John Montgomery is the long-time Republican sheriff of Baxter County. He posted the following on his Facebook page:
Rep John Burris of Harrison, has proposed making cuts to the State Crime Lab and the Arkansas Law Enforcement Training Academy. We have worked so hard over the past 6 years to make our Police Officers better trained and safer. We finally had it so results from the State Crime Lab came back to us in weeks instead of months. Rep Burris, you are playing politics with the public’s safety. Shame on you
A Democratic legislator, who has to attempt to work with the Shiites and doesn’t desire open combat just yet, sent me this link and commented further:
The radical nature of the proposed cuts should not be understated. Many of the agencies affected by the House Republicans’ proposed budget have not see increases for three years, and their employees have not had any salary increases during that time. Yet, Rep. Burris is proposing they be cut.
When an agency’s budget is flat, and you take money from it, the result will be firing employees who work there, without regard to the effect on the public served by those agencies. Why? To satisfy an abstract political philosophy about how much state government should be funded. Crazy.
I think I said about the same in the earlier post, but the legislator said it better.