June 18, 2015
The regular legislative session ended without a General Fund Budget. As we look back politically on the first half of the year, the dilemma with the General Fund has been the dominant issue. It has been at the forefront since the beginning of the year and it is not yet resolved.
After five months of wrangling over the beleaguered General Fund Budget, a late summer special session is in the works. The state must have a budget by October 1, when the new fiscal year begins.
While legislators are home for a while to let things cool off, hopefully they are listening to their constituents. You can rest assured that one thing they are hearing from Joe Constituent is “if the only thing you have to do constitutionally in a five month regular session is pass the budgets, then why didn’t you do it?” Now it is going to cost the state another $400,000 for a special session.
However, their constituents are probably not convinced that the state needs any new revenue. That is the problem. These GOP legislators are probably reflective of their constituencies. We are a very Republican, conservative, Tea Party, no tax state.
Gov. Robert Bentley is not your typical tax and spend liberal by any means. He is a true blue conservative Republican. However, he has to govern the state and he sees the big picture and the picture is not pretty.
Gov. Bentley, like 21 other state governors, are having problems with their state finances. The good doctor governor unveiled a $540 million tax increase proposal to shore up the General Fund. The heart of his proposal, some $410 million of the $540 million he said the state needed, centered around two consumer taxes. First, $200 million would be derived from increasing state sales tax on automobiles from 2 percent to 4 percent and $210 million would come from increasing the cigarette tax by 82.5 cents per pack. There were a handful of tax proposals that would close glaring loopholes that certain corporations have politically derived over the years.
Bentley’s entire plan was ridiculed at the beginning and ignored throughout the session. His bills were met with indifference and were dead on arrival. They never even got out of committee. He could hardly even find a sponsor. The disregard for Bentley has been the most perplexing scenario of the year.
However, about half way through the session a good many Republican legislators realized that Bentley was not crying wolf and, even if they did not agree with his solution, he was right that something had to be done if state government was going to function.
The first leader to step forward was President Pro Tem of the State Senate Del Marsh (R-Anniston). Marsh offered a solution that might work. His plan would allow the people of Alabama the right to vote on a lottery to resolve the budget problem. It would require a vote of the people because it is a constitutional amendment. The only vote a legislator would be required to make would be to allow it to be put on the ballot.
The governor would not be involved in a constitutional amendment. However, inexplicably, the governor came out against it. It would raise the same amount of money as his tax plan. However, it does not seem to matter to House or Senate members what the governor thinks.
This solution is the most appealing to the average Alabamian. Even if they do not like gambling, they do not like seeing their money flowing to our surrounding states and funding schools and government in Georgia, Florida, Tennessee and Mississippi.
The House came up with a complicated hodgepodge of taxes and fee increases that went nowhere because the Senate told them they were not going to vote for taxes, so why blemish their no tax record for naught.
The special session may give some power to the governor. It will take a three fifths vote to deviate from his call. They will have to focus on the budget. Everything is on the table including a cigarette tax and gambling. Some blend of Bentley’s tax proposals and Marsh’s lottery proposal could form a solution. If it does, the extra expense of a special session may be money well spent.
See you next week.
June 11, 2015
As I was walking out of the Statehouse recently someone asked me, “Do you think we will have gambling in Alabama”. My response was simple. We already have gambling, the state just does not derive any revenue from it.
Indeed gambling proliferates in our state just as it does in all of the other 49 states and the District of Columbia. People gamble online prolifically every day. There are no state line boundaries to internet gambling. All of the revenue from that activity goes out of state. Our people play the lottery, they just buy their tickets in Florida, Georgia and Tennessee. Our surrounding sister states fund their government and educate their children with our recreational dollars.
I hardly go anywhere in the state that I do not hear someone cackle that they are going to Biloxi to the shows at the casinos. Therefore, it did not surprise me when I read that 12% of the patrons at the Mississippi casinos were Alabamians. So our recreational gaming dollars are funding Mississippi state government. In fact, Mississippi derives 11% of their entire state revenue from gaming dollars.
Alabamians do not even have to go to Mississippi casinos, we have them here. They operate as Indian gambling casinos. These casinos are federally sanctioned. Therefore the state gets no revenue from these facilities. Only the problems and costs associated with gambling addiction.
The so called Indian gambling establishments in Alabama and around the country were created under a cloud of corruption that ranks as one of the most corrupt scandals in American history. “Casino Jack” Abramoff and his partner Bob Scanlan came to Washington armed with $40 million. They essentially bought and bribed enough congressmen and senators to give these casinos a monopoly. After the legislation was passed, Abramoff and Scanlan pled guilty to federal charges of conspiracy, tax evasion and mail fraud. They went to jail with 21 other Washington insiders and congressmen. However, the Indian gambling deal is still federal law.
Bob Scanlan worked for Bob Riley when Riley was a congressman. Soon thereafter Riley ran for governor. He received a good amount of his campaign money from these same Indian gambling syndicates. The Indian gambling money that flowed into the Riley campaign is probably the reason he narrowly won the 2002 Governor’s Race.
As pay back for them electing him, Riley spend the last two years of his term working to close down Macon County’s VictoryLand. The Indian gambling interests like a monopoly, which is what they have in Alabama.
Gambling dollars are big. The money spent politically is big. That is why it has become the centerpiece of conversation late in this legislative session. Legislators have come to the realization that the beleaguered General Fund is in dire straits. They believe that the good doctor, Gov. Robert Bentley, is right on that point. However, they have not and it appears they will not adopt his $540 million tax package.
The House of Representatives for the first time in four and a half years appears to have become disorganized. They have followed Speaker Mike Hubbard like a flock of sheep. They have been herded like goats. They may have come to the realization that they may be being led like pigs to slaughter.
The leader that has emerged in the first year of the quadrennium is Senate President Pro Tem Del Marsh (R-Anniston). He has offered to the senate a constitutional amendment to let the people of Alabama vote on a lottery. Polling shows that it would pass overwhelmingly in a referendum.
However, it has serious political opposition inside the Statehouse and Capitol getting to the people. Gov. Bentley is opposed inexplicably because it raises about the same amount of money for the General Fund as his tax plan. Speaker Hubbard will oppose it in the House if it gets out of the Senate. He is tied inextricably to the Poach Creek gambling money. Therefore, it looks like there are three different trains going down the tracks and folks that is a recipe for a train wreck.
It looks like a Special Session is in the works. In a Special Session the legislature must focus on the budgets and how to provide the revenue needed for state government to function. A special session is limited to 12 meeting days in 30 calendar days and only items in the governor’s call for the session may be addressed without a two-thirds vote by both chambers. We will see.
See you next week.
June 04, 2015
We are in the final days of the first regular legislative session of the quadrennium. The session constitutionally has to end June 15. The governor and legislature are at a standoff. The financial dilemma in the State General Fund has not been addressed and the budgets are up in the air.
As the session began four months ago, Gov. Robert Bentley was the first to cry wolf. No Republican likes to say the word tax, much less propose such a solution or vote for such a blasphemous resolution.
The governor is a lifelong Republican and over two thirds of the legislature, both the House and Senate, are Republicans. These folks are real Republicans. Conservative does not describe most of these solons. Right wing reactionaries would be a more accurate description.
Therefore, Governor Bentley’s appeal to save our bare bones Medicaid program and keep the federal government from taking over our prisons, closing our state parks and doing away with state troopers and highways does not stir the hearts of a good many of these Republican Tea Party stalwarts. In fact, if truth were known, some could not care less if we simply did away with Medicaid or state government entirely.
However, something changed over the course of the Session. About half of the Republicans realized that Governor Bentley was not crying wolf. They have come to the realization that something has to be done and we really do have to provide some semblance of state services.
They never have given Governor Bentley’s $540 million tax package any consideration. It is as though he does not exist. I have never seen a governor treated with such complete disdain or irreverence, especially one as popular with the electorate and from the same political party. His tax increase proposals have not even been given a hearing, much less a committee vote. He had a hard time even getting a sponsor.
Bentley has been rendered irrelevant in the budget process. He has journeyed around the state touting his plan to Chamber of Commerce groups and civic clubs to no avail. He has shown remarkable political naïveté with this approach. If he sells the chamber members on his taxes, they first of all are probably not going to call their state senator and secondly they probably do not know who their senator or representative is, especially if they are from an urban area.
Even if Bentley is a voice in the wilderness and they do not fear him or respect him politically, they have bought into the concept and belief that something has to be done for the beleaguered general fund.
We are not alone in this budget crisis. At least 22 other states project budget shortfalls for the coming fiscal year. State Senator Del Marsh, the President Pro Tem of the State Senate, came forward with a bold move. The senate leader has proposed offering a constitutional amendment for the people of the state to vote on having a state lottery. The proposal would be on the ballot on September 15, just before the fiscal year begins on October 1. His plan would bring in about the same amount of money as Bentley’s tax plan.
Marsh’s argument is that gambling is here in every form. It is probably more prevalent and less harmful than alcohol and our people are sending these dollars to Georgia, Tennessee, Florida and Mississippi. Indeed, Mississippi derives an amazing 11% of their entire state revenue from gambling and 12% of the patrons at their entertainment centers are from Alabama. Marsh says that he senses more support among senators to vote to allow their people to vote on a lottery than to vote for taxes.
The House seems to be somewhat rudderless for the first time since Mike Hubbard became Speaker. The Speaker seems to have lost some of his control of the House. It may be due to the felony trials he awaits in October.
In an awkward move, Hubbard proposed a hybrid small tax plan that suspiciously gave protection to the Indian gambling syndicate who desperately want to keep their monopoly on gambling in the state. A lottery and state taxed casinos would cook their golden goose.
Polling shows that if the lottery gets to a vote of the people it would pass overwhelmingly. We are only one of two states in America who derive no revenue from gambling. We are at a stalemate in the waning hours of the session. It looks like a Special Session may be necessary to resolve the budget crisis.
See you next week.
May 28, 2015
This has been an eventful year. Thousands of tourists have flocked to Alabama to commemorate the 50th Anniversary of the Selma to Montgomery March for Civil and Voting Rights. The events that happened in Alabama spurred the enactment of the landmark acts that broke down the legal barriers prohibiting African Americans from voting in the South.
The Civil Rights Act of 1964 made it unlawful to discriminate based on race. It was followed up the next year with the Voting Rights Act of 1965 that assured African Americans the right to vote.
Ironically, as the state and nation were preparing to celebrate and remember the famous 1965 marches and subsequent enactment of the Voting Rights Act, the federal courts essentially gave all marriage rights to homosexual couples in Alabama. Federal judges have clearly and emphatically ruled that it is unconstitutional to prohibit lesbian, gay and bisexual people from marrying each other. The federal courts have determined that same sex marriage rights are granted under the equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment.Read more
May 21, 2015
The hallmark accomplishment of this year’s legislative session will be a comprehensive prison reform package. This legislation is the one long-term substantive issue tackled by the super majority Republican legislative body.
This comprehensive prison project has been in the works for a while. A lot of research and planning went into the plan. State Senator Cam Ward (R-Alabaster) has been the steward of the project. Sen. Ward chairs the Prison Reform Task Force, which formulated the plan. He is also Chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee and he shepherded the plan through the legislative process.
Something had to be done. Alabama is in a crisis situation when it comes to prison overcrowding. Alabama’s prisons are at 200% capacity. The current prisons are designed to house 12,500. We have over 25,000 prisoners. We have had serious problems already arise at the Julia Tutwiler Prison for women. Our other institutions are ticking time bombs.
We are destined to be taken over by the federal courts. Federal judges took receivership of California’s prisons at 140% capacity. What do you think they would do to us at 200% capacity? Hopefully, if we are taken to court, the jurists will see we have made a move toward rectifying the crisis. The price tag of paying for what the federal receivership would require would be staggering to the state.
You may ask what exactly does this prison reform plan do. You first have to build some more prisons. The plan calls for an additional 2,000 beds over the next five years. These new prisons will not by themselves resolve the problem. Additional program implementations will hopefully bring overcrowding down to about 140%, which may be an acceptable level to a federal court.
The plan’s changes and building proposals have an approximate $35 million price tag. The primary focus of the long-term plan is twofold. New sentencing guidelines are designed to reduce recidivism through mandated supervision. Most inmates are not supervised much less assisted in finding employment. Under this current situation the odds of the inmate returning to prison are very high. The package calls for hiring 123 additional parole and probation officers.
These measures are not expected to give immediate relief. Over the next five years projections are that the increase in new parole officers, coupled with new buildings to incarcerate hardened criminals will cost $35 to 43 million and the savings evolved from less recidivism would save the same amount. Therefore, at best, in a few years it will be a wash financially.
In the long run, it is a good plan. The plan’s parent, Senator Ward says, “Our problem is we’ve spent so long ignoring the problem, it’s so far gone it’s going to take four or five years to see any savings.” Thus, the big question is how do you come up with the $35 million initial money to pay for the plan.
Much like the myriad of financial problems facing the General Fund, the prison problem has evolved over decades of neglect by the legislature. The chickens have come home to roost on this super majority Republican watch. They did not create the problem, they inherited it.
In a true Republican spirit they cut government spending drastically over the past four years. However, also in a true Republican theme, they have dwelt on right wing social issues that have actually exacerbated the financial situation. They have passed blatantly unconstitutional acts that any ninth grade civics student knows are federal issues.
The sad fact is that it costs money out of the General Fund to pay to defend this demagoguery. The legislature should simply pass resolutions saying they hate abortion, immigration and Obama Care. They could get the same political mileage with their political pandering but at least it would not cost the state anything other than the paper it is written on. The Resolution would have the same effect as their Act.
See you next week.
May 14, 2015
You would have to have been under a rock for the past six months to not have heard that the State General Fund has a shortfall and Gov. Robert Bentley has proposed a $540 million tax increase solution to resolve the problem.
This crisis has been formulating for close to a decade now. It is under Dr. Bentley’s watch that the train wreck has finally occurred and the chickens have come home to roost. During Bob Riley’s eight year ride, money was shuffled around and a lot of federal stimulus money fell on the state like manna from Heaven. Therefore, Riley got to spend his last two years in office playing cops and robbers. He rounded up all the troopers and rode around the state closing down constitutionally sanctioned and tax paying gaming casinos with the zeal of a child pretending to chase Al Capone.
Riley’s charades were gleefully welcomed by his friends in the Indian gambling establishments who pay no taxes. While Riley obsessed over granting a monopoly to the Indian casinos, the state financial picture worsened. A national recession settled in and all state governments fell on hard times.
Alabama’s problems are further exacerbated by the fact that we are only one of a handful of states that work out of two budgets. The Education Budget receives all of the growth taxes, such as income and sales tax. Therefore, the poor General Fund has to live on the same revenue today as it was 30 to 40 years ago. Unfortunately, the cost of things increase over the course of four decades. Automobiles, gasoline, desks, paper, pencils and especially health insurance have all gone up exponentially in cost.
Anybody could predict that eventually the beleaguered General Fund was going to have a rude awakening. During the 2010 Governor’s race, I continuously told you that whoever won the governor’s office was going to be a one-term governor simply because they were going to inherit a sinking financial ship of state and would be forced to raise new revenue.
Dr. Bentley took over this ship. It was like walking onto the deck of the Titanic. Riley left the cupboard bare and the federal stimulus money was gone. Somehow Bentley and the super majority legislature maneuvered through four years of financial Armageddon. They cut state services, the number of state employees and the salaries of those who were left. They were both overwhelmingly reelected.
Today, the first regular session of the quadrennium is heading toward its adjournment and no resolution is in sight. The governor and legislature are at a standoff. The super majority legislature is made up of some very conservative folks. It is probably the most conservative legislative body in the nation, both socially and fiscally. However, they are probably reflective of the constituents who sent them to Montgomery. Our electorate is very conservative.
These legislators are more interested in posturing against federal issues like abortion, immigration, gun rights, gay rights and Obama Care, than addressing the state’s budget. Therefore, they are sticking to their no new tax mantra and pledge and have buried their heads in the sand like ostriches. They are more interested in pleasing Grover Norquist than Dr. Bentley.
The problem with this approach is that whether they like it or not, the federal government always prevails over state government. The feds already sent them a message on the aforementioned social issues. If the crisis in Alabama’s prison population is not resolved this year, the federal government will probably take over our prison system. If they do take over our prisons, the picture will not be pretty.
The Medicaid problem needs a long term solution. It is a money eating monster that is now taking up one third of the General Fund. The Chairmen of the General Fund Budget Committees, Rep. Steve Clouse (R-Ozark) and Sen. Arthur Orr (R-Decatur), have done excellent jobs trying to craft budgets. Their yeomen efforts may be to no avail during this regular session.
It looks more and more every day like a special session may be on the horizon to resolve the budget dilemma. The fiscal year begins October 1. In a special session called by the governor, the legislature must focus on what the governor has put in the call. It may be a long hot summer in Montgomery.
See you next week.
May 07, 2015
There is an ominous cloud hanging over this legislative session. Last year the U.S. Supreme Court surprisingly agreed to hear a Hail Mary complaint filed by the black legislative caucus over the 2014 redistricting plan. In an even more surprising opinion, the Supreme Court ruled in favor of the complainants and remanded the case back to the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals instructing the lower court to tell the legislature to try again.
The super majority Republican legislature fully complied with the Voting Rights Act and the Justice Department guidelines when they crafted the new districts prior to the 2014 legislative elections. Specifically, they protected African American districts. The plan not only reserved the current number of minority districts, which by the way has the best reflection of African American districts of any state in America, they actually created a new additional minority House seat in Huntsville.Read more
April 30, 2015
Recently, at a forum I was asked the question, “Which governor made a difference in Alabama politics?” The question caught me off guard because I really had not thought about that obvious inquiry. My knee-jerk reaction and answer to the insightful questioner was George Wallace and I gave a litany of reasons for my response. Later, after contemplation, I felt that my answer was probably correct. Wallace would be the appropriate choice, simply because he was governor so long. I prefaced my reply to the inquisitor with the caveat, “You know, I’m not as old as you might think.” Therefore, I qualified my answer with, “Let’s talk about the governors since 1954.”
I actually knew Wallace and served as his representative in the legislature during my first term in the House and his last term as governor. I met Wallace earlier when I was a Page and he was a fiery first term governor in the 1960s. He would often times invite me down to the governor’s office to talk politics.Read more
April 23, 2015
On a picture perfect sunny January day Governor Robert Bentley was sworn in for his second term as governor, along with all of the other constitutional state officeholders. Taking their oath of office on the same day were Lt. Gov. Kay Ivey, Attorney General Luther Strange, State Treasurer Young Boozer, and State Agriculture Commissioner John McMillan. They were all sworn in for a second four year term. Newcomers Secretary of State John Merrill and State Auditor Jim Ziegler also took office on January 19.
Speculation has already begun as to which of these folks are eyeing Dr. Bentley’s office four years henceforth. It is shaping up as quite a governor’s race in 2018. Unlike Bentley’s 2014 coronation victory trot, this one will be quite a horse race. Beginning in September, I will handicap the potential horses for the 2018 derby for the brass ring of Alabama politics. I have a list of 18 potential horses that we will begin with as we handicap the derby.Read more
April 16, 2015
As the world turns in Alabama politics, a lot has happened in the first three months of 2015. After Inauguration Day, a federal judge in Mobile ruled Alabama’s constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage was not constitutional under federal law. In appeals to the U.S. Supreme Court it was obvious that the high tribunal conferred with the lower court ruling and gave every indication that they would render a final edict on the subject come June. By midsummer same-sex marriage will be the law of the land as decreed by the omnipotent U.S. Supreme Court.
There is not much that our state leaders/politicians can do but bark at the moon, which is exactly what our stalwart, religious, Ten Commandments Judge Roy Moore has done quite valiantly and in vain. He has ridden his high horse from Gallant again, much to the delight of our very religious state. Moore gallantly instructed the probate judges to refuse to issue marriage licenses to gay and lesbian couples. He made national news and further endeared himself to his evangelical base.Read more