As the Legislature begins the first regular session of the quadrennium this week, they face the daunting task of crafting a state budget demolished by the Great Recession.

The new Republican Legislature and governor have inherited a ship of state that is essentially sinking. They will have the dismal task of drastically reducing state services. Then they get to go back to their hotel rooms and eat cold peanut butter sandwiches for supper because they passed laws in their first capacity as legislators disallowing lobbyists from buying their dinner. They will have to cry in their own beer.

It is no wonder they also passed legislation in the Ethics Session that prohibits pass-through pork in the budgets because there will not be any pork to pass through.

Many lawmakers and fiscal experts suggest that our two state budgets are facing the most difficult challenge since the Great Depression. However, I submit that this current dilemma is the worst financial debacle in our state’s history.

During the Great Depression of the 1930s, the income tax had just been created by our federal government. Many states followed suit and created their own state income tax, including Alabama. Concurrently, our state’s schools had become abysmally under-funded. Many times the state could not even pay the schoolteachers. These devoted teachers were being paid with state IOUs and script. Most school buildings were one room and dilapidated. A farsighted governor named Bibb Graves latched on to the new income tax theory and earmarked it for education to ensure public education in Alabama would be at least minimally funded.

Over the past 70 years, the income tax has grown dramatically and is now the mainstay of the Education Trust Fund budget. Today the state income tax and state sales tax are the primary sources of revenue for education.

The Legislative fiscal office is predicting a $125 million shortfall in the Education Trust Fund budget. Joyce Bigbee, longtime chief legislative fiscal officer, is forecasting an identical $125 million shortage in the General Fund budget. This combined $250 million deficit is exacerbated by a loss of $1 billion of federal stimulus money. In addition, last year’s Legislature overspent the amount the fiscal office said was available, and the Riley administration left the cupboard bare by spending the state’s entire rainy day fund.

In short, the state is broke and $250 million short of last year’s budget. We are in proration. There are no federal dollars to bail us out. Our state unemployment rate hovers around 9 percent, which stymies any growth in the sales-and-income-tax-dependent Education Fund. Interest rates, which bolster the General Fund, are historically low.

The economy will eventually pick up. We will probably see a couple of lean years in the education budget. However, things look bleak for the smaller General Fund budget, which has received very little attention or new revenue for the last three decades since George Wallace’s last term as governor.

Senators Arthur Orr of Decatur and Trip Pittman of Baldwin County, along with Reps. Jay Love of Montgomery and Jim Barton of Mobile, have been given the unenviable task of chairing the budget committees in the House and Senate. They deserve our respect and need our prayers.

See you next week.

Steve Flowers’ political column appears weekly in 72 Alabama newspapers. He may be reached at www.steveflowers.us.