When Elected Officials Do Right (Editorial)

Following the parenting advice that we should praise the behavior we desire, we have compliments for a couple of elected officials.

The first goes to Gov. Asa Hutchinson, who has proposed a scholarship program, ArFuture (see ArFuture Grants To Help Fill High-Demand Jobs), that aims to pay for tuition and fees for any student in a high-demand field of study at a state community or technical college.

The governor understands that succeeding in higher education for students without a family history of college is about more than financial support. ArFuture, Hutchinson says, “gives them the confidence level that they can go to a two-year college program that will be fully paid in terms of tuition and fees, and they can actually get a certificate or an associate degree without going into debt.”

The $8.2 million cost of the program would be paid by eliminating two ineffective grant programs.

In addition to helping Arkansas students and future workers, ArFuture would help Arkansas employers by directing students into the kinds of jobs employers are seeking to fill.

Our other compliment goes to state Rep. Jana Della Rosa, R-Rogers, whom we’ve praised here before for her efforts to require candidates to submit electronic campaign finance reports rather than letting them file paper reports. A previous effort in 2015 failed, but she’s at it again.

Electronic campaign finance reports would make it much easier for the public and the press to search them for, perhaps most importantly, the sources of candidates’ campaign funding.

The Arkansas secretary of state’s office is implementing a new $700,000 online finance reporting system, and without mandatory electronic filing “the public will have a wonderful search engine for an incomplete database,” Della Rosa said.

Hutchinson’s and Della Rosa’s initiatives both seek to promote knowledge, which remains as powerful as it ever has been.