Legislature Has Responsibility to Do Our Job the First Time
By Cam Ward, State Representative

             The Alabama Legislature has one constitutional responsibility each time we begin a regular session- to pass an operating budget for the next year.  While we also take on many other important issues that face our state, in the end we are constitutionally obligated to pass a balanced budget.  With only a few days left in the current session of the legislature we are in danger of failing to meet this responsibility we have to the people. 

             I have several problems with the current budgets we have adopted.  In fact I voted against the General Fund budget because I think it just merely puts a band aid on top of band aids to what the real problems are in our state.  But in the end we must all sit down and develop the best budget possible.  There are some in Montgomery who would prefer this argument take place in a special session of the legislature.  I could not disagree more.  Every time the legislature goes into special session we place an unnecessary cost of over $500,000 on the taxpayers of this state. 

             So far three or four different special interest groups have tried to draw a line in the sand and say either they get 100% of what they want in the budget process or we should have no budget at all.  This self-serving strategy only harms the people who we have been sent to Montgomery to represent.   There are several changes I would like to see made to the current budgets being debated.  I have always felt like we should budget based on prior year revenues as opposed to what we might take in next year.  I also believe that in the end there are several wasted expenditures that need to be removed from the budget.  Some wasted spending has been removed but others still need to be eliminated to make government run more efficiently.