MONTGOMERY, Ala. — After hours of procedural delays at the Alabama Senate, lawmakers on Tuesday approved a record-high $3.8 billion General Fund budget for 2026, sending it to Gov. Kay Ivey’s desk for final approval.
An increase over this year’s budget by about $348 million, the 2026 General Fund is roughly $14 million more than what Ivey had initially proposed, with increases for law enforcement, airport development grants and public health constituting the bulk of the increases.
“We were able to up some funds for regional airports and try to make sure that everybody’s taken care of with all the agencies, so I think they’d done a really good job with that,” said House Speaker Nathaniel Ledbetter, R-Rainsville, speaking with reporters early Wednesday morning outside the House chamber.
The budget passed out of the House in early April at $3.67 billion with the aforementioned increases for law enforcement and airport development grants, though saw $3 million in funding for broadband expansion stripped out in a Senate committee last week.
When tackled in the Senate Tuesday, however, that broadband expansion funding was restored, and through a bill substitute, more than $6.8 million in additional funding was added, including the aforementioned increase for public health to the tune of $2.16 million, $1.5 million for Port Authority capital projects, and $1.5 million for rural and energy infrastructure development.
An amendment from Sen. Clyde Chambliss, R-Prattville, also made part of the funding for the Board of Pardons and Paroles conditional, contingent on the board revising its parole guidelines as required by state law, which the board is currently two years late on doing.
Why lawmakers didn’t end up passing the GF budget until nearly midnight was not due to disagreements on the budget. Rep. Rex Reynolds, R-Hazel Green, the chair of the House General Fund budget committee, said he and the Senate budget chair Sen. Greg Albritton, R-Range, were in constant communication on proposed changes to the budget.
“A lot of changes up there, but it was good,” Reynolds told Alabama Daily News. “Chairman Albritton and I communicated through the weekend and most of the day yesterday and put us in a good position to concur.”
Rather, the delay was due to Sen. Rodger Smitherman, D-Birmingham, requesting that the entire 133-page budget be read line by line on the Senate floor, a process that took just over four and a half hours. Smitherman often uses the Senate rules, including talking for the maximum allowed time about bills on the floor, to delay action, as he did earlier Tuesday.
During the four-plus hour process, the lower chamber voted to carry over Senate bills carried by Smitherman, and went into recess twice as they awaited the budget to pass out of the Senate. Once the budget reached the House, members unanimously concurred with the Senate changes with no discussion, and later voted to approve Smitherman’s bills it had previously carried over.
Leaving the Senate floor just after midnight, Smitherman told ADN that his request to have the budget read aloud was not due to any specific issue with any of its inclusions, but rather, as an effort to “slow down the process,” and give lawmakers time to consider the impacts of not just the budget, but other bills moving through the legislature in the 2025 legislative session’s final days.
Several Birmingham-area Democrats are still upset about legislation to overhaul the Birmingham Water Works Board. It passed the Senate unanimously and now awaits a House vote.