The Alabama Legislature begins the 2023 session today with tax rebates, tax cuts, school vouchers, and choices on how to use several billion dollars in one-time revenue all in the mix.

There is discussion about repealing the state sales tax on groceries, an idea talked about for years that has never come close to passing. There will be bills affecting Alabama’s overcrowded and understaffed prison system, including proposals for both longer sentences and shorter ones. And there will be the big annual decisions about state budgets, including funding to put more teachers in classrooms and programs intended to improve learning in public schools.

The session starts at noon, followed by Gov. Kay Ivey’s State of the State address tonight at 6. Governors use the annual speech to announce their goals. It will be Ivey’s sixth State of the State address after her landslide election to a second full term in November.

One factor to watch is the impact of a large turnover in the House, including new leadership and 31 freshman members out of the 105. There are six new members in the 35-seat Senate. Republicans maintained their super majorities in November’s election and hold 77 seats in the House and 27 in the Senate.

Today’s business starts at 9 a.m. with budget presentations from the Legislative Services Agency and the state Finance Department. Those will include projections on how much revenue lawmakers have to allocate and analysis of trends that will help shape their decisions. The state community college system will also present its budget request.

The Legislature will decide how to allocate more than $2 billion in surplus education dollars, an unusual circumstance that is the result of tax revenues exceeding last year’s budget.

Lawmakers will also decide how to spend the state’s remaining $1 billion from the American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA), which Congress passed two years ago to help states recover from the economic and healthcare costs of the pandemic. Last year, Ivey called a special session to allocate most of the state’s first billion dollars from ARPA. Large portions of that money were appropriated for long-range needs, including expanding broadband internet access and improvements to water and sewer systems across the state. The Legislature used $400 million from Alabama’s first round of ARPA funds to help build two 4,000-bed prisons for men, projects expected to be finished in 2026.

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This story will be updated.