MONTGOMERY, Ala. — Alabama lawmakers made a number of moderate changes to the 2025 General Fund and Education budgets Tuesday as they advanced through committees, including an additional $75.3 million in General Fund spending.
The changes also included shifting around money in the education spending bills – both the 2025 budget and the 2024 supplemental spending plan – to fund a summer food program for low-income children, as well as to provide workers compensation for teachers.
Tuesday morning, members of the House Ways & Means General Fund Committee, chaired by Rep. Rex Reynolds, R-Hazel Green, first took up Senate Bill 67, the 2025 General Fund budget that last passed out of the Senate at $3.32 billion.
Reynolds introduced a substitute to the bill that represented a nearly $37 million increase spread out across a number of state agencies.
“We used the additional revenues to plus-up the governor’s budget,” Reynolds explained to committee members. “The governor’s budget was a good, sound budget, certainly important to fund our agencies first, and we tried to get them back to where they were.”
The Senate had previously made some minor reductions to Ivey’s proposals.
Those increases, Reynolds later told Alabama Daily News, were possible due to what he said was a 16.6% increase in state revenues in 2023, with major contributors being the state’s Simplified Sellers Use Tax and interest earnings on state deposits.
“With the interest rates being up, we knew (revenues) were going to go up,” Reynolds told ADN. “We didn’t know how high they would go up and we didn’t know how long they would stay up, so we’re recognizing additional revenues all the way to September.”
Members of the committee also took up Senate Bill 66, the General Fund supplemental bill for the current fiscal year, which passed out of the Senate at $215.4 million. A substitute to the bill was introduced that included some moderate increases.
“The only deduction (from) the Senate version was the transfer of $500,000 to the Dovetail Landing veterans program,” Reynolds said.
With no discussion, committee members voted to adopt the substitute, as well as the bill itself as substituted.
Reynolds, when asked by ADN if he anticipated any pushback on the changes, said he had reason to believe his legislative colleagues would approve of the increases.
“I’ve been communicating with Chairman (Greg) Albritton daily in the last five or six days; I think we’re in a good place,” he said. “His budget was not disrupted, we just recognized additional monies to mainly go back and restore what the governor’s budget had in it.”
Later on Tuesday, members of the Senate Finance & Taxation Education Committee took up two education spending bills, the 2025 ETF budget, and the supplemental ETF budget for the current fiscal year.
While both budgets were substituted, neither saw a change in their total dollar amounts, but did see some dollars shifted around.
On the 2025 ETF budget, Sen. Arthur Orr, R-Decatur, the chair of the committee, summarized some of the differences.
“I want to point out a few highlights that we have here in the budget; one came at a request of this committee, and that was to place (automated external defibrillators) in the schools, and you’ll see an appropriation for that of $5 million,” Orr said.
“We also added $14.9 million for workers’ compensation for educators, (and) I know Sen. (Vivian) Figures has been a big advocate regarding the summer feeding program; that is in here, $10 million.”
“Praise the lord!” exclaimed Sen. Figures, D-Mobile, who had been a strong advocate for funding the summer feeding program.
“That’s what I’m talking about Mr. Chairman!” quipped Sen. Rodger Smitherman, D-Birmingham, another strong advocate for the program.
The additional funding was made possible by pulling $40.5 million from the Foundation Program, which funds basic K-12 education resources, including staffing.
While a sizable cut, members of the Alabama House passed the 2025 ETF budget with a $200 million increase to the program, meaning the program will still see a $159.5 million bump over this year.
As to the ETF supplemental budget for the current fiscal year, the substitute introduced included only modest changes, such as $8 million less for the Education Department’s Local Boards of Education, or $2.5 million more for capital projects.
One line item that did not change in the ETF supplemental budget when compared to what passed out of the House was $5 million for the Education Department’s struggling readers program, which the department had asked $22 million for.
The ETF supplemental budget ultimately passed out of the committee, as substituted.
Sen. Bobby Singleton, D-Greensboro, later told ADN that he would work to get the $5 million for the struggling readers program to as close as the department’s requested $22 million as possible.
On that program’s funding, Orr later told ADN that funding wasn’t the primary issue in declining to match what the Education Department had requested.
“My understanding is that it’s very difficult to find enough educators to even hire in the current system to help our children that are struggling readers in the fourth and fifth grade, so it’s not so much a money problem but a personnel problem,” Orr told ADN.
The General Fund and education budgets are both expected to appear in the House and Senate, respectively, on Thursday.