Every other policy question in Alabama eventually becomes a budget question. Schools, prisons, Medicaid, roads, and courts all depend on a revenue system that was designed decades ago and is unusually hard to change: most of it is written into the constitution, most of it is earmarked before the Legislature meets, and it relies more heavily on sales taxes and less on property taxes than almost any other state. 

That structure is defensible or indefensible depending on your values. What it should not be is invisible. PARCA’s job is to show how the system actually works, how Alabama compares, and what any proposed change would do, so the debate is about trade-offs rather than guesses.