark Elementary School for two years.

He has four years experience teaching fourth, fifth and sixth grade in PCSSD. McGill has a bachelor’s degree in elementary education and a master’s degree in elementary school administration. McGill lives in Mayflower.

The district is the second largest in the state, with 17,330 students.

Washington, the other candidate, lives in Summerville, S.C., where she is in her sixth year as associate superintendent for the Charleston County Schools, which has 43,000 students.

She has 10 years’ experience as a school principal and 15 years’ teaching experience on the elementary and middle school levels in South Carolina schools.

She holds a bachelor’s degree in speech and communication, a master’s degree in early childhood education and a doctoral degree in school leadership and administration.

TOP STORY >> Steep fall for former Cabot CEO

By JOAN McCOY

Leader staff writer

The Cabot man who was fired in March 2009 as CEO of Affiliated Foods four months before the wholesale food distribution company went out of business, pleaded guilty to kiting $11.5 million in checks Thursday. He faces up to 30 years in federal prison and a fine of up to $1 million.

A spokesman for U.S. Attorney Jane Duke said Friday that John Mills, 59, is free on his own recognizance until his sentencing in six to eight weeks.

The actual sentence will be determined by Chief U.S. District Judge J. Leon Holmes and based in part on a report from the court’s probation division. Since there is no parole for federal crimes, the sentence Mills is given is the one he will serve.

In its simplest form, check kiting is an activity carried out by individuals strapped for cash who float hot checks between two checking accounts.

A check written on one bank is deposited in a second bank creating an apparent positive balance which allows the withdrawal of enough money to deposit into the first bank before the first check bounces.

In a press release Thursday, Duke said Mills kited checks on a grand scale.

At the plea hearing before Judge Holmes, Mills admitted that Affiliated Foods began to experience major cash-flow problems in mid to late 2008, Duke said. To alleviate the problem, Mills and Alexander Martinez, the company’s chief financial officer, devised a scheme in which two subsidiaries, Convenience Store Supply Inc. and Supermarket Investors Inc., would issue checks to cover shortfalls at Affiliated Foods.

Every day, U.S. Bank withdrew the funds deposited into Affiliated Food’s account and used those funds to reduce the outstanding balance on the company’s line of credit, Duke said. By using the kited checks, written almost daily, to artificially reduce its outstanding line-of-credit balance, Affiliated Foods had sufficient funds available on its line of credit to cover the checks clearing each day.

The scheme was ongoing from Sept. 29, 2008 until Feb. 27, 2009 when it was discovered by U.S. Bank during a routine audit.

The company’s line of credit was frozen, further escalating the cash-flow problem. The company filed bankruptcy in May 2009 and went out of business two months later.

Affiliated Foods was headquartered in Little Rock and provided products to hundreds of independent grocery stores in Arkansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Oklahoma, Tennessee and Texas.

“In the wake of our country’s economic downturn, we have seen all manner of corporate fraud come to light. Such corporate fraud hampers vital recovery efforts by displacing workers, destroying investor trust, and curtailing consumer confidence,” Duke said in the Thursday press release.

“The Department of Justice will aggressively investigate and prosecute Ponzi schemes, bank fraud, check kiting, and other similar types of financial ‘shell games’ specifically designed to lull banks, investors, and employees into having a false sense of security,” she said.

The investigation that led to Mills’ guilty plea to bank fraud was conducted by the Federal Bureau of Investigation. It is being prosecuted by Assistant U.S. Attorney Karen Whatley.

EDITORIAL >> How you can help, senator

Sen. Blanche Lincoln spent a tiny bit of her ample campaign war chest Thursday on a country breakfast for some 40 Arkansas legislators in the state-owned apartment building across the street from the state Capitol, where she made an obviously earnest and most plaintive pitch to lawmakers to help her.

If there is any little problem in your districts that her office and the federal government might help resolve please call her, Sen. Lincoln told the lawmakers. Constituency work has become an important function of congressional offices, and diligent attention to constituency problems is rewarded at election time.

U. S. Rep. John Paul Hammerschmidt, Mr. Republican in Arkansas, was the best there ever was. He could dislodge a disability check more quickly than any member of Congress. There are stories that Lincoln’s staff is not the best at such mundane stuff.

 

But we have an idea about how Lincoln could serve her constituents much better than that. She could announce that she was going to use her pivotal position in the Senate to insist that Congress address the single problem that polls show most distresses the people of Arkansas: health care.

 

Then she should go back to Washington and do it. 

 

In a poll conducted last month for Talk Business Quarterly, 39 percent of Arkansans listed paying for health care as their greatest financial concern. Nothing else was close. Asked about all concerns, financial or otherwise, health care was second to worries about the general economy.

 

Why wouldn’t they be worried? Health-insurance premiums are rising far faster than inflation and tens of thousands lose their coverage every year. The increases are certain to become steeper and steeper.

 

Californians are learning this month about the insurance death spiral, and we will hear about it, too. People who are not covered by employer-sponsored plans and buy individual policies learned that their premiums are going up in some cases by 39 percent even while insurance companies are enjoying record profits.

 

More and more healthy people are dropping their coverage because of the expense, which means that the insurers are left with sicker people who need more expensive care. So the company raises premiums to cover the medical losses, which means that even more people will drop their coverage. The same spiral affects employer insurance, but it is slower.

 

It means more and more people fall back on government insurance, Medicaid and veterans medical services. Gov. Beebe is now wrestling with finding ways to cut $400 million a year from the state Medicaid budget because it is growing at an unsustainable rate of nearly 8 percent. Every state faces the same dilemma.

Some may remember that was the reason that President Obama made health-insurance reform the first priority with the support of a vast majority of Americans, and it was the reason that Congress spent the better part of a year putting together plans to address the manifold problems of the health system.

 

It was an ugly and confusing process, but both houses eventually produced very similar plans that did indeed address the big problems. Nearly everyone would have liked something a little different — more government involvement or less typically — but it was a consensus, which is how democratic institutions always address problems.

 

Both plans would have protected the coverage of people with private insurance, expanded it to tens of millions of Americans who are without it, install mechanisms to stem the rising costs and reduce the national budget deficits. 

 

Sen. Lincoln eventually voted for the plan that her committee drafted, but after seeing poll numbers showing that insurance and pharmaceutical company advertising had succeeded in frightening Arkansans about what the bills did, she became apologetic.

 

Then in full-panic mode she announced that she would join a Republican effort to block the legislation that she had supported from becoming law through the reconciliation process, by which a majority of senators rule.

We think it would be politically advisable for Lincoln, too, not just the right thing to do.  People would like to see their senator stand firm and educate them on what her bill does and why it would help all of them.

 

Tell seniors that the Republicans and insurance companies are lying and that the bills wouldn’t reduce their Medicare. Sen. Dale Bumpers, whose seat she took, did that for 24 years. Oh, how we miss him.

EDITORIAL >> $4.5B ripoff must stop

Don’t hold your breath, not until 2013 anyway, but a little relief on your light bill may be finally on the way. The state Public Service Commission ordered a study last week to see whether the state’s largest electric utility, Entergy Arkansas, should stop subsidizing people and industries in Mississippi, Louisiana and Texas with our paychecks.

You probably ask, why do we need a study? Isn’t the answer transparently yes? But we all thought the answer was yes 31 years ago when Arkansans first learned of the “system agreement” under which the six subsidiaries of Entergy Corp. — it was called Middle South Utilities back then — would start sharing the costs of power generation when a big new nuclear plant in Mississippi was finished.

Since 1985, when the Grand Gulf I generating plant was finished at Port Gibson, Miss., customers of the Arkansas utility have sent $4.5 billion to three states to the south so that customers there would not have to pay so much to light, heat and cool their homes and businesses. The monthly subsidy was part of your light bill. It helped Mississippi amortize the mammoth cost of building the nuclear plant and customers in all three states avoid the high cost of generating their electricity with expensive oil and gas.

As we have pointed out, Jacksonville’s own Wally Nixon, who was then working for the new young Governor Bill Clinton, uncovered the state’s obligation under the agreement, which was negotiated by the utilities. Clinton protested and there was protracted litigation, but in the end Arkansas lost. The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission and a federal appeals court said Arkansas had to oblige the agreement and pay up.

Arkansas had to pay under the agreement because in the 1960s and ’70s it had built two nuclear units at Russellville and two coal-powered plants near Pine Bluff and Batesville, all of which produced electricity at lower costs than the oil and gas plants in Louisiana. Arkansans had to pay for the plants’ construction, but along with much greater pollution from the carbon exhausts of coal, they eventually got cheaper power. Starting in 1985, they (we) would also have to subsidize the southern neighbors. The neighbors got cleaner air from generating from natural gas and nuclear and flat rates, too. Louisiana in particular has liked the arrangement a lot. Thanks Arkansas, Louisianans say, keep the money coming.

Last fall, the federal agency said Arkansas could be let out of the agreement in 2013 if it chose. The state Public Service Commission said last week that it wanted to explore that option. It will hold hearings this year.

Entergy, of course, wants the six subsidiaries to continue to share costs in some way. The company says it is working on a new agreement to start in 2013 but promises that it would be much different and presumably fairer than the old one. We recall Middle South’s insistence 30 years ago that the agreement was fair and mutually beneficial to people in the four states. How did that turn out?

It sounds like the Arkansas commissioners are going to examine the propositions with a hard eye, as they should. They only have to imagine what Arkansas and the 687,000 customers of Entergy could have done with $4.5 billion — $5 billion before this year is out.

TOP STORY >> Justice Jim fought tough final battle

By GARRICK FELDMAN
Leader executive editor

Arkansas bloggers were the first with the news of Justice Jim Johnson’s suicide over the weekend. The local TV news on Sunday ignored his passing, probably because no one in the newsroom knew who he was.

Johnson, who fought against integration at Central High School in Little Rock and elsewhere around the state, died from a self-inflicted gunshot wound early Saturday morning in his rural Conway home at the age of 85. He’d been in poor health and had been deteriorating since his wife’s death several years ago.

I knew him well enough to get his old ties in the mail around Christmas, but I didn’t receive one last December, and I realized he was not well.

He really was a man of the 1950s, although he kept making mischief for most of his life. He was smart, shrewd, articulate and all that, but a bit over the top: His blatant bigotry was a little too embarrassing even to those who shared many of his beliefs.

In his heyday, there was a menacing air around Justice Jim, who would scream and holler and hint at potential violence if he didn’t get his way. But he really wasn’t much of a brawler, and in his old age, everyone thought he was courtly, someone who was born 100 years too late, and he knew it.

He was mostly forgotten. Cancer had killed his beloved wife Virginia, and then he, too had cancer. Too despondent to go on, he killed himself with his .45-caliber rifle.

His constitutional amendment opposing integration, which the voters approved and then repealed 30 years later, was a legal sham and was never enforced.

Leading the massive resistance against the U.S. Supreme Court decision that outlawed segregation, Justice Jim fought the ruling with all his might and high-falutin’ legalisms such as “interposition” and “nullification,” which meant states could ignore court decisions they didn’t like.

A half-century later, the secessionists down in Texas and elsewhere are using the same words, which must have pleased Justice Jim.

An old-style segregationist who stuck to his principles, Johnson really believed all that stuff about keeping black children out of good schools and why it was wrong to shake hands with a black person. Orval Faubus, who died in 1994, was an opportunist who would have accepted integration if his political career hadn’t been on the line.

The obituaries talked about Johnson’s unabashed bigotry. He was a firebrand who modeled himself after Huey Long of Louisiana, just across the border from Johnson’s home town of Crossett in Ashley County. But Justice Jim, like Faubus, was a spent force by the time the 1960s rolled around.

Johnson hadn’t won an election since 1958, when he was elected to the state Supreme Court, a job he hated because it made him stay out of politics. He ran again for governor in 1966, losing to Winthrop Rockefeller, and the result was not much better than a decade earlier, when Faubus defeated him soundly.

Faubus, who positioned himself as a moderate in 1956, when he was running for a second term, carried 67 of the state’s 75 counties and beat Johnson better than 2-1.

The Central High School integration crisis might have been avoided if Johnson hadn’t sent his followers to the school and threatened violence. Faubus was so intimidated (and fearful he might lose the election next year), he sent in the National Guard to keep the Little Rock Nine out of Central.

Johnson rehearsed for the 1957 crisis two years earlier, when he thought he could stop integration in Hoxie near Jonesboro.

He stirred up the mob, as he often did, but in the end Hoxie was integrated.

Schools in Fayetteville, Van Buren and Charleston were integrated without incident — all of them in the northern half of Arkansas, where Johnson’s brand of politics didn’t travel well.

Justice Jim ran and lost for U.S. senator, attorney general and Supreme Court chief justice. He made a mark as state campaign chairman in 1968 for George Wallace, the third-party presidential candidate who carried Arkansas. That was the year Johnson lost to Sen. J. William Fulbright in the Democratic primary and Johnson’s wife lost to Rockefeller.

It’s unlikely Arkansas will ever see a ballot lineup like that again — not to mention the Gene Williams’ country band that entertained Johnson’s supporters on the campaign trail. You had to be there.

Johnson and Faubus were important political figures for maybe a dozen years, but neither would fade away: Johnson used his newspaper, Arkansas Faith, to spread his segregationist views and kept writing letters to editors and cultivating the media, a word that didn’t exist when he was still a force to be reckoned with.

Justice Jim had one more fight in him. He did not want Bill Clinton elected president and was the source for some of the most salacious allegations against him. This was 1950s no-holds-barred politics, the only kind he knew. That style of politics has made a comeback, thanks partly to Justice Jim.

During the Clinton years, Sheffield Nelson worked on the other side of the street, recruiting Jim McDougal to embarrass Clinton over Whitewater. Nelson was all business, sort of, while Johnson was all dirt.

The election of Barack Obama was another blow for Justice Jim. It was worse than integration, miscegenation and Clinton’s election. Few blacks could vote or go to white schools when Johnson started out in politics, and now it all seemed hopeless. All his life he had predicted that integration would mean the end of white domination, and he’d lived long enough to see it happen.

By then he had a terminal illness, and it was all too much to bear. He had no more fight left in him and ended it all with a gunshot to his chest.

TOP STORY >> Mayor will miss running city

By JOAN MCCOY
Leader staff writer

Cabot Mayor Eddie Joe Williams, who is not running for re-election, gave his last state of the city address during the Tuesday night council meeting saying the past three years have been the best years of his life.

Although Williams is running for state Senate, he said he will continue to work for the city as long as he is in office.

“It is my job to maintain the public’s trust and confidence that we are doing the best for Cabot with the means we have available to us. I believe we have accomplished this task, and my commitment to you is that we will continue down that road the rest of my term as mayor,” he said. “I took forward to an exciting final year in office and pledge to you that I will work my hardest for you until the day I leave office.”

From the tornadoes in 2008 to heavy rains in 2009, the weather has been one of the biggest challenges of his administration, Williams said.

“All of this water brought flooding to areas that never flooded in the past and extra problems to areas that typically flood,” Williams said.

But since the $30 million solution outlined in an engineering study was not feasible, Williams said, “We had to look at our drainage situation from a different perspective, and I believe we have made a significant amount of progress with a much smaller price tag.

“We applied for four small drainage grants from the Arkansas Department of Emergency Management. We have received approval letters for three of these projects and have two of them completely finished.

“They have already made a marked difference in the drainage in these areas, and we look forward to continuing to work on these projects as much as possible to help as many flood areas as we can with the available funds.

“We also applied for a large project through FEMA to help the Cabot Highlands, and we are currently awaiting approval of our application. This project is estimated to cost around $800,000 and is an 80/20 split with the city.

“There are still several flooding issues in Cabot, but we have made great strides and will continue to work hard to help as many of these areas as possible,” the mayor said.

Williams talked about improvements in technology that have made city hall accessible to residents without leaving their homes and about setting up a system for paying wages and salaries that includes a serious evaluation program for raises.

He talked about the good working relationships he has helped develop with county, state and national leaders and the importance of setting aside money for projects that will need funding after he is no longer mayor.

“Some of the projects we are planning for are the north interchange, Cabot Highlands flooding project, Veterans Park Community Center expansion, and equipping a new fire station. We must plan for these expenses now rather than wait until the day we need the money,” he said.

“The north interchange will require approximately $2 million to $4 million from the city of Cabot, so we must prepare now to have that money available when we are given the go ahead to start this project.

“We have worked diligently with our congressional representatives to get funding for this project, and we will continue to work on this project to my last day in office, and hopefully until it is finished,” the mayor said.

In other business, the city council passed a resolution reappointing Roger Tonnessen to the parks commission and read an ordinance that, if passed, will allow the city to place liens on property to collect unpaid bills for mowing yards.