How Divided Will Arkansas Be?

Now comes the governing, or the lack of it, depending on how the winners of Tuesday’s elections exercise their newly gained authority.

What happens next is also a measure of how they all view that authority. Is it power to impose the winners’ collective will? Or is it responsibility to serve the complete constituency despite diff ering views?

This column is necessarily written before the results of any of the elections were known, but the expectation certainly is Arkansas government will be politically divided. In one sense, it doesn’t really matter much which side has prevailed. Governing will be more dift cult.

Republicans may or may not have gained “control” of one or both of the chambers of the Legislature. Either way, the margin will be slim, which means state lawmakers won’t accomplish much of anything unless there are reasonable people in the middle who will compromise to serve that greater constituency.

Gov. Mike Beebe, the Democrat who has two years remaining in his second and fi nal term, predicted a closely divided Legislature, emphasizing the comparatively slim margin Democrats have heldalready forces lawmakers to work together.

“Whatever it ends up being,” Beebe said recently, “we’ll have to do the same thing we did last time, and that’s get people to sit down, knock their heads together and see where we can reach consensus and agreement.”

Right now, Democrats hold a 53-46 majority in the House of Representatives where one seat is vacant.

Democrats have a 20-15 edge in the Senate. Those individuals will continue to serve until the newly elected members take oft ce in January.

That continuing role for current oft ceholders is a complicating factor in preparation for the upcoming regular session of the Legislature.

Even though there will be changes in both chambers, lawmakers in oft ce now have already begun the work of preparing the state’s budget. Beebe is scheduled to present his proposed budget for the state Nov. 15.

The process reallycan’t wait until the new Legislature is seated, although those new lawmakers could conceivably undo much of what the current lawmakers propose. That’s part of the challenge with this year’s highly partisan elections.

Although there will be conflicts over other policy, the budget might be the most divisive issue for a newly constituted Legislature, especially one that might have a lot of newbies as yet unschooled in the realities of state budget-making. Some come into oft ce sure they can make huge cuts in spending and taxes, but they often learn there’s more to consider than they imagined.

None of it is easy, especially not with the state’s continuing challenges to fund an adequate and equitable education for public school children and to address a projected shortfall in Medicaid funding.

Orientation will begin soon for the newly elected members, but the truth is term limits have essentially stripped away much of the institutional knowledge in the Legislature. The most senior of House members, the ones on their way out at the end of this year, are in only their sixth year of service. Those in charge at the start of the newterm will be four-year “veterans.”

For these next two years, the institutional knowledge in state government resides in the governor’s oft ce.

Beebe served 20 years in the Senate - much of it in the days before term limits - before being elected attorney general and governor. His administration reflects that experience, particularly when it comes to the state’s budget.

Two years ago, he won easy re-election, sweeping all 75 counties and carrying an unmatched mandate into oftce. With his direct involvement in this year’s elections on behalf of Democratic candidates, however, the governor may have created some problems for negotiations with winning Republicans.

He is nonetheless the key figure to negotiate agreement from a divided Legislature.

How Republican lawmakers relate to him and to their Democratic colleagues in the Legislature and how the governor and the Democrats treat them will tell us whether this state is headed toward a partisan divide like the dysfunctional one in Washington, D.C.

Surely, Arkansas can do better.

BRENDA BLAGG IS A FREELANCE COLUMNIST.