With President Donald Trump dominating news coverage in an era when American politics have become nationalized (the idea that "all politics is local" seems so quaint these days), few Arkansans are focused on the biggest story in the state as 2026 begins.

State government, if it stays on the current path, is headed off the fiscal cliff.

State and local governments nationwide grew fat and fiscally lazy during and just after the pandemic as billions of dollars came from the federal government. The spigot has been turned off in Washington, and Republican majorities in Congress have instituted budget cuts (with the support of the six members of Arkansas' delegation) that have state governments scrambling to make up for loss of services.

In Arkansas, the problem is exacerbated by several factors.

There's the lack of leadership in the governor's office. Gov. Sarah Sanders is a political operative by training. Her background is working on political campaigns, which is far different from governing. She has no experience in the government budget process, and seemingly no interest.

Sanders' first three years in office were spent trying to further ingratiate herself with Trump, her former boss, while landing interviews with far-right media outlets in an attempt to improve her national political standing. Actually governing Arkansas appeared to be an afterthought.

The governor filled her office with young aides who shared her political campaign background rather than people with experience in state government. Key aides hailed from Washington instead of Arkansas, having been trained in the Trump way of doing things.

When Sanders' father, Gov. Mike Huckabee, took office in July 1996, he named three northwest Arkansas residents with vast legislative experience--Joe Yates, Dick Barclay and Jim von Gremp--to his senior management team. Huckabee was a Republican dealing with what at the time was an overwhelmingly Democratic state Legislature. Due to relationships Yates, Barclay and von Gremp had at the state Capitol, Huckabee was able to achieve most of his public policy goals.

Arkansas suffers from a lack of legislative leadership. The huge Republican majorities in the Legislature have tended to be rubber stamps for Sanders, unwilling to ask tough questions of the executive branch and assert legislative influence as an equally important branch of state government.

One longtime state Capitol observer told me that state Sen. Bart Hester, the Senate president pro tempore, is such a shill for Sanders that "if a piece of paper were to blow in the window and land on his desk, Bart would sign it."

Long gone are the days when legislators such as the late state Rep. John Miller of Melbourne would make it their business to understand every facet of the complex state budget, then hold governors to account. Many legislators these days prefer to fight culture wars, then send messages on social media to fire up what they perceive to be........

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