Steve Flowers: Inside the Statehouse - ACCS is just what the doctor ordered for Alabama jobs

  The recently completed 2025 Alabama Legislative Regular Session has concluded successfully. Any time you record solid balanced budgets, you have succeeded.

  Both the Education Budget and General Fund Budget are sound, thanks to the good work of the budget chairmen. Sen. Arthur Orr (R-Decatur), Rep. Danny Garrett (R-Trussville), Sen. Greg Albritton (R-Escambia), and Rep. Rex Reynolds (R-Huntsville) have done yeoman work. Legislative leaders, like Speaker Nathaniel Ledbetter (R-Rainsville) and Senate President Pro Tem Garlan Gudger (R-Cullman), have provided outstanding leadership.

A giveaway to the rich, disguised as school choice

  Our leaders call Alabama’s effective voucher program the CHOOSE Act. There’s some grim irony in that.

  Of course, you can choose to pay for private school tuition, whatever your reasons may be.

  But it’s not my choice. Or what the families of 730,000 Alabama students want. We pay taxes to support the teachers educating our children in public schools. And we want teachers and staff to have the resources they need to help students thrive.

  Yet our leaders plan to divert that money from classrooms into the pockets of wealthy families, in the form of $7,000 tax breaks. More if they have more than one kid enrolled in a private school.

Managing Alabama’s school funding problems isn’t fixing them

  There’s a pamphlet in the Alabama Department of Archives and History written by Booker T. Washington. It’s called “How To Build Up A Good School in the South” and dates from the first decade of the 20th century.

  Washington was trying to address a practical problem for Black Alabamians: how to keep their schools open. Because Alabama’s Jim Crow government had segregated the system and was doing all it could to destroy Black education.

In the Alabama Legislature, it’s culture wars first, retirees second

  As lawmakers locked in $12 billion in spending late in the recently-concluded legislative session, they discovered education retirees.

  These are the teachers and support staff who spent 20 or 30 years or more educating you and your children. They ensured the kids in their charge were fed, sheltered, and taught as best as local resources allowed.

  They haven’t seen a cost-of-living increase in their benefits since 2007.

Are Alabama’s state revenue streams too ‘wild’ to enact permanent tax cuts?

  The question of what to do with Alabama’s $3 billion revenue surplus continues as the 2023 Alabama Legislature regular session approaches.

  Rep. Danny Garrett (R-Trussville), the chairman of the House Ways and Means Education Committee, discussed the prospects of permanent tax cuts vs. tax rebates on Alabama Public Television’s “Capitol Journal” recently.

  Like other lawmakers weighing in on the issue, Garrett thinks lawmakers will eventually “do a rebate of some size.” But he also cautioned about the pushback over implementing a rebate versus putting all the money back into state government.

Steve Flowers: Inside the Statehouse: The future of online sales taxes and Alabama's roads

  My tradition for over two decades has been to give my children money for Christmas. Under this system, there is no returning of items. They get what they want or need. There is no way that I would know what style of clothing, color or size they like. It works well.

  The most illuminating thing that occurred to me this year is that both of my daughters and my granddaughter bought all of their Christmas gifts for me online. Without question, our country and state have changed dramatically in my lifetime in terms of technology. As a result, Alabama and other states have to change the way that sales tax is collected. States have to find a solution and the will to derive sales tax from online purchases.