Pressing Arkansas Issue Keeps Clinton Off the Campaign Trail

While other Democratic presidential hopefuls fan out across the nation this week, Arkansas Gov. Bill Clinton sits in his office in the imposing state Capitol here.

A week before key primaries in Colorado, Maryland and Georgia, and two weeks before the Super Tuesday presidential sweepstakes, Clinton is stuck in Arkansas while the state’s General Assembly, meeting in special session, debates a plan to bail out the troubled Arkansas child welfare system. The session is to last at least three days.

The debate could not only cost Clinton some key days on the campaign trail, but also could focus national attention on the problems that Arkansas--and Clinton--have faced in dealing with one of Clinton’s campaign themes, social services for the poor and powerless.

At a Capitol press conference Monday, Clinton acknowledged that two or three days off the road could cost him politically. Had he not been forced to return to Arkansas, he said earlier, he would have spent Monday campaigning in South Dakota, which holds its primary today. In that race, a local newspaper poll placed Clinton in a tight race for second, along with Tom Harkin and Paul E. Tsongas. Bob Kerrey holds a 10-point lead, the poll found, but more than a quarter of the voters were undecided.

“It’s just one of those things,” Clinton said Monday. “There’s nothing I can do about it. What I’m doing here is important.”

The focus of the special session is a reorganization plan for the Arkansas Division of Children and Family Services. The plan, which would cost an estimated $64 million over the next four years, would settle a lawsuit filed last July accusing Arkansas authorities of virtually abandoning the state’s abused or neglected children.

The lawsuit, filed last year by Central Arkansas Legal Services and the National Center for Youth Law, alleges that reports of child abuse or neglect often have not been investigated, that many foster homes do not meet minimum licensing requirements and that a third of the department’s caseworkers fail to meet minimum state hiring standards.

Clinton is asking the 135 legislators, who meet together for only 60 days every two years, to set aside $15.4 million for the current and the next fiscal year to begin paying for the massive reorganization.