Arkansas Governor Sarah Huckabee Sanders delivered her annual State-of-the-State Address this pasweek. It marks the beginning of the 30-day legislative fiscal session. As Little Rock Public Radio reports, Sanders laid out her budget priorities to lawmakers. The governor did not, however, mention her previous, failed attempts to fund a new state prison. Instead, she focused on celebrating her administration’s crime policies and proposed pay raises for corrections officers. “We insured the most violent criminals serve their full sentence. We’ve opened 1,500 new beds at existing prison facilities and we created a recidivism pilot program to get inmates back in the workforce and kept off the streets once they’ve served their time.” Sanders is also proposing a slim budget this year, as she works to phase out Arkansas’ state income tax.
The governor’s Democratic challenger in her reelection bid, state senator Fred Love, delivered a rebuttal. Love says that Sanders’ efforts to eliminate the state income tax would hurt the very people who need help the most. “Here’s the question: What did you get for that tax cut? Because those cuts overwhelmingly benefit the wealthiest Arkansans. And every time we cut the top rate for millionaires and billionaires, it gets harder to fund schools, childcare, healthcare, and services for our seniors.”
