Lots to do in only a short time
By Staff
Johnny Mack Morrow
There are only a few days left in the 2008 regular legislative session, which ends on May 19. It has been a productive session for the House, where we have passed major reforms and bills that will make Alabama better.
The House passed a landmark measure that will ban pass-through pork, the process where line-items are used in agency budgets to direct spending by legislator. Campaign finance reform also passed the House that would outlaw the practice of shifting funds from one political action committee to another in order to hide its source. These are but two of the many bills passed by the House.
However, there are some important things that can still be accomplished on the last day for both branches of the Legislature, but if the Senate does not accomplish one specific thing, then a special session will have to be called and we will have to return.
The Senate must pass the 2009 education budget. If the Senate does not come to some agreement and pass this budget, then the governor will have to call the Legislature into a special session to pass the measure. That would be unfortunate and unnecessary.
The primary constitutional duty of the Legislature is to pass the budgets. There are two budgets for state government: the General Fund and the Education Trust Fund. The $2 billion General Fund pays for everything that is non-education related, and that is a big list. From state troopers to state courts, child protection to elderly healthcare, insurance oversight to environmental regulation, important and vital programs and agencies are budgeted for by the General Fund.
And it was a very difficult budget. One of the reasons it has been such a tough session is because the budget process has been so tough. In every aspect spending had to be cut, for some important areas like the courts, the cuts were more than 10 percent. The reason is as economy has slowed down recently, revenue to the state has also slowed for important programs.
There are places where everything was done to avoid such cuts, especially when it would put lives in danger and hurt the most vulnerable among us. For example, caseworkers that protect abuse and neglected children were not cut because we have found that if you cut child services, chances are someone will fall through the cracks and tragedy will strike.
The only good news about the General Fund is that it has passed both the House and Senate, and the governor has said he will sign it. Now the attention turns to the education budget.
Even though more programs are funded by the General Fund, the larger of the two state budgets is by far the education budget. Because of our tax system, Alabama schools receive most of their funding from the state. And in education the cuts are also steep; $400 million has been taken out from the budget, which is a reduction around 6 percent from current spending levels.
There is general agreement on the education budget in the Senate, but with the way the session has been going for that branch of the Legislature, there is no sure thing it will pass. Let us hope that the last day of the 2008 legislative session will be the last day the Legislature will have to meet, and that the people's business will have been accomplished.
Johnny Mack Morrow is a state representative for Franklin County. His column appears each Wednesday.
