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 […]
Court cost collections continue to sag
In tough budget years, lawmakers have often looked for alternative ways to bring in revenue to support state government operations. In the case of the judicial branch of government, the Legislature has repeatedly raised the charges, fees and fines charged to the users of the court system, shifting much of the cost burden for court operations to […]
The Nation's Longest Constitution Just Got Longer
[iframe src=”http://cf.datawrapper.de/mxId5/2/” frameborder=”0″ allowtransparency=”true” allowfullscreen=”allowfullscreen” webkitallowfullscreen=”webkitallowfullscreen” mozallowfullscreen=”mozallowfullscreen” oallowfullscreen=”oallowfullscreen” msallowfullscreen=”msallowfullscreen” width=”640″ height=”480″>] Enlarge to explore. It’s now official. In 2014, Alabama added 12 more amendments to its constitution, bringing the total number to 892. The State Elections Canvassing Board met the final week in November and certified the election results. The additions include amendments restating, in stronger […]
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 […]
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 […]