Homewood chamber holds annual legislative roundtable
Homewood Chamber of Commerce members were caught up on the most recent legislative session at the October chamber luncheon.
Rep. David Faulkner and Sen. Jabo Waggoner spoke at the chamber’s annual legislative roundtable at Samford University. The legislators focused on the state budget and legislation that was relevant to the city of Homewood during their discussion.
Waggoner said a Birmingham Water Works bill, which he has worked to pass for the past three years, is one of the bills that could affect Homewood. The bill helped provide representation on the Water Works Board to cities throughout Jefferson County, Waggoner said, and brought the board members and employees under ethics laws.
He also noted the bill that annexed certain pockets of land into Homewood. These areas, which were previously in unincorporated Jefferson County, were annexed into Homewood by the Legislature during the first special session and will require people in those pockets of land to follow Homewood ordinances.
“That was significant to a lot of people,” Waggoner said. “So now Homewood will have some say-so on billboards in different locations.”
One of the biggest frustrations in this legislative session was the budget, Faulkner said, particularly figuring out the best way to balance the general fund budget.
“We had some struggles in trying to get people to agree in how we were going to get that done,” Faulkner said.
In the next legislative session, Waggoner said, discussions on the budget likely will involve conversations about lotteries and casino gambling. He said he has fought this sort of bill in the past, and it likely will come up again in order to fill gaps in the general fund.
“What we’re talking about in the next session is legalizing a lottery, and there’s a lot of pros and cons to that,” Waggoner said. “We’ll have a vote of the people. Some states are doing reasonably well. A lot of the states that legalized the lottery are not doing so well.”
Faulkner said he has heard support for establishing a lottery from people in his district.
“Most of the people I hear from, I will tell you, seem to be OK with a statewide lottery, knowing that the money is going to the state of Alabama,” Faulkner said. “I would say it’s a very high percentage of the people who are here in this district.”
Gambling, however, is less supported, Faulkner said. He also said that neither the lottery nor gambling will fix the state’s problem.
“Like Jabo, I’m not for that personally. I just think it goes back to this hole that we have in the general fund and trying to decide what we’re going to do,” Faulkner said. “In order to provide state services, how much do we keep cutting?”
The audience was also given the opportunity to ask a few questions. Samford's vice president of university relations, Randy Pittman, asked why the state did not combine the education trust fund and general fund.
“At my house, when there’s a shortfall in one fund and a surplus in the other, it’s OK because we just take one and fix the other,” Pittman said.
Waggoner said he could argue either side, but at the end of the day, the state always has the same amount of money.
“It would be a real uphill fight and battle to combine them now,” Waggoner said. “I think down the road, when we fix the general fund and we have a lot of revenue, hopefully at some point we will.”
The next Homewood Chamber of Commerce luncheon is scheduled for Nov. 17 at The Club.