My column this week talks about Gov. Asa Hutchinson’s appointments to top state jobs. His record of appointments falls short of his own solid performance on some big issues.
The most widely praised to date, I note, is the appointment of someone legally ineligible to hold the job Hutchinson will give him. That would be Johnny Key, who doesn’t currently meet the law to be state Education commissioner, though a law change will soon fix that. He IS qualified after a fashion to run the state-run Little Rock School District, because when a district is declared in distress, most laws governing school regulation are set aside in state operation. That is a job that has some defenders of the school district nervous, given Key’s push as a legislator of laws that helped charters, helped homeschoolers and encouraged resegregation of some school districts.