First Meeting of Task Force on Budget Reform Wednesday
A newly formed Joint Legislative Task Force on Budget Reform meets for the first time this week in Montgomery: a group of House and Senate members tasked with studying and recommending changes to the state’s broken system for budgeting. That is the same issue PARCA examined at its 2016 Annual Meeting this February. The Task […]
PARCA Annual Meeting Additional Materials
PARCA’s Annual Meeting was held in Birmingham on Friday, February 5. Its focus was Alabama’s process for formulating budgets. PARCA’s description of current budget issues can be accessed here. The presentation made by William Glasgall of the Volcker Alliance describing budget issues in a national context can be found here. If you want to look […]
Resources for Understanding Alabama's Budget Process
As February approaches, the Legislature is preparing to return to Montgomery for yet another tough session of struggling with Alabama’s budgets. The Governor’s Office is in the process of crafting a proposed plan and budget. The Legislature has already begun its process of reviewing budget requests from state agencies. PARCA’s annual meeting, to be held […]
Education Trust Fund Grows but School Spending Still Behind
Receipts to Alabama’s Education Trust Fund grew by 4.2 percent in FY2015, according to year-end revenue reports, allowing the state to finish repaying the education’s borrowing from the state savings account and to begin socking away additional savings for the next downturn. It should be noted, however, that for the current budget year, state support […]
General Fund Sputters Along
Despite the healthy economy, the state’s General Fund posted its usual sputtering performance in 2015, according to the state’s year-end revenue collection reports. The General Fund, which supports the non-education functions of state government, received about $1.8 billion in 2015, up from approximately $1.7 billion in 2014. However, that total includes a $105 million transfer […]
PARCA Talks State Budget
With the passage of the state’s general fund budget last week, PARCA Senior Research Associate Tom Spencer took a moment to sit down with WBHM’s Andrew Yeager to provide an overview of the budget and how some of the key departments will be affected. “Medicaid, prisons, and education had strategic plans in place,” said Spencer. […]
Back to the Basics on Taxes and Budgeting
With the Governor and Legislature still at odds over how to solve a $250 million shortfall in the state’s General Fund, we thought it would be useful to again call attention to two essential underlying problems that explain why we are in the current predicament. PARCA has written about both recently and, over the past […]
Governor Pledges Bold Action on the Budget at PARCA Annual Meeting
Speaking before a sell-out crowd of more than 400 at the Harbert Center on Friday, Feb. 13, Gov. Robert Bentley said he will propose bold solutions in the face of a steep budget shortfall. In his luncheon address, Bentley said that during his first term he had held the line on spending, shrunk the state […]
PARCA Winter Quarterly Tackles Budgeting, Corrections, Medicaid, and Education
The PARCA Quarterly Winter 2015 edition provides perspective on Alabama’s budget challenges and reform efforts in education, Medicaid, and the state prison system. The Quarterly provides background for our upcoming annual meeting, which is February 13 at the Harbert Center in downtown Birmingham. The meeting will feature: State Sen. Cam Ward and […]
Budding interest in changing the way we budget in Alabama?
[iframe width=”360″ height=”302″ src=”http://www.ustream.tv/embed/recorded/55335918/highlight/576788?v=3&wmode=direct” scrolling=”no” frameborder=”0″ style=”border: 0px none transparent;”] Budget discussion, State Board of Education, Nov. 12 With the General Fund facing an acute shortfall and the education budget still struggling to recover to pre-Great Recession levels, there are beginning to be conversations about new approaches to budgeting. At a recent State Board of […]