Boozman visits Northeast Arkansas for Military Spouse Appreciation Day

JONESBORO — U.S. Sen. John Boozman observed Military Spouse Appreciation Day on Friday by sharing lunch with Morgan Paige Taylor of Paragould and Bethany Garland of Jonesboro at Veterans Village.

Veterans Village is a transitional housing facility nearing completion in Jonesboro.

“We’re working really hard in Washington on the Veterans Affairs Committee and the Veterans Appropriations Committee – all those kinds of committees – but there’s no substitute for actually visiting with people and asking them what’s going on … and listen to their concerns,” Boozman, the Republican senior senator from Rogers said. “The nation very much appreciates the veterans and their military.”

The wife of First Sgt. Matt Garland of the 1036th Engineer Company of the Arkansas National Guard, Bethany was the leader of the Family Readiness Group for four years. She organized unit level readiness groups. She also planned and executed fundraisers that paid for family events and recreational activities for soldiers. She provided information on resources such as counseling services and job fairs to soldiers and their families. She acted as the unit FRG spokesperson for communicating family members’ concerns and ideas to the unit commander. She still helps the unit in any capacity needed.

Morgan Taylor, wife of Staff Sgt. Anthony Taylor, supported her husband’s move from Mississippi to Arkansas, leaving friends and family and changing jobs. She now serves as assistant principal at Oak Grove Middle School.

Anita Deason, a retired colonel in the Arkansas National Guard is Boozman’s veterans affairs liaison. She said any veteran who has had issues with receiving the benefits they’re entitled to should contact the senator’s office for help. Boozman agreed.

“I can’t make a decision, but I can ask questions on your behalf,” Boozman said.

Also Friday, Boozman and Democratic Sen. Tim Kaine of Virginia announced the reintroduction of the Jobs and Childcare for Military Families Act to address military spouse unemployment and access to affordable childcare. The bill would amend the tax code to incentivize businesses to hire military spouses and create new flexible spending accounts (FSAs) to make it easier for military families to afford childcare. “Military spouses and families play such an important role supporting our service members and they often face unique challenges in the course of that service,” Boozman said. “We should

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always be looking for ways to reduce their burdens and help meet their distinct needs, particularly in light of the impact frequent relocations and lengthy deployments have on their finances and responsibilities. I’m proud to be part of this bipartisan effort to make it easier for military spouses to find employment opportunities and help these heroic families afford childcare services.”

Boozman also visited Walnut Ridge and Harrisburg among other locations to listen to requests for continued help with infrastructure funding. “There are a lot of great projects going on,” Boozman said. “This part of the state is so blessed with growth, and as you grow, you need additional infrastructure, so there’s really a lot of positive things.”

Though he opposes the size of Democratic President Joe Biden’s infrastructure plan, Boozman predicts Congress will eventually reach an agreement.

“This has traditionally been a very bipartisan effort,” Boozman said of transportation bills.

“We have to wait and see as we negotiate back and forth, but I do think at the end of the day, we’ll come up with something that is going to be significant for our nation’s infrastructure.

It creates jobs as you build roads and things like that.

But the more important thing is the economic opportunity that comes once you get those things done.”

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LITTLE ROCK Analysts at quotewizardnews.com found that tornadic activity in Arkansas has decreased by 20.1% since 2010.

“That means Arkansas has had 83 fewer tornadoes from 2010-2019 than from 2000-2009.” They also found that tornado patterns are shifting, moving out of what is called Tornado Alley and into the south.

White County Emergency Management Coordinator Tamara Jenkins told The Daily Citizen that the last time White County had a tornado fatality was in April of 2014 in El Paso.

“It was also the same tornado that hit Mayflower and it came up through El Paso, Floyd, Romance, Centerhill and went up a little further north.” Jenkins said she was on the scene for that.

Asked if she had talked to others in the emergency management field about reasons for the number of tornadoes being down in Arkansas, she said “we never look a gift horse in the mouth, you never look a gift horse in the mouth and the less we have, the better off we are. I know that disaster is our line of work but if we don’t have disasters, we feel that we are very blessed.”

National Weather Service Meteorologist Justin Condry from the North Little Rock office said “you are right in saying tornadoes are down, as of May 6, 2020 there was 23 tornados reported across Arkansas, so far this year there has only been 11. Part of that is do to the lack of instability across the state.

A lot of time in our forecasting incidents, we notice that certain aspects of the atmosphere that lead us to seeing that severe weather is likely, tend to be lacking. Before two weeks ago when we started to get really wet with a lot of storms coming in, from about February until then we had been pretty dry across the state and that dry part means that storms are not moving across the state like they usually do.”

Condry said it is “weird”

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for them at the National Weather Service because usually in a La Nina year [winter temperatures are warmer than normal in the south and cooler than normal in the north] you would expect to have more severe weather across our area but for whatever reason that hasn’t happened.”

Condry said you could probably ask 10 meteorologists about why there hasn’t been more tornadoes and you would probably get 10 different answers.

“My personal thoughts are just the lack of instability, the lack of storms moving across the state. Of course, if you don’t have storms, you can’t have tornados.”

Tornado season, according to Condry, can range from about March until May, pretty much for Arkansas.

“Different areas across the United States are going to have their different times.

They way I kind of think about it is you have that winter that is not ready to give up and you have the summer that is trying to take over and in between that time period we have spring and that spring time is when we are most likely to see tornados with the more unstable atmosphere.

By unstable, I mean the systems coming in, the large temperature differences. You’ve got really cold air still in the upper plains and that really warm moist air here near the Gulf of Mexico.”

Looking back on Arkansas tornados, Condry said a lot of what he hears in the office centers on the “super outbreaks in 2011. Those were kind of multiple events over a few days.

Another one would be in 2014, the Mayflower-Vilonia tornado, that was a pretty big one that stands out among a lot of people at the office here.”

According to the National Weather Service's tweet on April 27 this year, they recalled seven years ago the tornado that killed 16 people and injured 200 others. 'After lifting north of El Paso, this supercell spawned 3 more, weaker tornadoes to the northeast.'

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LITTLE ROCK — Arkansas is ending its participation in the federal unemployment program that gives workers an additional $300 a week, Gov.

Asa Hutchinson said Friday, citing a shortage of workers.

The Republican governor directed the Division of Workforce Services to end the state's participation in the program after June 26.

The federally funded additional benefits had been scheduled to run through early September.

Hutchinson said businesses in retail, restaurant and other sectors are trying to return to employment levels before the coronavirus pandemic, but 'employees are as scarce today as jobs were a year ago.'

'The $300 federal supplement helped thousands of Arkansans make it through this tough time, so it served a good purpose,' he said in a statement released by his office. 'Now we need Arkansans back on the job so that we can get our economy back to full speed.'

Hutchinson's move follows Montana and South Carolina, which earlier this week announced they were leaving the supplemental program.

Arkansas' unemployment rate was 4.4% in March, the most recent figure available, significantly lower than the national rate at 6%.

Hutchinson announced the decision the same day the U.S. Labor Department said, nationally, employers added just 266,000 jobs in April, sharply lower than in March and far fewer than economists had expected.

In a memo to the head of the state Division of Workforce Services, Hutchinson said continuing the state's participation in the program would hamper employers' ability to fill more than 40,000 job vacancies in the state.

But Arkansas AFL-CIO President Alan Hughes said fear of returning to unsafe conditions during the pandemic is what's keeping workers away, not the additional payments.

Hutchinson has lifted the state's restrictions because of the virus, including a statewide mask mandate and capacity limits for bars and restaurants. Hutchinson last week signed into law legislation that, starting in late July, will prevent any state or local mask requirements.

'They're still concerned about their safety,' Hughes said. 'Why put them in that danger again now?'