State unity increases, governor says

FAYETTEVILLE — Regional tensions have greatly eased as more sectors of Arkansas thrive and their interdependence grows, Gov. Asa Hutchinson said Tuesday at the Fayetteville Chamber of Commerce annual banquet.

“I’d go to Crossett and people would tell me, ‘You’re from Northwest Arkansas. You don’t care about us,’” Hutchinson said of his first, unsuccessful campaign for governor in 2006. Now he goes to the same city and others in southern Arkansas and finds people who travel regularly to this region to visit friends and family here.

Those contacts and trips home by transplants have increased the unity of the state, Hutchinson told the crowd of about 260. Better economic conditions than in the past, when much of the state outside Northwest Arkansas struggled, have also relaxed tensions, he said.

Dan Ferritor, an honoree, agreed and pointed to an incident at Tuesday’s meeting to illustrate. Ferritor, a former University of Arkansas chancellor, along with minister and community leader Lowell Grisham and retiring state Sen. Uvalde Lindsey received achievement awards Tuesday.

Ferritor noted the governor’s comment in his speech that most school districts in Northwest Arkansas can afford a $4,000-a-year increase in starting salary for teachers. Hutchinson proposes such an increase and hopes lawmakers will enact it in the next legislative session, which begins in January. The governor said other school districts, including many in east

Arkansas’ Delta region, will need help paying the raises. Therefore, those districts will need an additional $60 million in state taxpayer money.

Hutchinson’s comment about spreading the wealth for raises drew the most applause of any portion of the governor’s speech, Ferritor said.

It’s a sign of something he has seen elsewhere in recent years, he said — a greater sense of unity with the rest of the state from people in this region, which had previously been more isolated.

Ferritor talked of the importance of connections to the rest of the state and the rest of the world through developments such as Interstate 49 and the Northwest

Arkansas Regional Airport, both of which were completed within the last 20 years. Ferritor credited Lindsey, who was then director of the Northwest Arkansas Council during those projects, for doing much of the work that accomplished both.

The governor has a good chance of passing his legislative program, including the teacher raise, a highway program on the 2020 ballot and a reorganization of state government, Lindsey said after Tuesday’s event.

“He has momentum after the election, and his support is solid,” Lindsey said.

Hutchinson was elected to a second term earlier this month with 65 percent of the vote. The governor won in 68 of the state’s 75 counties, election results show.