Budgets, Teacher Pay Raise Top House Republican Priorities

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The theme for Republican house members this year is Right for Alabama.

They released a list of 11 bills, ranging from refusing access to Syrian refugees to a new way of budgeting.

The plan is to make agencies account for every bit of their budget.

“Really asking all of the agency heads to come to us and justify every dollar that they have, not just come in and say this is what we had last year, this is what we want in addition to that. That’s a change from the way we operated before.” said Speaker of the House Mike Hubbard.

Lawmakers usually wait until the very end of the session to pass a budget, but this year Speaker Hubbard says it will be the top priority, especially after so many special sessions last year.

“I think you’re going to see us get to both budgets much quicker. We start the education trust fund budget in the house this year. i’ve talked to Chairman Poole and the plan is to start moving on that right away. We’ll start having public hearings and putting the budget together and the goal is to have it done well before spring break,” said Rep. Hubbard.

In addition to the new budgeting, house republicans are also proposing a teacher pay raise. Lawmakers approved a 2 percent raise in 2013. Teacher salaries hadn’t seen any increase since 2007 up to that point.

“What we’re saying is we’re committed to giving a pay raise. We know that they deserve it, we want to do it. We’re not giving a percentage at this point because we don’t want to get ourselves into a point where we overextend ourselves or we’re obligated to carry something out that we can’t maintain,” said Hubbard.

Some other bills include creating a school security task force, as well as a bill to prevent the sale of unborn infant body parts in the state.