15 April 2005, Montgomery, Alabama: Last week marked the start of the final third of the regular session.  There is already talk of a special session for the Education Budget.  The senate has spent most of the session locked down in filibusters over the BellSouth deregulation bill and the disclosure bill.  All the while, there have been no senate introductions nor have they been able to accept House messages.   Because of the filibustering, the momentum for passage of the Construction Industry Good Samaritan Bill is stalled in the State Senate.

With the Senate facing a legislative log jam caused by an on-going filibuster over a bill that requires non-profit organizations to publicly disclose their contributors, lawmakers broke from their previous plans and moved an Education Trust Fund budget out of a House committee this week.  Originally, the legislative leadership had planned to originate the General Fund in the House and the ETF in the Senate.
 
As legislative days continue to tick off the calendar, the decision to move the ETF in the House was made in order to lessen the possibility that one or both budgets would fail to pass and allow the Governor to call lawmakers back into a Special Session that he would control.  Lawmakers also want to pass the budgets in time to override a gubernatorial veto, if needed.
 
Another factor was the Senate rule that requires unanimous consent for the body to transmit a bill to the House after the 24th meeting day, which will most likely occur on April 21.  Because of increased tensions and partisanship caused by the looming end of the session, it was feared that it would be next to impossible to get unanimous consent on the controversial ETF budget.
 
For these and other reasons, the House Education Finance and Appropriations Committee on Tuesday passed a $5.1 billion ETF budget that roughly mirrors one approved by its Senate counterpart earlier in the session.
 
Despite a promised veto from Gov. Bob Riley and dire warnings from even its own Legislative Fiscal Office, the committee approved, upon a voice vote, a 6% pay raise for teachers and school employees.  The budget, as approved, would demand 6% growth in earmarked ETF revenues in order to avoid the need for proration in public education or additional taxes in the next fiscal year.  To put that in perspective, as we have in previous updates, both the Executive Budget Office and the Legislative Fiscal Office are predicting growth of only about 4%, and, over the past 15 years, ETF growth has averaged about 4.7% annually.
 
Because a 6% pay raise would also add an additional $180 million in recurring expenses to the ETF budget, State Finance Director Jim Main noted that anything higher than the 4% recommended by Riley would result in proration and classroom and education program cuts as high as $100 million in the fiscal year 2007 budget cycle.  School employee salaries are constitutionally exempt from being prorated when education dollars are scarce.