All right, we go through this every two years. To let it slide would be like not putting up a Christmas tree. It just wouldn’t seem right.
In this General Improvement Fund where legislators throw surplus funds around for their play-pretties, Sen. Mary Anne Salmon of North Little Rock is securing $75,000 for the Arkansas Sports Hall of Fame — an insular club of old Razorbacks that throws an installation dinner and swill-fest once a year.
Yes, the outfit has an actual exhibit area now in the Alltel Arena, there in Salmon’s district. So the argument is that this money is appropriately going to a tourism-enhancing purpose.
So, anyway, here goes:
1. This is big-government conservatism. Why, it’s socialistic. This is a nonprofit organization, not a part of government. It gets tax advantages already as a nonprofit. Why should taxpayers be tapped at all for it? They shouldn’t. If you can’t raise your own money in Arkansas for an old Hog shrine, you are pitiful indeed.
2. The appropriation would be mildly more palatable if it were appropriately limited to a capital project, meaning to securing space, building exhibits or securing exhibit items. But the appropriation through GIF specifically allows the money to be used for “operational expenses.” Good Lord. It is not the taxpayers job to pay the salaries of peons working in the jock-idolatry field.
3. I say it every two years. This is no different from somebody starting a tired old drunken journalists hall of fame and having a dinner and drunk once a year putting himself in this hall of fame and opening an exhibit of some description in the Press Association building, and then hitting up the taxpayers for some easy money to pay himself a salary.
Here’s the thing: We have all these self-professed conservatives coming down to Little Rock every two years. They extol the limited government. And then they use government to meddle around in all manner of nonsense, thinking they’re important because they have access to money we paid in excess of what the government needed over the preceding couple of years.
I think I’m the only real conservative in the state. The rest of you are over-tax and over-spend, socializing the Razorbacks of all things. Let’s call us what he are. The USSR. The Union of Soviet Socialist Razorbackers. I’m getting so worked up here I may do a whole column.
April 7th, 2009 at 8:43 am
I am going to defend the Arkansas Sports Hall of Fame.
John, you know full well that there are LOTS of others in the Sports Hall of Fame than just Razorbacks…Each and every one of the state’s college/universities are included in the hall. And some really great athletes, coaches from the prep and professional heritage of Arkansas are there too. Shame on you. There are bigger drags on the state treasury that this…
April 11th, 2009 at 11:50 am
I respect MR’s support for the AR Sports Hall of Fame, it’s a wonderful warm and fuzzy project. However, in these dire economic times (even in the best of times) I am strongly opposed to the use of taxpayer money to support this effort in any shape or form, not just based on paying salaries. This project should be totally financed through donations from private individuals and sponsorships from corporations. (Also, Maybe I’m out of touch but I question the real impact on tourism the Hall might have. But hey.. if changing the name of a highway to “Rock n Roll” will create a boom in tourism and the ecomony, I suppose anything is possible.)
I have heard so many time recently that one should just over look this project or that one, this list of earmarks, this expenditure, this salary increase, etc. because they only amount to a drop in the bucket when looking at the big picture. It’s depressing to keep hearing this free spending, over used justification.
Yes, there are bigger drags on the state treasury (and federal) than this $75,000 (for an example just take a look at the 2010 General Improvement Projects listing containing over $1B of pork projects, take a look at the federal money coming to Arkansas through earmarks (pork) contained in the President’s recently signed spending (not stimulus) bill. The cutting has got to start somewhere. Ignore the $75,000 just because it’s a drop in the bucket, then what about the next 50 projects at $75,000 or so. Ignore them too? Pretty soon you have spent $60M of hard earned tax money for nothing but a bunch of AR Sports Hall of Fame Projects. These GIP are just about passing out razorback pork and building support back home in preparation for the next election cycle.
I guess I am from the old school where I was taught if I saved my small change it would soon make a dollar; the more change I saved, the more dollars I would have to spend on the essentials needed to survive. That’s why I believe the elimination of wasteful expenditures, regardless of size, will make more money available for taking care of the essentials that government is really responsibile for providing to the citizens.
Yes Mr. Brumment, I wish you would get so worked up to write a whole column, maybe two, on this subject. You will no doubt have plenty of material at your finger tips once it is fully known where the $60M legislative members have available to distribute finally ends up. We all know there’s going to be a lot more AR Sports Hall of Fame type projects getting funding.
Support the Hall of Fame.. only support it with the money one has left over after paying taxes on April 15, then claim it as a tax deduction. That way it’s a win-win deal for everyone.