Arkansas Republican lawmakers will continue championing Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders’ policy priorities during the 2025 legislative session, while Democrats hope to secure enough support to pass a wide-ranging agenda despite the ongoing GOP supermajority in both chambers, according to legislative leaders.

The Senate will be “largely a photocopy of itself” in January compared to the 2023 session, said Minority Leader Greg Leding, D-Fayetteville. Republicans will hold 29 Senate seats while Democrats will have six for the second consecutive session; Democrats gained one House seat in November and will have 19 to Republicans’ 81.

House Democrats presented their four-pronged policy agenda in November, focusing on maternal health care, mental health care, public education and access to voting and direct democracy. House Minority Leader Andrew Collins, D-Little Rock, has since filed 36 bills and three resolutions addressing aspects of all four priorities. Rep. Denise Ennett, D-Little Rock, is the only other Democrat to have filed legislation.

“Our intention is to fight for all of this legislation, but I also think there is value in making clear what we as a caucus stand for,” Collins said.

Leding said he expects that regardless of topic, any policy proposal “with a hefty price tag will be met with opposition” by GOP lawmakers.

“It seems a lot of the discussion right now is on removing or minimizing things that we don’t like rather than expanding proactive services,” Leding said.

Republicans will focus their energy on school vouchers, the correctional system and efforts to regulate minors’ access to cellphones, said Senate President Pro Tempore Bart Hester, R-Cave Springs.

Hester told Talk Business & Politics that the Legislature should examine the cost and effectiveness of Arkansas’ Medicaid program. The state’s expansion waiver at the federal Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services is up for renewal in 2025.

“No matter what we’ve sent [CMS] in the past, I think we will send something different to this administration, and whatever we send I’m confident will get reasonably quickly approved,” Hester told the Advocate. “That’s one good thing about having a governor that is very close with the president.”

Sanders was President-elect Donald Trump’s press secretary from 2017 to 2019, during his first term. He won reelection last year after losing in 2020.

Hester told the Advocate lawmakers should ensure Medicaid is serving “the most vulnerable” rather than people who “refuse to work or find it inconvenient.” Sanders and the Department of Human Services sought a federal waiver in 2023 requiring work or volunteering for able-bodied adults to receive the full package of Medicaid expansion services.

Education

The LEARNS Act of 2023, Sanders’ signature legislation, altered several aspects of Arkansas’ public education system and passed with solely Republican support.

Democrats criticized many facets of the law, particularly the creation of the Education Freedom Account program, which provides state funding for allowable education expenses, including private school tuition. Some Republicans joined Democrats in voting against LEARNS, arguing that directing taxpayer funds to private schools and homeschooling families would hurt public schools.

“As much as we attempted to make that argument in the discussion about LEARNS, it certainly bears repeating, and we’re going to have to come back to it because it’s too important,” Collins said. “Public schools serve 95% of Arkansas kids, and we cannot undermine them and expect to have good educational outcomes in our state.”

Collins’ House Bill 1020 would repeal the Education Freedom Account program and set aside an annual $3,862, multiplied by the number of students with individualized education plans (IEPs), to fund special education statewide. Supporters of school vouchers have said parents of students with disabilities deserve a chance to choose where their children attend school.

Education Freedom Accounts are set to become available to all Arkansas families in the 2025-26 school year after two years of limited eligibility. The program included help with private school tuition for students with disabilities in its first year.

Arkansas’ fiscal year 2025 budget included a $65 million spending increase for vouchers. Sanders’ proposed fiscal year 2026 budget raises the hike to $90 million, plus an additional $90 million in set-aside funding to meet an anticipated increase in demand.

Since the program is “growing even faster than maybe we expected,” Hester said, it begs the question of why so many families want to choose private schools or homeschooling over “the system they are forced into.”

“We want competition,” Hester said. “We want our public schools to say, ‘Why are children leaving our schools?’”

Collins also introduced a bill that would reinstate the Teacher Fair Dismissal Act, which the LEARNS Act repealed, and one that would create an income tax credit for some early childhood education workers.

The LEARNS Act raised K-12 teachers’ minimum salary from $36,000 to $50,000. Early childhood educators were not included in the policy.

Democratic lawmakers proposed teacher pay raises in legislation separate from the LEARNS Act that did not advance in 2023.

Sanders has named higher education policy as a priority for the 2025 session but has not shared details. Sen. Dan Sullivan, R-Jonesboro, has proposed a bill to eliminate required minority recruitment and retention plans and reports from public school districts and higher education institutions.

Sullivan has criticized diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives, calling it “state-sponsored discrimination,” and sponsored a failed 2023 bill to end affirmative action in Arkansas. The new bill contains much of the same language.

Sullivan was the lead sponsor of Act 372 of 2023, which would create criminal liability for librarians who distribute content that some consider “harmful to minors” and give local elected officials the final say over the availability of challenged materials. Parts of the law were temporarily blocked in federal court in July 2023 and permanently blocked on Dec. 23.

Collins’ House Bill 1028 would repeal Act 372 and require public libraries to have “a written policy prohibiting the practice of banning books or other materials because of partisan or doctrinal disapproval” in order to receive state funding.

Maternal health and reproductive rights

Maternal health has become a bipartisan concern for elected officials due to Arkansas’ consistently high rates of maternal and infant mortality.

Last March, an executive order from Sanders created a strategic committee to make plans to improve the state’s maternal health infrastructure and outcomes. Sanders’ budget proposes $13 million for Medicaid to support recommendations made by the committee in September.

Sanders has said extending Arkansas’ Medicaid coverage for postpartum mothers from 60 days to 12 months after birth would be “redundant,” citing the state’s other health insurance options. The task force’s report did not recommend this policy, and Arkansas remains the only state that has not adopted this federal option.

Rep. Aaron Pilkington, R-Knoxville, proposed the same policy in a 2023 bill that did not advance due to cost concerns. In November, he followed through on his promise to reintroduce the bill for 2025.

Collins introduced the same proposal in a similarly worded bill, as well as other maternal health policies he said “would go further than some of the proposals that have been talked about by the task force.”

The 128-page Restore Roe Act would allow abortion before fetal viability, “with limited exceptions following fetal viability for the health or life of the mother or in case of rape or incest perpetrated on a minor.”

Arkansas bans abortion in all circumstances except for endangerment of the pregnant person’s life. The “trigger ban” went into effect upon the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2022 decision to overturn Roe v. Wade.

Collins is also sponsoring bills to protect the right to fertility treatments in Arkansas and require the State and Public School Life and Health Insurance Program to cover in vitro fertilization (IVF).

More Democrat-led bills would create a tax credit for dependent children and a tax exemption for menstrual products, diapers and breastfeeding items. Collins said these measures that “impact the bottom line of mothers and families” should be part of the maternal health policy discussion.

“I do hope there are enough Republicans that want to see improvement on this issue that we can get some of these over the hump and expand the conversation,” Collins said.

Arkansas Legislature saw wide range of maternal and reproductive health legislation in 2023

Since Arkansas’ abortion ban went into effect, Republicans have doubled down on their support for it and opposition to loosening it. In 2023, House Democrats proposed exceptions for incest, fatal fetal anomalies and to protect the mother’s health that Republicans voted down in committee.

All three exceptions were included in a proposed state constitutional amendment that received more than 102,000 signatures from Arkansans in more than 50 counties last year. The measure did not go before voters in November because it was disqualified on a technicality. 

Only 35 hospitals in Arkansas have labor and delivery units, and four units have closed since the onset of the pandemic in 2020. Some Arkansas counties have no hospitals at all, according to the Arkansas Foundation for Medical Care.

Hester said he hopes the Legislature finds solutions to maternal health care deserts, particularly in South Arkansas. He also said physicians who deliver babies need liability protections. Critics of abortion bans have said such laws increase OB/GYNs’ medical malpractice insurance costs.

Additionally, fewer medical students have sought to practice in states with abortion bans since the reversal of Roe v. Wade, according to a study released in May by the Association of American Medical Colleges Research and Action Institute. This issue directly impacts Arkansas’ maternal health landscape, Collins said.

Mental health

Mental health, particularly among children, is another issue that members of both parties have said needs improvement. Republicans, including Sanders, have tied the issue of children’s anxiety and depression levels to their use of cellphones and social media.

Collins expressed support for Sanders’ proposals to reduce children’s cellphone access last year on X. He said in an interview that he plans to propose the Kids Online Safety Act as state policy in case it doesn’t become federal law. As of December, the bill is stalled in the U.S. House.

Hester agreed there should be limits to kids’ access to social media, saying it reduces their “life satisfaction.” House GOP policy chair Rep. David Ray, R-Maumelle, added that such limits could reduce online bullying.

Ray and Hester both praised a pilot program announced in July that restricts phone use in schools and broadens students’ access to mental health services.

In August, lawmakers allowed the Department of Education to distribute $7 million among school districts to pay for pouches or lockers where students can store their phones during class time.

“People might look at it as a social media conversation, but it’s really, in my mind, about trying to improve learning,” Ray said.

Leding said lawmakers could address the issue of phones as in-class distractions while also addressing the reasons children are facing higher rates of anxiety and depression, such as poverty, climate change and the prevalence of school shootings.

Collins’ House Bill 1033 is a “red flag” law, which several states have, that would prevent the sale of firearms to someone who poses a threat to people’s safety.

House Bill 1030 would require school counselors and school-based law enforcement officers to be trained in youth mental health first aid.

Other policy issues

Collins is sponsoring several bills meant to make voting and direct democracy easier, such as allowing Arkansans to register to vote online, during early voting and on Election Day. One bill would repeal a 2021 law that “in certain circumstances… makes it a criminal offense for a volunteer to bring water or food to someone waiting in line to vote,” among other things. Another bill would allow no-excuse absentee voting.

Meanwhile, GOP lawmakers have filed three health-related bills with ties to projected U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s stated agenda: one to repeal Arkansas’ water fluoridation mandate, one to outlaw certain artificial food dyes and one that would loosen restrictions on the sale of unpasteurized milk.

Republicans also continue to focus on criminal justice after overhauling the state’s parole system in 2023’s Protect Arkansas Act. Sanders supports building a 3,000-bed prison in Franklin County, where community members have expressed frustration about the plan.

“We need to build this new prison, and those of us in the Legislature need to be committed to funding it,” Ray said. “There’s no doubt that building a prison is an expensive undertaking, but what’s more expensive than building a prison is not building one.”

The state purchased 815 acres of Franklin County land for $2.95 million in October. The Legislature has set aside $330 million for the prison project, and there’s another $75 million in reserves.

Arkansas state employee pay plan overhaul boosts salaries for hard-to-fill jobs

Sanders’ FY 2026 budget includes $50 million for corrections. It also includes proposed pay raises for several hard-to-fill jobs with the state, including correctional officers and nurses.

While most of the $102 million commitment for pay raises comes from existing funding sources, mainly departments’ own budgets, the state budget also proposes $3.15 million to help with this endeavor, Sanders said in November.

Leding said he expects Republicans to continue legislative efforts to restrict the activities of transgender Arkansans. Such laws in 2023 focused on the uses of pronouns and bathrooms in public schools and transgender minors’ access to health care.

Leding also said he’s been contacted by Arkansans who share his concerns about future attempts to add exemptions to the Freedom of Information Act. Sanders and other Republicans met bipartisan opposition to such an effort in a 2023 special legislative session.

Collins and Sen. Bryan King, R-Green Forest, are both sponsoring resolutions proposing constitutional amendments that would restrict the Legislature’s ability to change laws pertaining to public records and meetings.

The Legislature can refer a maximum of three proposals to the statewide ballot for a public vote. The only legislatively referred ballot measure in 2024 proposed allowing vocational-technical students to access lottery scholarship funds, which voters overwhelmingly approved.

Collins said he expects at least one proposed amendment to make it to the ballot but also acknowledged that any legislation can be amended and nothing is guaranteed until session is underway.

“I’ve seen people oppose things that I thought were likely to pass, and I’ve seen people support things I thought would have a low chance to pass,” Collins said.

The 2025 legislative session begins on Jan. 13.

When Beverly Culp woke from her afternoon nap Tuesday to the fire alarm going off in her first-floor unit at the Midtown Park Apartments off Markham Street, she had no idea the building she has called home for almost two years was on fire.

“I thought it was a joke or somebody was in need, and instead of being able to call 911 they pulled the fire alarm to bring help to them,” Culp said. “Then I noticed before I opened my window, like 120 people were there and they’re saying, ‘They can’t get out, they can’t get out.’”

After feeling no heat coming from the front door by her kitchen, Culp grabbed her yellow bag with a few belongings, “wadded” up a shirt she was wearing to cover her mouth and “let myself out,” she said.