Bills to cut the state sales tax on food and to send a one-time tax rebate to Alabama households are among dozens under consideration as lawmakers move into the final days of the annual legislative session.

Decisions remain about the education and General Fund budgets and about how to spend a massive surplus from last year’s education budget.

Other bills that could still become law would affect school policy, crime, and voting. The session resumes Tuesday. Seven meeting days remain out of the maximum of 30 allowed by the state Constitution.

Food tax

For decades, advocacy groups such as Alabama Arise and some lawmakers have called for a repeal of the state sales tax on groceries because of the burden on low-income families who struggle to pay for necessities. Bills to reduce the tax have never passed, mainly because the tax is a major source of funding for public schools. This year, there is more support than ever to reduce the tax, partly because of inflation.

All 35 senators and about 100 of 105 House members have endorsed a bill that would gradually reduce the 4 percent tax to 2 percent, which would mean a total tax cut of about $300 million when fully implemented. The reduced rate would apply to foods eligible under the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, previously called food stamps. House Speaker Nathaniel Ledbetter said the House will consider the grocery tax bill on Thursday.

Read more: How a grocery tax cut will help Alabama’s aging, rural population

Education budget

The Senate passed the state’s largest ever education budget, a plan to spend $8.8 billion from the Education Trust Fund, 6.5% more than this year. It includes a 2% raise for education employees and would add more than 100 teachers in grades 4-6 to help reduce class sizes. The budget is for the 2024 fiscal year, which starts Oct. 1. Ledbetter said the House would consider the budget on Thursday.

Education surplus/tax rebate

A bill to allocate an unprecedented $2.8 billion surplus in the education budget is being considered separately from the budget. The money is available because tax revenues exceeded spending last year. Gov. Kay Ivey proposed spending almost $1 billion of the surplus on one-time rebates, $800 for couples and $400 for individuals. The Senate rewrote Ivey’s spending plan for the surplus and reduced the rebate to $210 for couples and $105 for individuals. Ledbetter said last week the House could change the rebate bill, which is SB86, but did not give specifics. A conference committee would have to work out differences in the two versions.

The bill to allocate the remainder of the $2.8 billion surplus, aside from for the rebates, will be one of the most closely watched of the final days of the session. The version that passed the Senate included $512 million for community colleges for one-time expenses and $360 million for K-12 school capital projects to help with inflation that has driven up construction costs since a 2020 school bond issue.

Education savings accounts, school choice

A bill to create education savings accounts that parents could use to send their children to private school and for other expenses related to education has won approval in a Senate committee but has limited time to pass both the Senate and House. Parents could get $6,900 a year in tax dollars under the Parental Rights in Children’s Education Act, or PRICE Act. The money would come from the Education Trust Fund, the main state fund for public schools. The bill, SB202, places a annual cap of $50 million on the benefits paid during the first three years.

Another Senate bill, SB263, would expand eligibility for scholarships under the Alabama Accountability Act to students with a higher family income and require students using scholarships to take the state’s annual standardized test in math and reading. The Legislature passed the Accountability Act in 2013 to offer tuition scholarships for students who want to attend a school other than their assigned public school.

Divisive concepts

For the second year, many Republican lawmakers are backing bills that would prohibit public schools from promoting or teaching “divisive concepts” relating to race, sex, or religion. The bill emerged last year as part of national opposition to critical race theory, although it does not mention CRT. It passed the House last year but did not pass the Senate. This year, House and Senate committees have approved similar bills but neither have come up for a vote on the floor. Ledbetter has said he wants to see the Senate pass the bill first this year because that is where it died last year.

Transgender college athletes

A bill to prohibit transgender students from competing on college athletic teams that match their gender identity has passed the House and Senate by wide margins but has not yet received final passage because the Senate changed the bill and the House has not yet considered those changes. It would expand on a ban on transgender athletes in high school sports that passed last year.

Birmingham-Southern College loan

A bill to create a loan program for colleges at risk because of financial hardships came in response to the possible closure of Birmingham-Southern College. SB278 passed the Senate with no opposition and is pending in the House. A separate bill would allocate $30 million to the loan program for the education budget surplus, the amount Birmingham-Southern requested from the Legislature. .

General Fund

The House unanimously passed a record $3 billion General Fund budget, a 6% increase over this year. The budget is for the fiscal year that starts Oct. 1. The budget is for non-education state programs and would increase spending on Medicaid, prisons, the Department of Mental Health, the Department of Human Resources, and other agencies.

Absentee ballots

A bill to make it a felony to help a voter with an absentee ballot application or absentee ballot passed the House with strong support from the Republican majority and staunch opposition from Democrats. HB209 includes some exceptions, including for family members. But opponents said it would criminalize providing an absentee ballot application or ballot to voters who are elderly, lack transportation, or are incarcerated. Supporters said the goal is to prevent voter fraud. A public hearing is scheduled on the bill in a Senate committee on Tuesday.

Read more: Alabama may make it a felony to help someone fill out an absentee ballot

Retail theft

The Alabama District Attorneys Association has spearheaded a bill intended to crack down on the rise in organized retail theft. Montgomery County District Attorney Daryl Bailey, president of the ADAA, said the schemes typically involve selling the stolen merchandise online. Lawmakers on the House Judiciary Committee initially expressed concern that the bill would lead to felony sentences for a single shoplifting theft of any value. But the committee amended the bill to add value amounts and time elements intended to more narrowly focus the bill on organized theft. The bill, SB206, has passed the Senate and won approval from the House Judiciary Committee after the changes.

Mental health crisis support

A bill to create a 98-cents per month surcharge on cellphone and landline bills to support a system of crisis care for mental health is pending in the House and Senate. The bill would help fund call centers for the 988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline created last year and related services for those who call the line. The crisis care system includes four crisis care centers that have opened in Huntsville, Mobile, Montgomery, and Birmingham within the last two years, plus two more that will open this year in Dothan and Tuscaloosa. The system also includes mobile crisis teams for other parts of the state. Officials say the crisis care system is saving lives, helping people who might otherwise end up in emergency rooms or jail, and beginning to fill what was a large gap in mental health care in Alabama.

Land purchase restrictions applying to China

The House passed a bill, HB379, that would have prohibited citizens of China, including those living and working legally in Alabama, from buying property. The bill sparked an outcry across the state, and opponents reached out to lawmakers and paced a committee room for a public hearing. A Senate committee changed the bill to remove any restrictions on individuals and narrow the focus to certain counties, including China, Iran, North Korea, and Russia. The restrictions apply to land for agriculture and forestry and land near military installations and other critical infrastructure like power plants and airports. The Senate passed the amended bill, which returns to the House.

Bills that have already passed

Lawmakers have passed a number of bills, including some they named as priorities before the session started.

Those include four bills to renew, expand, and update the tax incentive laws Alabama uses to recruit industry; a bill to make impose mandatory prison time for knowingly possessing one gram or more of fentanyl, which that came in response to a surge in overdose deaths and a bill to reduce “good time” that state inmates can receive to shorten their prison sentences, which came in response to the fatal shooting of Bibb County Deputy Brad Johnson and problems cited with the good time system.

The Legislature passed a bill that takes steps toward construction of a new State House to replace the one built in 1963 for the state Highway Department, which the Legislature has used since 1985. The Retirement Systems of Alabama has requested proposals for designs on a new building that would be built close to the existing State House. No final decision has been made. The Legislative Council, a panel of 20 lawmakers, could give the go-ahead for an agreement under which the RSA would finance and build the State House and lease it to the council.