This year’s Alabama Senate session will be the last for Sen. Phil Williams, R-Rainbow City, who is stepping down from his office after two terms to focus on running his law firm, Williams and Associates.
Though it’s his final session as a senator, it’s a first for Alabama: This year both sides of the state’s split budget have surplus funding, allowing a bit more room in how to spend money and what to use it on, according to Williams.
“The economy has boomed this past year, and in the previous year or two back, we reallocated growth revenues, sales tax went up, the use tax went up and for the first time in memory, the General Fund has some new money,” said Williams.
The Education Trust Fund also did a bit better than expected, said Williams, which may be used to give educators a pay bump, alongside state employees drawing from the General Fund. Williams said there also been cost-of-living raises for educators in the last few years, a trend he’d like to see continue.
“It’s not as much as I’d like, but my hope is that we can do that again this year,” he said.
Weighing against that surplus is the state prison system, operating at a 172 percent capacity, according to Williams, and the burgeoning cost of Medicaid.
Williams said Medicaid came in under budget in 2017, the first time he said he can remember that happening, though not by much. Enrollment was lower, he explained, with a cheaper cost for pharmaceuticals.
The prison system, however, is still operating beyond its means to keep offenders detained. Sentencing reform has eased overpopulation from about 194 percent down to 172 percent, said Williams, though it’s still not enough. He said he expects this year’s budget will include a supplemental approach to funding prisons in an effort to control spending; rather than prorating the budget and allocating funds up front, correctional departments will need to request supplemental funding when spending has exceeded the budget.
Medicaid and prisons account for a full half of the state’s entire budget, according to Williams, which makes them pressing concerns.
While he doesn’t have any local bills in the pipe for this session, Williams plans to support other initiatives at the state level, including a provision to offer help to veteran-owned businesses, the revisiting of anti-abortion bills that were challenged by federal courts and determining the licensure of daycares, especially when those daycares are Christian churches or schools, where state involvement in the curriculum may be inappropriate.
“We’re walking a fine line between the two, but not sacrificing the possibility of religious freedom,” he said. “We’ll find the middle ground.”
As a member of the Alabama Human Trafficking Task Force, Williams also is involved with legislation to allow victims of human trafficking to seek restitution from their traffickers, as well as users of services related to human trafficking, whether sexual or commercial, such as the illegal employment of workers at construction sites.
Williams said even after his exit from politics, there are a few “passion projects” that he plans to remain involved in locally: the Interstate 759 extension in Gadsden, the Little Canoe Creek Megasite and renovations of the Cherokee County Courthouse, which he said is in disrepair.
“I still have some issues around the house I still want to keep plugging away at,” he joked.