This may be difficult, but let’s start with the facts about Alabama’s current budget crisis before we start talking about our feelings on things like taxes, gambling and expanding Medicaid.

In March, the Legislative Fiscal Office briefed the Alabama Legislature on the state’s fiscal situation. The major takeaway was that the state’s General Fund faced a $290 million projected shortfall and the state’s Education Trust Fund anticipated a $287 million surplus.

In short, if we did not have two separate major budgets, we would not have a budget crisis. We would be able to simultaneously fund education in Alabama and our other government obligations.

That means we’re not broke.

If you want to argue about the funding level for education being insufficient, feel free. That’s not the issue we’re talking about. On a purely budgetary level, we should have the money we need.

We have known all along that our state budget structure is causing the vast majority of our budgetary issues. Almost all of the taxes that recover with the economy are earmarked for the ETF. That leaves the General Fund threadbare, while trying to deal with prison infrastructure issues and Medicaid.

It is not a secret, yet most of our political leaders are not even trying to solve the structural problem they all see. To Gov. Robert Bentley’s credit, he has tried to move growth revenues into the General Fund, but he has done little to promote that effort.

The truth is that the state’s politicians are scared to death of being accused of taking money from students and teachers.

It is a silly political game that was perfected by the Alabama Education Association (AEA) under Paul Hubbert’s reign. Any politician even suggesting that we should consolidate our budgets and remove earmarks faced the wrath of the state’s most powerful political machine.

To Hubbert’s credit, he was so effective that many of Alabama’s more senior legislators have a version of Stockholm syndrome, where those past political realities still hold sway.

The funny thing about it is that education spending isn’t really tied to the budget structure. We can spend the same, more or less on education within a consolidated budget. The argument that combining the budgets necessarily means less money for education simply doesn’t hold water. Voters would still be able to hold legislators accountable for their education-spending choices.

But that doesn’t seem to matter to Alabama’s political leaders.

Rather than repairing the actual problem, Alabama’s legislators are likely going to give the people a choice between some combination of tax increases, significant government cuts or legalizing gambling in the state. That will only put a short-term bandage on the General Fund until the next time we run short on funds because of our goofy budget structure.

No, we’re not broke; we’re just either too stupid or too unwilling to solve the real problems we face.

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