This week, the Alabama House of Representatives passed a $1 billion plus bond issue for capital improvements in public schools across the state, and the logjam in the Senate finally seems to have broken, with optimism that the General Fund and Education Trust Fund can be passed without a special session.Sen. Jim Preuitt, D-Talladega, said the past week vindicated remarks he made indicating the Senate would accomplish what it needed to.
“Things are moving on, just as I anticipated,” he said. “Both budgets are on their second reading, and all of the differences that I’m aware of in the education budget have been resolved. And I think the chances are very good that we will pass the General Fund and the bond issue before the session runs out, too.”
Preuitt had expressed concern that schools in his district, particularly the Alabama Institute for Deaf and Blind, would not be funded at the same level as those in some other districts. Those concerns have now more or less been addressed.
“As far as my district is concerned, I think things are pretty much ironed out. I foresee AIDB being level funded, and they’ll get some more in the bond issue. They’ll get another $500,000 in the Senate budget, and the bond issue will get them where they need to be.”
Preuitt said he also planned to seek additional funding for Talladega College in the education budget. The college will benefit from the bond issue.
As for the actions of Lt. Gov. Jim Folsom Jr., who many credit with breaking the impasse by killing two sunset bills, Preuitt said, “His actions were certainly unprecedented, but we did manage to come back and pass the sunset bills later. But by that time we were already in a position to start taking messages from the House. And there’s still some good legislation we need to take a look at, but every bill that gets introduced doesn’t necessarily need to pass. But we did manage to put politics behind us and pass some good bills already, and I think this will end up being a good session.”
Sen. Dell Marsh, R-Anniston, took a darker view of Folsom’s actions, which he characterized as “illegal, and I’m sure they will be challenged in court. That won’t have any impact on this session, but it will on the next three. Remember, we (the minority party) have been trying to do this for three weeks, trying to put aside the sunset bills to look at the budgets. The purpose of dragging the process out was to give us time to look at the budgets. As it is now, we won’t see them until Tuesday, although the discussion period was extended to 3 hours from 30 minutes.”
The main thing, though, Marsh continued, “is that we did get both budgets through committee, and we’ve got some local bills on second and third reading. We passed a banking bill, the budgets are well on the way, and I think we’re pretty much in agreement on the bond issue now. We might get some local bills passed before the end of the session, too.”
In the House, Tuesday’s final passage of the bond issue was handily the top story of the week.
“That’ll be a good deal for our local schools, cities, counties and AIDB,” said Rep. Steve Hurst, D-Munford.
According to Hurst, the Talladega County School System stands to gain more than $6.8 million in capital improvement funds, AIDB will get $4.5 million, the Talladega City School System will get $2.4 million and Sylacauga will get $2.2 million. “In all the K-12 funding, the first $200,000 is at the discretion of the local board of education,” Hurst said.
He added that a bill to ban gillnetting had sparked a filibuster Thursday, and as a result very little was accomplished that day. “We did finally get a compromise on that one, but it won’t pass the Senate, so that doesn’t really matter.”
Rep. Jim McClendon, R-Springville, said, “Not much changed in the House, but they had lots going on upstairs in the Senate. It looks like they’re doing their job, and now there’s a good chance we will have a budget to pay our teachers, state troopers and corrections officers with.”
McClendon said he felt the bond issue “had a better than even chance of being approved. Room for improvement is in the eye of the beholder, but it is needed, it will give our schools a shot in the arm. We’ve got trailers coming back in a lot of school districts just because of growth, but $1 billion builds a lot of classrooms.”
McClendon said the “so-called ‘apology for slavery’” came back from the Senate Thursday, and was passed in the House without a roll call vote.
“The way it was worded rubbed a lot of people raw, and we felt it was just not accurate. But our plea for a roll call was ignored, so we wrote a bi-partisan statement expressing our disagreement in the House journal,” he said.
Rep. Blaine Galliher, R-Rainbow City, also expressed relief that the Senate was addressing the budgets. “That’s a great relief to me,” he said. “And passing the bond issue is a great achievement for the House. Schools can’t prepare for the fall (and fall gets earlier every year), when you don’t have a budget.”
Galliher said he also signed the journal objecting to the slavery apology. “I don’t condone slavery or injustice, but it went too far in the language. I had nothing to do with slavery, I am a fair and equitable person, and I strive to treat all people fairly. But now we can put it behind us and move on to other issues that need to be addressed. We have things like tax reform, education and PAC-to-PAC transfer reform that we say we’re going to address every year, but certain people make sure we never do.”
Rep. Ron Johnson, R-Sylacauga, said last week was “slow other than passing the bond issue. But Preuitt was instrumental on getting the Senate negotiated out of the bog they were in, and he deserves kudos for that. Now they can get to the budgets and hopefully get to the bond issue later.”
Johnson said two local bills, including an annexation in Lincoln, would probably pass next week, as well as a general bill that will provide greater precision in locating 9-1-1 calls from cell phones.
Rep. Randy Wood, R-Anniston, said he had voted for the bond issue in spite of having some reservations. “When it came up last week, I had some differences with the original version in that there was too much ‘slush fund’ money in there. I’m still not entirely happy with it, but I voted for it and it made it out of the House. What the Senate will do with it the Good Lord only knows.”
Wood said he also signed the journal opposing the apology. “I’m pretty sure there was no roll call because enough Democrats would have voted against it to kill it,” he said.
Rep. Barbara Boyd, D-Anniston, was not available for comment.
