Ala. Gov. proposes cuts, funding shift

MONTGOMERY, Ala. (AP) - Gov. Robert Bentley proposed state budgets Wednesday that take the politically sensitive steps of cutting employees and using tax money traditionally spent on public education to operate state agencies.
    
Bentley's state finance director, Marquita Davis, said the Republican governor is shifting $185 million in Medicaid costs for children from the General Fund budget to the state education budget. He's also transferring $45 million in tax revenue from education to the General Fund budget to help state agencies.
    
She said the Republican-controlled Legislature can accept his plan to shore up spending on state agencies or get ready to free thousands of state prisoners and make big cuts in public safety and social services.
    
Davis said the governor's proposed $5.4 billion education budget cuts 1,381 teaching and administrative positions in public schools, but attrition should take care of that. It cuts overall spending on education at all levels, but maintains popular programs that have helped improve student performance, including the Alabama Reading Initiative.
    
Bentley's $1.4 billion General Fund budget is based on merging some small state programs into larger agencies, including putting the Department of Labor into the Department of Industrial Relations.
    
Bentley's General Fund budget for fiscal 2013 would fund prisons and state troopers at about the same levels as this year's budget, but other agencies would take cuts ranging from a few percent to 24 percent, which Davis said could lead to personnel cuts.
    
Davis said the governor designed his General Fund budget to maintain social services for the neediest in Alabama, but his plan hinges on several things happening. For instance, nursing homes and hospitals would have to agree to take less money for the Medicaid services they now provide.
    
The executive secretary of the Alabama Education Association, Henry Mabry, said Bentley's budgets take money from children's educations to maintain state prisoners. "That makes no sense whatsoever," he said.
    
Davis said if the Legislature balks at spending $230 million in education revenue on what has traditionally been General Fund expenses, then it will have huge consequences.
    
"They can release 11,000 prisoners. They can decide that children won't have child care," she said.
    
Bentley's plan for shifting education revenue to state agencies is a step toward his recently announced goal of combining both state budgets into one budget like most states have. Davis said the governor won't propose a budget merger during 2012.