For instance, if you deposit a portion of your monthly wages into a vacation account, you ‘earmark’ those dollars for the trip. But what if you lost your job? Common sense says to use the vacation money for utility bills and house payments, but the earmarking system of fixed budgeting wouldn’t allow you to withdraw that money for anything other than a vacation. I know that seems ridiculous, but that’s how your tax dollars are budgeted in Montgomery. That would be a foolish way to run your personal budget, and it’s a foolish way of running a state budget.

In Alabama, we earmark about 90 cents of every dollar before even deciding what part of government needs more, or less, money to operate. That’s the highest amount of earmarking in the entire nation. The national average for earmarking is 22 cents per dollar. Our neighboring states are nowhere near our number, with Georgia only earmarking eight cents of every dollar. They all discovered its ineffectiveness decades ago, reformed the process and moved on. Yet, Alabama remains in the past, trying to solve old problems with old, hopeless solutions.

We all know that public schools need better resources to give our children a competitive education. I believe that having the ability to transfer money into the education budget from a low-priority item in another budget is a smart move in these shaky financial times and can be used to avoid proration. The success of our economy shouldn’t determine the success of our schools.

That is why I recently created the Alabama Citizens’ Constitution Commission and ordered it to draft suggested revisions to our state’s governing document. One of its directives is to address the excessive and restrictive process of earmarking. My order explicitly directs the commission to “hold public hearings, deliberations, and draft suggested revisions to the constitution to reform the current system of earmarking in state budgetary matters while ensuring that our children’s educations are fully funded.” I prohibited the commission from considering any option that would allow money from the Education Trust Fund to be spent on any item other than education. While fundamental changes must be made in the entire education system, un-earmarking some of our non-education tax dollars would provide immediate relief to our schools – our number one priority.

State government may have surrendered its ability to effectively budget your tax dollars, but it still has that responsibility, and it’s a responsibility my administration will fulfill.