Budget to aid suicide fight loses support

The Arkansas Suicide Prevention Council’s executive committee on Wednesday withdrew its support from proposed legislation less than 24 hours after its co-chairman threw the council’s support behind the bill in testimony before state lawmakers.

Council Co-Chairman Steven Blackwood told the Joint Budget Committee on Tuesday that House Bill 1705 by Rep. Tim Lemons, R-Cabot, was recommended by the Arkansas Suicide Prevention Council, which was created in 2015 to serve as the state’s central body for setting statewide priorities to prevent suicide.

However, the council did not take a position on the proposed legislation until Wednesday, when the executive committee voted to “clarify that the council has no position” on the bill, which would appropriate $2.3 million to the state Department of Human Services’ Behavioral Health Services Division for suicide prevention next fiscal year. Lemons said that money would come from any federal grants the state could secure.

The House approved Lemons’ bill Wednesday, and the Senate is expected to move on the measure today. In a phone interview before his bill hit the House floor, Lemons said he was “sorry” that the council chose not to support it, but he still planned to move forward.

“This will give us an empty bucket we hope to fill with grant money,” Lemons said. “If we want to combat suicide, we need to think outside the box.”

Arkansas in 2015 rose from No. 16 to No. 10 in the national ranking of suicides per capita with 571 deaths, according to the Health Department.

The council’s about-face on HB1705 happened two days after the state Legislature passed a separate bill that requires the Arkansas Department of Health to maintain a suicide prevention By law, the Health Department hotline call center “to the extent is tasked with suicide that funding is available.” prevention programs in Arkansas, That legislation — House Bill so opponents of Lemons’ 1775 by Rep. Bob Johnson, bill have said it doesn’t D- Jacksonville — was formally make sense to give the money endorsed by the council to a separate agency. They also and now awaits Gov. Asa worry that it could affect Hutchinson’s signature. future grant funding.

Joe Martin, the Health “I think it would completely Department’s injury and violence disrupt the suicide prevention prevention section program as it stands today,” chief, said he hopes the call council member Tanya center will open in June. Phillips said at Wednesday’s

Divisions have formed in meeting. the 23-member Suicide Prevention A Department of Human Council, and some Services spokesman said the members fear that HB1705 department didn’t help craft could undermine the board’s HB1705, but said it would mission and lead to a less-coordinated collaborate with other state suicide prevention partners and contractors if effort by appropriating money suicide-prevention funding to the Department of Human Services.

were directed to DHS.

Blackwood, who said he was unable to attend the Suicide Prevention Council meeting Wednesday, said Lemons’ bill would take a more holistic approach to suicide prevention by leveraging existing “statewide prevention frameworks.” He also emphasized that it wouldn’t take any money or grant opportunities away from the Health Department.

While the council never formally voted on the particulars of the legislation, Blackwood said council members last year agreed to pursue the broader goals he believes HB1705 would accomplish.

Wednesday’s tense meeting underscored fissures that have formed in the council since the start of the year.