Selig To Stay At DHS, Hutchinson Says

John Selig, director of the state Department of Human Services, will remain in that position on at least a short-term basis, while Dr. Joe Thompson, Arkansas’ surgeon general, has been asked to step down, Gov.-elect Asa Hutchinson confirmed Tuesday in a press conference.

“I have asked him to stay on, and as to what’s long-term in place remains to be seen, but I’ve certainly asked him to stay on for the time,” Hutchinson said of Selig.

Asked if Selig had agreed to stay, Hutchinson said that he had.

“I’ll let him speak to that, but yes, I’m counting on him being there as we enter the legislative session.”

Earlier in the day, Thompson had announced in a press release that he would not be retained as surgeon general by the incoming administration. Asked about that announcement, Hutchinson said a new perspective was needed.

“In terms of the future, obviously the surgeon general has played a key role in helping develop the strategy and the marketing of the private option to the Legislature, and I think we need to have a fresh look at all of this,” he said.

Hutchinson said “all of this” included all the changes that are happening in the health care sector. He said, as he has before, that he would need until mid-January to determine his stance on the private option, which uses federal Medicaid dollars through the Affordable Care Act, otherwise known as Obamacare, to purchase private health insurance for about 200,000 lower-income Arkansans.

Hutchinson said he is still working on his budget proposals using past budgets and those proposed by Gov. Mike Beebe. Beebe has submitted two proposals that do not include the middle class tax cut upon which Hutchinson campaigned. Hutchinson said he had communicated to the Department of Finance and Administration that he will be engaged in preparing his own budget.

“It’s going to be an agency-by-agency, line-by-line item review that I will conduct of the existing budget and what I will present,” he said.

Hutchinson said he intended to present his tax cut proposal to the Legislature the “earlier the better” so legislators will understand his priorities.

“The top priority is the tax cuts to the middle class, reduction of the income tax rate. That is the priority over anything else,” he said.

Hutchinson said he had been assured that recent abuses of physical restraints on young people under the charge of the Department of Youth Services would not continue. He said he had also been assured that the number of monitors overseeing the facilities will be increased. He said he pledged that DYS will have the resources it needs to do that.