You’re on and I’m off. Closing out:
* FOUR DEAD IN HOUSE FIRE: A family of four is believed to have perished in a house fire this morning near Timbo. KATV reports.
* ALABAMA MAY BE NO. 1 BUT THEY’RE STILL LIARS: Sam Eifling has a post up on Deadspin about how Alabama inflates its national title count. Including with 1964!
* ARKANSAS AND NEW STATS ON HIGH SCHOOL GRADUATION RATES: Kind of interesting. The feds have recalibrated how they calculate high school graduation rates. Some previously high-ranking states aren’t showing up so well. And a number of states show wide variances in graduation rates among different racial and ethnic groups. Not Arkansas. There isn’t a wide variation among group rates and its overall 80 percent rate is well above the median.
* THERE ARE GIFTS AND THEN THERE IS MONEY: A few folks at UAMS huffed a bit at the following memo. Because of tax law, no parting gifts may be paid from UAMS Foundation money. Where does $312,000 for an on-call promise from a former employee, plus health insurance coverage, computer and iPad fit in that gift language, they wonder, thinking of the departed CFO with the rich, privately paid stipend to answer the phone when UAMS calls. From the memo:
.. due to IRS tax compliance requirements regarding compensation to employees, we will no longer pay for gifts to employees, gifts to employees retiring or leaving the university or a department. These types of payments will have to be paid from UAMS and we can reimburse UAMS. Dinner’s or lunches can be paid for through foundation funds. The only gifts we can pay for directly from the foundation are for non-university employees.
* STORM DEBRIS: The city of Little Rock issued another update on storm cleanup today. It continues to say it hopes for a FEMA disaster declaration that will open an avenue to money to hire private contractors to speed up the process. City crews will continue to work every street. They’ve picked up 1,700 tons of debris so far, but that’s not even 10 percent of the estimated total. Release follows: