The Alabama Legislature is gearing up for a new session in February, and local delegates visited Dothan to discuss the top issues they expect on the legislative floor.
Rep. Steve Clouse, Rep. Paul Lee, Rep. Jeff Sorrells, Rep. Rick Rehm, Sen. Donnie Chesteen, and Sen. Billy Beasley appeared at the Wiregrass Rehabilitation Center for Eggs and Issues, a Chamber of Commerce event previewing the public on the legislature’s plans for 2025. While various topics were discussed, it was clear local legislators are focused on a lottery bill, driving economic development by improving education, and tackling faltering healthcare systems around the state.
Gambling
Gaming is a hot topic in Alabama — one of only five states without a lottery.
The state misses out on a large amount of money yearly because those who want to play the lottery are forced to travel across state lines, thus handing revenue to surrounding states.
Sen. Billy Beasley, who has been in the legislature for 26 years, said lottery legislation passed both chambers in 1999, but it failed a general vote.
“It got torpedoed by outside interest,” he said.
Gambling legislation failed again last year; Beasley said the sponsor of the bill voted no at the advice of the Poarch Indians, who sold their casino this year.
“I’m ready for the issue to be sent to the people because it’s a constitutional amendment,” he said. “All you do is align the people of Alabama to make the final vote.”
Education
Houston County is one of the lowest-funded districts in the state of Alabama.
Rep. Steve Clouse said he hopes the legislature will focus on modernizing the school funding formula.
Currently, the state determines funding levels by enrollments submitted by the schools; 40 states in the U.S. have done away with this method, instead pivoting to a student-based funding model.
“You can’t educate every student for the same dollar,” Clouse said.
Potential ideas would make sure every school would get a base level of funding, then adding more money for poverty, special needs students, gifted students, and rural communities.
Clouse said school funding would be a “big topic” in the upcoming session.
“I don’t know if we’ll get there this year, but the conversations have begun.”
Sen. Donnie Chesteen said Alabama was in the seventh year of “record growth” in state education budgets.
The CHOOSE Act passed earned great interest from Alabama families. The act allows up to $7,000 for families to send children to private schools instead of public schools.
Special needs students get first preference for funds, followed by military families and then families deemed eligible within a certain income.
Another issue on the legislature’s mind is the amount of graduates attending college or secondary education. About 46% of Alabama high school graduates do not attend college, Chesteen said.
“They’re basically getting the high school diploma and we’re saying, ‘good luck with your minimum wage job,’” Chesteen said. “What are we doing to prepare these kids for the workforce?”
Legislators hope the last session’s Alabama Workforce Pathways Act can help students get jobs.
With this legislation, students can substitute math and science courses for career courses.
Chesteen said Alabama has a 57% workforce participation rate, and this legislation could also help that statistic.
“Let’s give them a skill they can go to work with,” he said. “If we want to move that labor participation rate, that’s the way to do it.”
Rep. Rick Rehm said the issues go back to economic development.
He said the education system is a healthy industry — supported and tax-based — but taxes are not the be-all-end-all solution.
“We cannot tax our way into prosperity,” he said. “You have to create an atmosphere in which industry wants to come and business wants to thrive,” he said.
Healthcare
Rep. Paul Lee, also the executive director of Wiregrass Rehabilitation Center, said healthcare was a primary issue for Alabama’s governing body.
The Alabama Political Reporter said 14 rural hospitals closed since 2010.
“The importance of rural hospitals is tremendous,” Lee said.
1819 News reported 252 pharmacies have closed from 2019 to 2024.
Lee said the closures can be partially attributed to not enough reimbursements for medications.
“Our rural pharmacies are closed, and that is the heart of the Columbia, of the Cottonwood, of the Wicksburg, the smaller towns in those areas,” he said. “Those pharmacists know everyone, and when those close, let me tell you, it’s difficult.
“We’re fortunate here, but we have deserts in the Black Belt of the state that maybe they don’t have a hospital, they don’t have pharmacies, they don’t have dentists.”
Beasley said the price of drugs can drive a pharmacy to ruin with high costs; they can’t afford to stock higher-priced drugs, leading them to pay large amounts to get a prescription without much chance for reimbursement.
Beasley said he hopes to see regulations in the pharmacy benefit management industry, which determines how much drugstores have to pay to fill prescriptions.
“There needs to be some regulations in Washington on how pharmaceutical companies set up the prices of drugs,” he said.
He said he also plans to introduce a bill regulating the prices of drugs.
Lee said the legislature hopes to tackle the problem by incentivizing healthcare providers to stay in the state with better reimbursements.
Doctors can realize there’s more money to be made in surrounding states, leading to not as much incentive to stay and practice in Alabama.
“Hopefully we’re going to have some help now at the federal level that will address it,” he said.
Rep. Rick Rehm
Sen. Donnie Chesteen
Sen. Billy Beasley
Rep. Steve Clouse
Rep. Jeff Sorrells
Rep. Paul Lee
