The non-profit Focus On Greenwood held its monthly meeting today, Wednesday 20, 2022. The guest speaker was current State Representative Dr. Lee Johnson, who is running for re-election in the upcoming vote.
To open the meeting, Johnson begins to talk about why he is running for re-election, stating “There is still so much opportunity for a single person to make a difference at the state level, and absolutely room for an individual to take ideas from our community to the state legislatures”. While discussing the issues that arise during campaigns, Johnson remarked “You have to balance defending positions based on what your opponent has said vs. talking to people about what you really want to do…My opponent said I voted to raise taxes, but I would say I didn’t vote to raise taxes, I voted to support infrastructure. One of those bills was called the 911 Bill voted on in 2019. That bill was crafted by multiple conservative Republican legislators, and the reason it was crafted was to prop up a failing 911 system. Our 911 system has historically been funded by a landline tax. So what happened is that as less and less people started using landlines, overtime we were losing funding to our fire, police, and pre-hospital call centers, so the idea was that we put a small tax on cell phones that would supplant the lost revenue from landlines and upgrade our 911 system”. Johnson continued, “ Another thing I’ve been accused of voting for is an internet tax, well there is no tax on the internet, that’s a misconception and misrepresentation of my stance. Up until 2018 Internet sales were relatively new and there was a loophole in the law that allowed for businesses like Walmart and Amazon to not have to collect or remit sales tax to the government. Small businesses have to, but they didn’t. So it created an unfair advantage that hurt small businesses, and we closed that loophole, that was it.” When discussing the highway infrastructure bill, he described it as something that was meant to allow the taxation of Arkansas Casinos that would directly fund our highways, within that bill was a 3% tax on gas that he admits he did not like being attached to that bill, however without it we would not be able to have gotten all of the upcoming traffic relief projects that Greenwood specifically has scheduled. On the issue of transgender treatment for minors, Johnson says “This is sort of the elephant in the room for me because my opponent is saying some things about me personally that I’ll say are just not true. There were several bills and legislation have been about transgender treatments, and I agree with what the bill was trying to do, meaning I think it’s important for us to protect our own children from inappropriate medical care. I just don’t agree with how this bill was trying to accomplish that…” Johnson further explains how some of those bills did not allow for physicians to have the ability to taper off their patients from hormones if passed, and that as a doctor he knows the medical complications that can arise from abruptly ending treatments, therefore could not vote for something that could be medically dangerous.
As a focus for the future, Johnson describes his involvement with the Mental Health Caucus which aims at increasing the public’s availability to receive care and working with Adult Education centers to bring up the number of workforce training programs. In addition, he aimed to expand the Scope of Practice bill which would allow pharmacists to dispense certain medications for things like Strep and Flu, and allow Doctors to dispense medications that treat chronic issues as well, thereby breaking down barriers to care.
**In every effort to present unbiased and fair news, Resident News will reach out to candidate for State Representative District 47, Wade Dunn, for a response.**
