2014 Education Trust Fund Performance
While the looming shortfall in Alabama’s ailing General Fund has received much attention, the state’s Education Trust Fund (ETF) isn’t exactly enjoying robust growth, according the recently published year-end report on receipts to the fund. The ETF, which pays for public K-12 and higher education plus an assortment of other smaller agencies, grew just 2.1 […]
A Look at 2014's Anemic General Fund Performance
The final tallies are in for fiscal year 2014 collections to the state’s General Fund. The results are, as usual, lackluster. Collections from the assortment of taxes that feed the Fund grew by just 1.03 percent over 2013. That’s pretty typical performance for the General Fund, and that anemic growth is the root cause of […]
Alabama’s Corrections Conundrum
The Alabama Department of Corrections has jurisdiction over more than 32,000 individuals who’ve been convicted of a crime and are serving sentences in prisons, work release centers, supervised reentry programs, and community-based corrections programs. That’s more than double the number of convicts the system had in its charge in 1990, but over that same period, […]
Alabama’s Ailing General Fund
When the new legislature convenes in 2015, it will face an old problem: a shortfall in the state’s $1.8 billion General Fund account. This time, state leaders are expecting as much as a $200 million gap between revenues available for fiscal 2016 and the appropriations needed to maintain services. Any such imbalance between revenues and […]
While Alabama incomes lag behind other states, so do the prices we pay
Earlier this year, the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis released a new way of looking at income and prices across the United States. Income levels vary from state to state; but so do prices paid by consumers. Consequently, an individual’s standard of living depends not only on the income he or she earns, but on […]
Government Services Go Digital: Alabama Making Improvements
New technologies provide opportunities for people to conduct business and allow governments to provide services in more efficient ways as well. Online banking and e-commerce websites have become more prevalent, raising expectations for how similar transactions should be done by state and local governments. What is becoming clear is that the technology alone is not […]
Alabama Gasoline Tax Revenue Continues to Decline
Alabama Gasoline Tax Revenue Continues to Decline Revenue from the gasoline tax, the money that goes into building and maintaining roads, continues to decline in Alabama. Cars are using less gas, and Alabama’s state gas tax is collected on a per gallon basis. That means Alabama is collecting less for every mile driven. Compounding the […]
Alabama’s Tax Bargain
Alabama’s Tax Bargain April is traditionally the month we think about taxes. National tax comparisons are published, and we were reminded again this year that Alabama has among the lowest taxes in the U.S. In this month’s edition of The Alabama Baptist, PARCA executive director Jim Williams points out that while our state’s taxes are […]