The special legislative session: It Resumes Today with Still No Agreement on Budget Fixes

Matt Boster

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Posted by: Matt Boster
Date: Aug 03 2015 8:10 AM

MONTGOMERY  – State lawmakers return to this hot and humid capital city today to resume a special session they adjourned three weeks ago to work behind the scenes to find either a fix to or a bandage for a state budget crisis.

Looming over their shoulders is the start of a new fiscal year beginning Oct. 1 and at least a $200 million hole in the state's General Fund budget. If not addressed that hole will result in what Gov. Robert Bentley has called "unworkable" cuts to vital state services.

On the chopping block are 20 state parks that could close, cuts to the number of already too few state troopers, medical and mental health care for some of the poorest Alabamians including children, slashed and every day court house services like renewing driver's licenses cut back.

Yet despite three weeks of closed door meetings among key legislators there appears no clear consensus among lawmakers as to what they will do.

One veteran lawmaker talking on background Sunday night said that in decades in the Legislature he has never seen a more chaotic environment as lawmakers struggle with possible answers most of them deeply dislike.

Among those include:

Tax increases – Bentley is pushing a package of about $300 million in tax hikes and budget reforms which will solve the budget problem by Oct. 1.

Legalizing gambling to include a lottery and Las-Vegas-style table games. If lawmakers approve then voters would have to approve and none of that can happen in time to avoid cuts not only this year but likely next year as well.

Or do what lawmakers did in June: approve a budget that slashes spending by $200 million. Bentley vetoed that budget and he would veto it again resulting in another special session.

The governor began today with a series of television interviews by satellite in the state's largest cities. "The problems we must tackle have been decades in the making, but it is up to us to solve them," Bentley said in one interview.

The two competing solutions to the crisis as the emergency session begins is the fight between Bentley's tax hike plan and state Senate leader Del Marsh's gambling package.

While Marsh has said his plan won't fix the budget crisis now or maybe even next year, he said legalizing gambling and taxing it will eventually generate $400 million a year in new money and create 11,000.

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