FM Talk 1065 Podcasts
State Senator Andrew Jones - Jeff Poor Show - Thursday 10-03-24
[MUSIC PLAYING] From Buck's Pocket to the shores of Orange Beach, at all points in between, an insider's perspective on Alabama politics. It's the Jeff Porshow. I don't think Hank done it this way. [MUSIC PLAYING] Good morning, and welcome back to the Jeff Porshow. And if you talk 106.5, thanks for staying with us on this Thursday morning, 251-343-0106 would be a touch with the program. All you do is text me. We'll get to a couple of text, and we'll get to our next guest here in just a moment. Andrew Jones, State Senator from Cherokee County. Let's see here. Dirt Digger, what good is $700 if there is nothing to buy in stores, keep striking you, your workers, illegal immigrants will have your jobs? We'll see what else got here. Mike, we had a buyer rider yesterday pick, and first wanted to my hotspot, then to the device to get an Alabama ID. And then finally, bad news yet. Told paper side of the SESCE is a luxury, a port of luxury right up there today, seeing the SESCE in good water to keep you alive, not a clean behind. I'm going to have to disagree with that, the sub-degree. I do believe it is a necessity in our modern-- I would put it up in the SESCE. A luxury is probably like-- I don't know that green egg grill you got out in your yard. Or something of that sort. So I'm not going to seed the toilet paper argument. Anyway, 2513430106, keep the text coming. We always appreciate the feedback. Joining us now on the line, he represents Cherokee County Center. But he's a state senator up that way. Andrew Jones joins us. Senator, good morning. How are you? Good morning, Jeff. I'm doing great. How are you? Hey, thanks for making time for us. I do appreciate special such short notice last night. But let me ask you this, when we get into the news of the day, how are the battle wounds healed from the-- especially the upper chamber there from this last session? Well, I think so. Folks are already starting to talk about next session. And I think we're about right past or right at the halfway point we've been out as long as we've got left until we go back in. So the focus has kind of shifted toward what's coming and what we're looking at. And we'll see some of the same old things. I'm sure that it's been coming up for the past few years that you might be referring to that will probably be coming back again. Do you think gambling is coming back again this year? I think it is. But I've yet to see any shift in the numbers in our chamber. So we'll see. But things happen that's politics and deals are worked out and things are crafted and we may end up getting there. Tell me this is your perception. I mean, you've been in for six years now. But everybody tells me, at least a handful that I talk to. Nothing is more divisive in your caucus meetings than this issue. There's a lot of emotions. And it does sort of like hang over the shoulder of the entire session when you try to deal with gambling. And that's why I think there's a reluctance to go after it again. Well, it does. It divides our caucus, in particular. Not always 50/50, but sometimes closer 50/50. Most things we deal with in a controversial or a red versus blue type issues. And this one kind of hits home a little bit harder. And it's a little bit-- when your brothers in arms and they're both in party have deep seated views on both sides. You know, a lot of people have this fundamental belief that gaming and gambling is just wrong. And other folks have a fundamental belief that it's democracy and you should let the people vote on the issue like this. So yeah, it's just family fights are never fun. Not to call it a fight. But you know what I mean? If this guy's maybe debate would be more accurate. Well, let's get you all what we talked about. And I can't explain this earlier in the program a little bit, but let me go back over it here. So a couple of years ago, Alabama did something that had been talking about for decades and started at least a ball rolling to repeal or reduce the grocery tax, taxable food. It's appalling that we tax food in Alabama, we've been told. And it's finally something's getting done about it. Somewhere in the bill there, though, for whatever reason, maybe it was somebody who was in y'all's ear at the time. But it created like kind of a floor on how much the municipalities could reduce or raise if they wanted to, I suppose, their grocery tax, their taxable food. And you, according to the 18-19 news story, my colleague Caleb Taylor there, you got to work on a fix this coming year. Is that what you think is that a possibility? Yeah, this really kind of called us all by surprise. First of all, to the back story, the County Commission Association of Alabama came to us and said, hey, we would like some safeguards in place because a county could get too ambitious, wanting to cut the grocery tax. They may end up in a bit of a pond, and we don't want counties or cities going bankrupt because they were too aggressive going back to this. So it was kind of like help us protect ourselves kind of thing. And of course, the league municipalities was kind of, they were, I think, more ambivalent, but they were inclined to go along with what the counties had requested. And so we took their language that they had asked for. Now, in hindsight, the way I read it is they-- if it says they may reduce it by 25%, that means they may reduce it by less than that. The way I would read it, I think a normal person would if you give them permission to lower it by that amount, then certainly they could do less than that. So it kind of took us by surprise that the revenue department made that determination. So that's one thing that needs to be cleaned up. But it probably needs to-- when you're talking about reducing a 4%, typically, there are 3 and 1/2 to 4% of what these counties have. Come out reducing that by 8% basis point, right? Would probably be more clear, but then it gets a little muddy. And so the language put in there, they could reduce that rate by 25% if that makes sense. So that is an issue. Now, we did say that they could not raise it to backfill the state's portion. I'm pretty certain on that. So they could reduce it. And we got to be clear, I guess, on the language, and nobody can look at all that. But also, there are plenty of other issues that we probably need to look at if we're going to open that back up. I'm happy to get into those when we get to that point. And just to kind of walk us through that, it's like, OK, the state does its part. It removes its portion of the grocery tax over time. And you just to keep them in this polity from saying, well, this gives us an opportunity to raise ours and fill that in, right? That's the keep them from opportunizing on it. That's right, because folks are used to seeing 9%, 10% and state takes the penny off. And senior county puts a penny back on. Nobody notices a difference, right? So there was a concern there from the get-go on this issue. Even years before we passed it, that you had to prevent that back billing from taking place. Let's talk about the state and the-- I mean, we've not had the growth necessary to get that next sent off or whatever it is. We've not had the increase in ETF. And it's hard to see. I mean, I know y'all are very smart people who give you economic forecast and looking. But I mean, just overall, it doesn't seem at least that the ETF is stable, and we're not going to have any sort of had to dip into any reserve funds here. I mean, it may be a couple of years. The way it looks, the way things are going, potentially, to get to continue the reduction. Well, that's correct. And part of the issue is, so in terms of the budget, we're going to have growth this year. We had growth the last couple of years. Now, it's the flatter growth. It's not as gangbusters as it has been. And actually, this year, they had said that sales tax growth had a little bit of a decline. But overall, revenue to the ETF has been increasing. So we've had the growth. The other side of that coin is, we have been, in terms of the grocery tax, has been a victim of our success. And what I mean by that is, the bill used the term net receipts to the ETF. So if it had used gross receipts, that would have been all the money coming in. But when you have net, that takes whatever we do in a tax cut, like I'm thinking, reducing the taxes on overtime pay, which I think everybody unanimously supported. Reducing the taxes bill I had to exempt national guard from income tax, all these tax cuts add up. And that means the net receipts into the ETF have declined. Another decline, they have not grown by 3 and 1/2%. So they haven't met that 3 and 1/2% threshold. Probably they would have. I'm just going to guess if we have been talking about gross receipts. Does that make sense, trying to simplify a complex issue? But that's the best way I know how to say it. Yeah, and then, I mean, this is not unexpected though, right? It was, things were kind of moving on, long in a rapid tick. And every year, it's an early year, record education budget, record education budget. And it was a realistic to expect that trend to continue. I don't think so, but that's sort of the handy-delt yourselves that we're going to do it this way. That's right. I think we've all known for a time that we can't keep up this pace of growth forever. Certainly, inflation was playing into all of that with some of the rapid growth, the federal stimulus money that had come down, which are just kind of like a shot cocaine to the economy, if you will. It just kind of made everything just kind of spiral. And that's why we're dealing with the after effects of inflation. And now the Federal Reserve has kind of got to pull what they feel like. It's kind of starting to turn the tide. And they can start backing off on the rates. But it may be a couple more years before we get back to firm footing. Yeah. But you guys did what-- the one thing you could say, we could agree or disagree about budgeting in the legislature. But it's a much different process, a much different fiscal approach than what we had even prior to 2012 or something like that when Republicans were first taken over and kind of figured things out. But the caution, even giving tax cuts, it seems to be less freewheeling than it ever has been in my lifetime in the State House. Well, yeah, I think we all know that it's the 2010 ride, the pro-ration. And that was from a 2008 recession that started. So we've known for some time that we can't sustain this level of economic good times and growth forever. So we have paid back all of the debts that in terms of the borrowing, the Alabama Trust Fund, all these other preserves. We filled them up. We created new ones. We had the rolling reserve and education budget. But then we created one for the general fund. And then we amended those to allow more to be held. We've not been budgeting and sending out the door everything that comes in. We've been kind of having to hold over and sustainable growth in both of the budgets. So I think we've done everything we can to shore things up and weather potential, uncertain economic future. So we've been cautious. And that's not a bad thing. But we've been able to do things like grocery tax cuts, largest tax cut now, then the history. We have been able to rebate money back to folks. Been able to do the overtime tax cut and several others that are kind of smaller in nature. And we'll talk about it real quick. We'll get you out of here on this. I guess there's question is, everything seems to be kind of lagging, right? Did it takes maybe a year or two for the economic conditions we're seeing about hearing about on TV to really have a profound impact on the-- even the general fund already ETF. Where do you think we are right now on that map? I'm asking all these fiscal questions, but they seem appropriate for this discussion. Yeah, I think we're turning the tide, but I think it's going to be a while before-- I think it could be a couple more years before things or back on the even playing field. But as well as I did, Jeff, any little things and upset the apple cart, something on Wall Street, or this issue with the porch right now. I've been-- everything I've read indicates that the impact of that will be felt not right now, but months down the road as things start to stack up, right? Even just if it lasted a week, there would be an impact potential in the holidays people were talking about from certain supplies, things people want for Christmas and the holidays getting in. And so the economy always lags, right? And usually the stock market is the first to rebound from what I've always learned in school. And the stock market is-- it went down a little bit during COVID, but now it's kind of back to getting at record levels. So we've got to get to a point where the people who are working, the Alabamians, are feeling it in their pocketbooks. And right now, they're spending more than they ever have on groceries and you name it. Health care, whatever it is. So we've got to get to a point where they are feeling it and they have more buying power with their wages. Senator, thanks for hopping on real quick and kind of giving us an update there. We've got some news, but I think it was useful. Let's talk again soon. That sounds great. Thank you, Jeff. Thank you. Say Senator Andrew Jones there. We've got to get a break here. We'll be right back. This is the Jeff Moore show, and if I talk, 106.5. Walk away from trouble if you can. Now you'll all be in your week if you're tiny and cheap. I hope you're old enough to understand.