Mental health is more than a personal challenge—it’s a community concern with profound impacts on education, workforce productivity, and Alabama’s future.
The 2025 PARCA Annual Forum will convene policymakers, business leaders, nonprofit executives, educators, and mental health professionals to address the pressing mental health challenges facing children in schools and adults in the workforce.
Join us on Friday, March 7 at 9:00 a.m. at The Harbert Center in Birmingham as we explore state and local policy solutions, innovative programs, and practical strategies that can strengthen mental health systems and support Alabama’s students and workers.
The Alabama Constitution’s Impact on Taxes and Spending
PARCA is re-examining Alabama’s Constitution in light of the 2022 passage of a revised and reorganized version of the state’s fundamental law.
The approval of the Constitution of 2022 was the culmination of decades of advocacy. Some important changes were achieved, including a substantial reorganization and the removal of racist and unconstitutional provisions central to the spirit of the state’s 1901 Constitution.
And yet, the Alabama Constitution of 2022 maintains the fundamental shackles on government from the 1901 Constitution. Embedded in the Constitution is a tax system that is inadequate, inefficient, and inequitable.
Since the early 1990s, PARCA’s How Alabama Taxes Compare analysis has found that Alabama state and local governments consistently collect less per capita in taxes than almost all other states. After occupying the bottom spot for most of the past 30 years, Alabama has traded back and forth with Tennessee for last place since 2018. This year, Tennessee’s per capita collections came in $4 lower than Alabama’s, resulting in a rank for Alabama of No. 49.
Alabama continues to collect less per capita in state and local property taxes than any other state. Property taxes are strictly limited by provisions in the state constitution.
Low taxes create some advantages. Low property taxes on land and homes are attractive in some regards, decreasing the cost of homeownership and shielding rural land and farms from development pressure. Lower taxes also can be attractive to businesses and individuals moving to the state.
However, low property taxes come at a cost, creating a greater reliance on other taxes, mainly sales taxes. Those sales taxes put a particular burden on low-income Alabamians. Low tax collections also mean that Alabama state and local governments have less to invest in services such as education, health, public safety, and the justice system. That is in a state with high poverty rates, low educational attainment, poorer health outcomes, and higher rates of violent crime than most other states. In turn, high poverty and less economic activity mean less wealth to tax and, thus, lower tax collections.
Inadequate
In contrast to other states, where the state legislature and local governments generally have the power to adjust tax rates, Alabama’s constitution sets limits, rates, and procedural restraints on state and local taxes. That makes taxes hard to raise, adjust, or rebalance. In the end, Alabama’s lower base of wealth and structural and cultural resistance to taxes mean that governments here have less to spend on providing vital public services, placing Alabama in the bottom ten states in most spending categories.
The project is supported, in part, by the Alabama Citizens for Constitutional Reform (ACCR). Both ACCR and PARCA are nonpartisan organizations, and our members and supporters are Republicans, Democrats, and independents. Former Governor Albert Brewer and former Samford University President Thomas Corts, both deceased, were founding leaders in both organizations.
Birmingham-Jefferson County Justice Governance Partnership Launched to Strengthen Justice and Opportunity
Leaders from city and county government, education, philanthropy, social services, and community are launching a new partnership to decrease violence and increase health and opportunity in Jefferson County.
Coming in the wake of a record-setting year for homicides in the City of Birmingham, the Birmingham-Jefferson County Justice Governance Partnership (BJC-JGP) seeks to build a coordinated and sustained effort to understand and address the conditions that give rise to violence and the underlying vulnerabilities of the neighborhoods where violence is concentrated. The partnership grows out of a recognition that law enforcement alone cannot solve the problem and that community members and an array of agencies play a part in the solution.
Birmingham City Councilor LaTonya Tate and Jefferson County Commissioner Sheila Tyson co-chair the BJC-JGP and convened the partnership’s leadership council last week at the Women’s Foundation of Alabama. Other members of the JGP Leadership Council in attendance included Jefferson County Health Officer David Hicks, Jefferson County District Attorney Danny Carr, Bessemer District Attorney Lynneice Washington, Jefferson County Chief Deputy Coroner Bill Yates, as well as representatives from the offices of Birmingham Mayor Randall Woodfin and Sherriff Mark Pettway, and philanthropic leaders.
The effort spans multiple government agencies, non-profit service providers, as well as researchers and care providers from the University of Alabama at Birmingham. The Public Affairs Research Council of Alabama serves as the partnership’s Local Justice Intermediary, a role that includes coordinating data collection across agencies and collaborating to provide research and analysis that supports the work of the Partnership.
The Justice Governance Partnership is being launched with the support of the Aspen Institute’s Criminal Justice Reform Initiative (CJRI). The Aspen Institute is a nonpartisan educational and policy studies organization based in Washington, DC. Aspen is known for convening thought leaders from across the country to address complex public policy problems. Its Criminal Justice Reform Initiative brings together national experts in criminal justice, education, and budgeting with the aim of helping local communities develop more effective approaches to public safety.
Birmingham is among a handful of communities piloting the Justice Governance Partnerships model. Aspen’s CJRI is also working with Grand Rapids, Michigan, and in rural South Carolina, and North Charleston, S.C.
The formal launch of the JGP follows the release of the Birmingham Crime Commission Report, commissioned by Mayor Woodfin. The commission’s report called for the implementation of evidence-based violence reduction strategies, community engagement and investment, and sustainable governance to implement, monitor, and maintain short-term and long-term solutions.
The Justice Governance Partnership serves as a vehicle for cooperating around implementation and monitoring progress. Partners across the cooperating organizations provide wide-ranging data to produce a Justice Audit, which quantifies conditions and identifies needs. The Audit is regularly updated to track progress.
Meanwhile, the ultimate goal is to devise a Justice Reinvestment Plan, which identifies preventive investments that can improve neighborhood conditions and drive down the need for costly emergency responses. The Audit and Reinvestment Plan are tools that aim to identify actionable solutions to improve economic conditions, address violence, and mitigate other risk factors at the local level, focusing on under-served neighborhoods.
About the Birmingham-Jefferson County Justice Governance Partnership
The Birmingham-Jefferson County Justice Governance Partnership is a coalition dedicated to fostering a transparent, equitable, and effective justice system in Birmingham and Jefferson County. Through collaboration, policy innovation, and community engagement, the BJC-JGP seeks to address systemic challenges and create lasting change for the benefit of all residents. For more information, visit parcalabama.org/bjc-jgp.
How Alabama Taxes Compare, 2024
Each year, PARCA uses data from the U.S. Census Bureau’s Annual Survey of State and Local Finances to compare Alabama’s tax collections to the other 50 states. The most recent data comes from the 2022 Fiscal Year.
In FY 2022, adjusted for population, Alabama collected less in state and local taxes than all but one other state, Tennessee.
Alabama’s per capita property tax collections are the lowest in the nation. That helps owners of homes, farms, and timberland but creates a revenue deficit, leaving state and local governments with less to spend on providing government services such as education, health, and public safety.
Alabama’s state and local sales tax rates are among the highest in the U.S., compensating for low property taxes.
Alabama’s income tax does not provide the balancing effect income taxes in other states do. Low-income workers begin paying taxes at a lower threshold than any other state. At the other end of the spectrum, Alabama is the only state that allows a full deduction for federal income taxes paid, a tax break that benefits high-income earners.
Alabama’s rankings in per capita state and local tax collections were generally consistent with rankings in prior years.
For most of the past thirty years, Alabama has consistently ranked last in the Southeast and last in the U.S. in terms of per capita tax collections. In recent years, Alabama has traded that last-place spot back and forth with Tennessee, thanks to tax-cutting measures in that state. This year, according to the Census survey, Tennessee returned to the bottom spot, collecting $4 less per capita than Alabama. Tennessee’s income tax on dividends continues to decrease as the state phases it out.
Alabama Grows through Domestic and International Migration
Alabama’s population increased by more than 40,000, between July 2023 and July 2024, reaching a total of 5,157,699, according to estimates issued in December by the U.S. Census Bureau. Alabama ranked 22nd in percentage population increase and No. 24 in numeric population change.
The number of new Alabama residents arriving from other states (26,028) was down somewhat compared to 2023, part of a national trend of slowing domestic migration. However, international immigration increased over the same period, bringing 15,763 new residents from abroad into the state.
When it comes to natural population change in Alabama’s resident population, deaths exceeded births in 2024, according to the estimates. That is a trend that began in 2020 with the arrival of Covid-19 and has persisted thanks to an aging population and a smaller rising generation producing few babies.
Due to a range of negative health indicators, Alabama’s resident population has a shorter life expectancy than other states, resulting in a higher death rate. Alabama’s birth rate is higher than the U.S. average, but trails states with younger populations and higher levels of international immigration, both of which are associated with more births.
Nationally, international immigration drove population change with 2.8 million new residents coming to the U.S. from abroad during the 2024 estimate period. The highest number of international migrants arrived in Florida (411,322), California (361,057) and Texas (319,569). Alabama has one of lowest rates of international in-migration in the U.S. (ranking No. 43). Despite that, the state did see an increase in new arrivals compared to 2023, when about 13,000 international immigrants arrived. Both the 2023 and 2024 totals for international immigration are about double the average number of arrivals between 2010 and 2020. And far exceed the levels seen during the first Trump administration and the record lows during the pandemic.
The Southeastern U.S. is one of the fastest-growing regions in the U.S. Alabama ranks in the middle of pack of Southeastern states when it comes to population growth, outpacing Mississippi, Louisiana, Arkansas, and Kentucky, but well behind the rates of growth seen in Florida, North Carolina, Georgia, South Carolina, and Tennessee.
