Tag: Alabama Legislature
New Bill Would Allow Cities, Counties to Cut Grocery Taxes
MONTGOMERY — For more than a decade, Alabama lawmakers have debated eliminating the sales tax on groceries, but no proposal has ever passed. Could they now choose to allow cities and counties to reduce grocery sales taxes of their own?
State Rep. Chris England, D-Tuscaloosa, has filed legislation that would give counties or municipalities the ability to reduce or completely remove their sales taxes on groceries. England told Alabama Daily News that he developed the bill because Tuscaloosa City Council members recently decided they wanted to remove the city’s sales tax on groceries, only to learn state law prohibited them from doing so. Read more.
Lawmakers Tackle Alabama’s Persistent Prison Problems
Alabama’s prisons are overcrowded, understaffed, and plagued by violence. A federal judge ruled mental health care for inmates is “horrendously inadequate.” There have been 15 suicides in as many months – including one earlier this month. Two inmates were stabbed and killed recently as well. While overcrowding has eased slightly, state lawmakers know there’s more work to do. WBHM’s Andrew Yeager spoke with state Sen. Cam Ward, a leading voice on prison issues, to get a sense of where lawmakers stand during this legislative session.
Lawmakers Get Ivey’s Budgets; One ‘Heartburn’ Issue Noted
MONTGOMERY — Gov. Kay Ivey introduced her education and General Fund budgets to state lawmakers this week, with popular provisions like a teacher pay raise, increases for cash-strapped agencies and more money to expand the state’s First Class pre-kindergarten program.
State House budget leaders said Thursday they didn’t see major changes coming to Ivey’s proposed $2.1 billion General Fund budget and $7.1 billion education budget this week, with one possible exception.
Ivey’s proposed education budget — the largest in the state’s history — allocates about $35 million for Children’s Health Insurance Program, which historically has been paid for with General Fund dollars. Read more.
Church ‘Stand Your Ground’ Bill Advances
MONTGOMERY — A bill extending Alabama’s “Stand Your Ground” law to churches was approved by the House Judiciary Committee this week, despite concerns from some Republican and Democrat members. Read more.
Fast-Tracked Common Core Repeal Bill Passed by the Senate
Updated MONTGOMERY – A bill to repeal the state’s Common Core education standards cleared the Senate on Thursday, a day after being passed in committee.
Senate President Pro Tem Del Marsh, R-Anniston, in previous years stood in the way of Common Core repeal efforts. But now he says removing the standards and charging the Alabama Board of Education to start over is aimed at improving Alabama’s lagging student performance.
“My position early on was that the (state) Department of Education and the board, elected by the people, should figure this out,” Marsh told Alabama Daily News this week. “That’s policy. We’re sitting here today with math scores in the eighth-grade level at 49th in the country and reading at 46th. I mean, you can’t justify that. So we’re saying after nine years with this program, it’s not working and we need to change direction.”
The bill would require the state board of educatiion to adopt new standards for the 2021-2022 school year. Originally the bill had called for the new standards to be in place for the 2020-2021 school year, and it required the state to revert to the previous standards in place during the 1990s and 2000s for the upcoming academic year. Some educators objected to changing the standards twice in two years and said making the changes would be a burdensome and costly task.
State Superintendent Eric Mackey said the bill would have a lot of unintended consequences.
Border Wall Bill Passes Senate
Updated: MONTGOMERY – A bill to allow Alabamians to donate some of their income tax return to the construction of a wall on the U.S. southern border by checking a box on their tax return documents passed the Alabama Senate this week.
The bill, sponsored by Senate President Pro Tem Del Marsh, R-Anniston, passed the Senate Thursday on a vote of 23-6. Read more.
GOP: Without New Money to Fund It, Medicaid Expansion Unlikely
MONTGOMERY — Alabama Democrats hope their support of Gov. Kay Ivey’s gas tax increase got them further on possible Medicaid expansion, but legislative leaders last week said expansion can’t happen without new money.
“There is no plan to feasibly make it work,” Sen. Greg Albritton, R-Atmore, said Friday. He’s chairman of the Senate General Fund committee.
Ivey met with many Democrats in the past two weeks as she drummed up support for the 10-cents-a-gallon gas tax increase that takes effect this fall. Democrats used those conversations to again push expansion, as they’ve done since 2012. This year, the calls for expansion seem louder, in part driven by the Alabama Hospital Association. Alabama is one of 14 states that hasn’t expanded Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act. Thirteen Alabama hospitals, including seven rural ones, have closed since 2011. Another closure was announced last month. Read more.
Gas Tax Bill Means Millions for Birmingham Area
Alabama’s more than 400 cities and towns currently share about $22 million a year from the statewide gas tax. They would get an additional $26 million a year under a proposed 10-cent-a-gallon increase.
Alabama’s counties now receive a combined $176.5 million; if House Bill 2 becomes law, they would receive an additional $80 million.
“It’s enormous,” said Greg Cochran, deputy director of the Alabama League of Municipalities, about the potential impact of the gas tax. Read more.
Local Gas Tax Payouts
Under House Bill 2, the gas tax increase bill, municipalities would receive an additional $26 million a year, bringing their total to $48.7 million. Counties would receive an additional $80 million, bringing their total to $256.4 million a year.
Jefferson Co.: $6.53 million St. Clair Co.: $1.32 million
Shelby Co.: $2.41 million Walker Co.: $1.13 million
Gas Tax, Lottery, Teacher Pay Raises Are Issues to Watch in 2019 Legislative Session
MONTGOMERY – Gov. Kay Ivey’s first legislative session since winning a term in her own right will feature a laundry list of contentious issues when it begins Tuesday.
On the top of that list is Ivey’s proposal to raise the state’s gas tax to pay for improving roads and bridges, which could be one of the first votes the GOP-led Alabama Legislature will be asked to take.
Ivey’s infrastructure plan will be the predominant issue of the 15-week session. Advocates for the first statewide gas tax increase since 1992 say bad roads are dangerous, cause costly congestion and hinder economic development. But passage of the legislation is not a sure thing in the 140-member Legislature where 41 members are new this year.
Other potential high-profile bills include a proposal for a statewide lottery, a likely teacher pay raise request and continued attempts to address the state’s understaffed and aging prisons.
In a recent interview with Alabama Daily News, Ivey said she knew that confronting difficult issues was going to be necessary when she decided to run.
“When I was trying to wrestle with the idea of even making a race for governor, I had to face the fact that our state has some very difficult challenges and needs,” Ivey said.
“Because they’ve been, with the prisons and the infrastructure, neglected for years and years and decades. I knew if I was successful in running for governor, I was going to have to deal with those. And you don’t look forward to dealing with difficult things, but that was one of the soul-searching questions that I had to answer for myself. Was I willing, if I was going to run for governor, would I be willing to take on the high priority needs that the state has because of neglect by others through the years?
“And it was a hard decision for me to make because we have some heavy lifts.” Read more.
Alabama Lawmakers’ Pay up 4% in 2019
Alabamians’ median household income increased in 2017, which means Alabama lawmakers received a corresponding 4.03 percent pay increase this year.
Their annual salary is now $48,123. This is the third raise for lawmakers since 2014, when their pay was tied to household incomes through a voter-approved constitutional amendment.
“If legislators want a raise, we need to get the median household income up, and if we can get that up, we’ll deserve a raise,” said state Rep. Mike Ball, R-Madison. He sponsored the legislation that led to the constitutional amendment in 2012. The amendment went into effect after the 2014 election with lawmakers earning $42,849.
The latest raise, $1,866, went into effect Jan.1, according to the Alabama Personnel Department memo, which cites 2017 Census data. Read more.
