Alabama’s budget breakdown
Contrary to recent political fear mongering, Alabama has enough money to pay its bills. All the state needs is leaders willing to make tough choices.
Projected at over $6.2 billion, the money flowing into Alabama’s Education Trust Fund in 2016 will likely be the highest amount in state history.
Meanwhile, we’re facing a $260-plus million crisis in Alabama’s General Fund.
Again, with emphasis: The Education Trust Fund budget as currently passed by the House and Senate should come in almost $270 million under projected revenues.
That extra money isn’t going to the classroom. It will go to a rainy day account.
Combining state budgets and removing earmarks won’t increase revenues, but anyone that tells you it won’t fix our immediate budgetary problem is flat-out lying.
Virtually every state in the country has unified budgets. Somehow, most of them are able to outperform Alabama in education, operate Medicaid and maintain constitutionally acceptable prisons.
Medicaid and corrections are the budgetary nightmares in Alabama’s General Fund. But legislators shouldn’t be able to hide behind a goofy budget structure to avoid making spending choices between Medicaid, corrections and education.
Change is particularly hard here, but thus far, even our current budget situation hasn’t been enough to make something give.
Gambling is dead for the session. Tax hikes will almost certainly meet their demise in the Senate. And thanks to the recent filibuster from state Sen. Gerald Dial, R-Lineville, a one-time diversion of money earmarked for education isn’t going to bail out the General Fund by session’s end.
The Senate must push through some form of the House-passed budget, a reduction of about $200 million from Fiscal Year 2015, if they want to pass a budget at all.
Then we’ll all sit back and wait to see if Gov. Robert Bentley calls a special session to take another look at the budget. Since tax hikes will not become any more politically popular over the next couple of months and Bentley opposes gambling, the special session essentially boils down to two options for adding revenues: a one-time diversion or combining budgets.
The one-time diversion does buy some time for legislators, but combining the budgets and removing earmarks has the best chance for creating long-term improvements.
If not, we’ll simply live with no new taxes, no gambling, no combined budgets and no political consensus on how to lead Alabama in a better direction.
