BIRMINGHAM — “We are going to raise taxes,” Governor Robert Bentley told the audience at the Public Affairs Research Council of Alabama (PARCA) conference Friday.
After months of floating hints of his plan to raise taxes to patch the $700 million hole in the state’s general fund budget, Gov. Bentley quit dancing around the issue and told PARCA conference attendees what “raising revenue” really means.
“After four years of saying we’re not raising taxes, and we have not, I’m telling you, for the next four years we are going to raise taxes,” Gov. Bentley said.
Bentley openly advocating for tax hikes is a relatively new development—he was elected twice on a platform of unreservedly opposing tax increases.
During a 2010 gubernatorial campaign debate, then-State Rep. Bentley unequivocally said “I am not for raising taxes,” citing tax hikes’ negative impact on businesses. “When you hurt businesses and you tax businesses, you’re going to lose jobs and we need to be creating jobs,” he said. He went a step further and signed Americans for Tax Reform’s “Taxpayer Protection Pledge,” committing himself in writing to opposing all tax increases. During his most recent campaign, Gov. Bentley’s re-election ads also prominently displayed the words “No New Taxes.”
In December, Americans for Tax Reform (ATR), the country’s leading anti-tax group, criticized Alabama Gov. Robert Bentley for proposing the elimination of certain state income tax deductions as a solution for the state’s budget woes.
“Enacting legislation that burdens taxpayers with higher taxes and fees to fuel exorbitant state spending, goes against his written promise to the people of Alabama to ‘oppose and veto any and all efforts to increase taxes,’” the group wrote on its website.
Bentley also told PARCA conference attendees Friday he was considering “all options,” including closing loopholes and even creating entirely new taxes.
In a plan that sounds eerily like one from President Obama’s recently proposed—and almost certainly doomed—budget, Bentley spoke of taxing corporations outside the state.
“I want taxes to be fair,” he said. “I don’t want to raise them on people if there are giant corporations outside the state not paying them.”
“We’re not in the same boat, but we’re going down the same stream,” Bentley said of the lawmakers with whom he will have to deal and compromise to pass a budget during the upcoming legislative session.
Convincing the Alabama State Legislature, the body tasked with passing and implementing the state’s appropriations is going to be a tough sell. Many legislators, including those in leadership in both houses, ran on a “no new taxes” pledge.
State Sen. Del Marsh (R-Anniston), the leader of the Alabama Senate, has been adamant in his opposition to tax increases.
“I’m not going to support any tax increase,” he said. “I look at this as a further opportunity to right-size government.”
“There’s a lot that needs to be done before you talk about raising taxes on working families,” State Senator and chairman of the General Fund Budget Committee Arthur Orr (R-Decatur) added to the Decatur Daily.
The Governor said specifics of his proposal might be ready next week.
The Alabama State Legislature will convene for the 2015 session on March 3rd, and will have 30 legislative days, spread out over about three months, to pass a budget for the upcoming fiscal year.
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— Elizabeth BeShears (@LizEBeesh) January 21, 2015
