Second Legislative Special Session Starts Tuesday

State lawmakers have hit crunch time. The next fiscal year starts October 1st and the state still does not have a General Fund budget. Lawmakers and Governor Robert Bentley remain at odds over what to do about a more than $200 million budget shortfall. Two legislative sessions have come and gone with without a resolution. So the governor has called another special session to start Tuesday.

His message is simple. We’ve already cut and cut and cut some more.

“But we still don’t have enough,” Bentley told the Rotary Club of Birmingham last month.  “And we have developed anorexia. And when you have anorexia nervosa, your electrolytes get out of balance and you die.”

Bentley said the state has 5,000 fewer workers and a General Fund budget that’s $400 million smaller than in 2009. He says further cuts threaten state agencies from prisons to Medicaid and the public doesn’t want that.

“They don’t want their state parks closed down,” said Bentley.  “They don’t want their hospitals closed. They want mentally ill in their state treated. They want all of that. Because they need and want and deserve the services.”

Bentley maintains the only option is new revenue even though his push for tax increases went nowhere in the first two legislative sessions. For the upcoming session he’s proposed a $300-million revenue package. It would redirect tax money now going to education to the General Fund. The plan would replace some of that education money by eliminating the deduction on the federal payroll tax called FICA. It also increases the business privilege tax and cigarette tax.

Bentley is a Republican and in a state where politicians can hardly utter the word taxes except to denounce them. So is Steve Clouse, Chair of the House General Fund Budget Committee. Still he calls the governor’s plan the most workable.

“We’ve got to have help from all different sources whether it be the education budget whether it be from the business community with the business privilege tax, a small increase in the tobacco tax on the consumer side and put this three-legged stool together,” said Clouse.

But many lawmakers don’t agree. In fact some Republicans say there’s not really a crisis at all.

State Senator Paul Bussman points to a reserve account for education   He says that money should be used for the General Fund.

“You don’t not pay your electric bill to put money into savings,” said Bussman.  “You have to pay for the basic services and that’s what we’re trying to do.”

Bussman said departments such as Medicaid and prisons should be level funded while non-essential departments are cut 5-percent. He adds the dire warnings about what cuts would do to state agencies are overblown and a scare tactic.

Bussman and Bentley do agree gambling proposals are a distraction from the budget issues, but it appears the topic will be in the mix during the second special session. Republican State Senator Paul Sanford says he will introduce a bill to allow a statewide vote on a lottery, although any potential revenue would come too late this budget.

All this infighting among Republicans stems from the fact they hold all the power in state government says Birmingham-Southern College political scientist Natalie Davis.

“When you’re the only act in town, the probability of consensus drops,” said Davis.

That lack of consensus though has hardened into a stalemate.

“It is almost a zero sum game all the way around,” said Davis.  “So far we have deadlocked because everybody has got an answer but no one supports the other persons’ answers.”

One new factor for this second special session is the governor’s divorce. Bentley’s wife of 50 years filed for divorce last month and that’s fueled rumors of an extramarital affair. One state lawmaker has called for an investigation into whether Bentley improperly used state resources to cover up the reasons for the divorce. Bentley says he won’t let what he termed “distractions” get into way of resolving the budget crisis. But for a governor having difficulty getting his way politically, personal turmoil can’t help.