Debian sid root path issue

[Joseph Lenox <lenox.joseph@gmail.com>]

After updating Sid last week, I tried to install something with apt-get 
using sudo and got the following error from dpkg:

dpkg: warning: 'ldconfig' not found in PATH or not executable.
dpkg: warning: 'start-stop-daemon' not found in PATH or not executable.
dpkg: error: 2 expected programs not found in PATH or not executable.
Note: root's PATH should usually contain /usr/local/sbin, /usr/sbin and 
/sbin.
E: Sub-process /usr/bin/dpkg returned an error code (2)

Any apt-get subcommand that calls dpkg as a subprocess (install, 
autoremove) fails with that error.. if I use sudo.

Synaptic package manager works fine, as does changing to root with "su -".

Any offhand ideas as to where to look first to figure out what's going on?

--Joseph Lenox