[Arkinsaw]

I suspect Mike Huckabee shall retire from politics after 2006. He would most likely be teaching at Ouachita Baptist universitywhen he is done with the Governorship.

All this time with a Republican governor and we still have a sales tax on groceries. We still have a state income tax dragging us down. We are talking about taking power from local school boards and moving it to Little Rock. Time's up.

We have a special exemption for Texarkana, AR on the state income tax because businesses always choose to locate across the street in Texarkana, TX because they have no state income tax and we do. My question is, what about those of us who do not live in Texarkana? Do they think business will choose us non-Texarkanans over Texas? If the state income tax is so obviously bad for Texarkana then how would it be good for the rest of us? The problem was that it was so OBVIOUS in Texarkana. But no effort was made to take that ball and chain off us and very little effort on taking the tax off of our FOOD either.

Makes no sense.

[HAL9000]

All this time with a Republican governor and we still have a sales tax on groceries.

The voters decided not to abolish that tax in the last general election. The legislature refuses to act on it. Not Huckabee's fault.

We are talking about taking power from local school boards and moving it to Little Rock.

Except for the Lake View case, I believe the actual plan was to consolidate some of the smallest disticts into larger ones - e.g. merging the Garnett and Tyro districts into a single one. We don't need a separate school district for every intersection. There are too many districts to be funded and operated efficiently, and Huckabee had a sensible plan for dealing with the problem. If some underutilized superintendents have to find work elsewhere, that would be an improvement.