With the state’s General Fund facing a projected shortfall of 25 to 30 percent, Gov. Robert Bentley has proposed combining that fund with the Special Education Trust Fund. That move would help ease the burden of funding non-education needs such as prisons, roads and Medicaid. But to do so would raid a fund set aside specifically to provide for public education.
That would be a colossal error. Fortunately, legislative leaders seem to recognize that.
Gov. Bentley’s budget is “dead on arrival,” said Rep. Jim Barton, a Mobile Republican who serves as chairman of the House General Fund Budget Committee. Sen. Trip Pittman (R-Daphne), chairman of the Senate education budget committee, said that in meetings with the governor, nothing had been mentioned about using education money until after the session started.
Lawmakers will draft their own budgets. However, they’ll face the same challenges, and must look for ways to lop off between a quarter and a third of the state’s expenses.
This didn’t happen overnight, and is not going to magically correct itself. Lawmakers must either find a way to provide the services necessary to run our state at roughly 70 percent of the cost of government, or find a way to generate enough revenue to ensure those services are properly funded.
An overhaul of state finances is long overdue. This legislature must not let its session end without a strategy to provide Alabamians with the government services they should reasonably expect.
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