General
Removing the Alabama state income tax from overtime pay was an idea almost everybody liked.
It even got the endorsement of Donald Trump, who said he wanted a federal tax exemption.
“The people who work overtime are among the hardest working citizens in our country and for too long no one in Washington has been looking out for them,” Trump said at a 2024 campaign rally in Arizona.
But it turned out that Alabama’s overtime exemption saved workers a lot more money than expected, and that was not good for the Education Trust Fund, which relies on state income taxes to pay for public schools.
Lawmakers put an expiration date on the exemption because of that very concern – uncertainty about how much it would reduce education funding. That date arrives June 30.
A bill that would keep the exemption in place has not advanced during the legislative session.
With three meeting days left, it’s too late for the bill to become law. So the overtime tax exemption will end.
Many other bills – close to 300 – are dead for this session.
They include a sales tax holiday for buying guns and ammo, a requirement that school systems allow students to leave campus for religious classes, and a bill to charge parents with a crime if their child brings a gun to school.
Others include prohibiting the use of chemicals to control the weather, NIL for high school athletes, and making illegal gambling operations a felony.
One proposal that died never officially became a bill.
Sen. Greg Albritton, R-Atmore, did not introduce his bill calling for a lottery, sports betting, and electronic gambling at the state’s former dog tracks and several other facilities, as well as a revenue-sharing deal with the Poarch Band of Creek Indians.
Albritton could not round up the 21 votes he needed in the Senate for the proposed constitutional amendment, which would have also required voter approval.
Read more: Alabama gambling bill defeated; sponsor declares issue dead for next 20 years
Here is a partial summary of the dead bills.
Overtime tax exemption
In 2023, House Minority Leader Anthony Daniels, D-Huntsville, sponsored the bill to exempt overtime pay, compensation for more than 40 hours a week, from the state income tax.
Daniels said families would benefit because employees could take home more of their pay.
He said it would help employers hire and retain workers at a time when Alabama has one of the nation’s lowest workforce participation rates.
Republicans supported the bill. Lawmakers from both parties and business leaders joined Gov. Kay Ivey for a ceremonial bill signing.
But last year, a Department of Revenue report found that workers claimed $230 million under the exemption during the first nine months of 2024, far more than the estimated annual impact of about $35 million.
Republican lawmakers said they were alarmed by the report. Income taxes are the biggest source of dollars for the education budget.
Daniels filed a bill to keep the exemption and do an economic impact study. He argued that the exemption helped boost employment, adding new workers who were paying the 5% state income tax on non-overtime pay.
Read more: Alabama paper plant technician: Overtime tax exemption ‘should not be taken away from us’
Daniels’ bill had 33 co-sponsors, including some Republicans.
But the Legislature pursued other tax bills instead, including a 1% cut in the state sales tax on food, an expanded tax exemption for retirees, and other adjustments to the state income tax.
Those bills, which are in position to pass, would save taxpayers an estimated $190 million a year.
Religious instruction
Current law says local boards of education can adopt policies to allow students to leave campus during the school day for classes, including religious classes.
But few Alabama school systems have done so.
Bills filed this year by Rep. Susan DuBose, R-Hoover, and Sen. Shay Shelnutt, R-Trussville, would require local school boards to adopt the policies for off-campus classes.
Students would receive credit for the classes as elective courses.
The bills have not advanced.
The House Education Policy Committee rejected DuBose’s bill.
Second Amendment tax holiday
A bill by Rep. Ernie Yarbrough, R-Trinity, would have exempted purchases of guns, ammunition, and hunting supplies from the 4% state sales tax from Memorial Day until the Fourth of July each year.
Alabama has sales tax holidays for other categories of merchandise, including back-to-school supplies and severe weather emergency supplies.
The 2nd Amendment tax holiday bill, which had 21 Republican co-sponsors, failed to win approval by the House Ways and Means education committee.
Locking up guns
A bill by Rep. Barbara Drummond, D-Mobile, would hold parents criminally responsible if their children carry a gun to school and if the gun was not locked up at home.
Drummond said her bill was not an anti-gun measure but was intended to help stop school shootings and make schools safer.
Drummond pointed to incidents like the discharge of a gun inside the backpack of a second grader at a Huntsville elementary school in February and a shooting at LeFlore High School last year to help show why the bill was needed.
Drummond’s bill would have made it a Class A misdemeanor, which can result in up to a year in jail and a fine of up to $6,000, if a parent or guardian failed to “reasonably secure” a gun at home and their child took it to school.
“Reasonably secure” would mean storing a gun with a trigger lock or in a locked gun box or safe.
But the House Public Safety and Homeland Security Committee voted down Drummond’s bill.
It was the third straight year for Drummond to sponsor the bill.
NIL for high school athletes
Rep. Jeremy Gray, a Democrat who represents Lee and Russell counties in east Alabama, sponsored a bill that says high school athletes cannot be prevented from receiving compensation for the use of their name, image, and likeness (NIL).
College athletes have been able to legally receive NIL money since 2021.
The bill by Gray, a former high school and college football player, would place some restrictions on NIL money for high school athletes.
The payments could not be contingent on specific athletic performance or achievement. They could not be used as an incentive to enroll or remain at a specific school.
Also, students could not receive NIL money for any appearances that used the school’s name, uniform, or facilities, or for endorsing tobacco, alcohol, or any other products in conflict with school policy.
Gray’s bill has not advanced out of a House committee.
Flying drones over schools
Alabama has a state law against flying drones near state prisons, an effort to keep contraband like phones, drugs, and weapons out of prisons.
Read more: Alabama woman accused of using drone to drop marijuana into maximum security state prison
Rep. Cynthia Almond, R-Tuscaloosa, proposed a bill to apply a similar prohibition on flying drones over or near public schools.
Her bill would have made it a misdemeanor to fly a drone within 500 horizontal feet or 400 vertical feet of a public school without the consent of the school administrator.
A violation would be a Class C misdemeanor and carry a fine of up to $500 and three months in jail.
The penalties would be harsher for using a drone to take photographs or video of a school without consent. That would be a Class A misdemeanor and could result in a fine of up to $6,000 and up to a year in jail.
Almond’s bill also would make it a Class A misdemeanor to knowingly photograph, record or observe a person where they have a “reasonable expectation of privacy,” such as at their home or in their yard.
Almond’s bill stalled in the House Judiciary Committee after lawmakers said it could make it a crime for people to fly drones over their own property if they lived near schools and raised other concerns.
Spraying chemicals to stop global warming
Rep. Mack Butler, R-Rainbow City filed a bill to prohibit spraying chemicals into the atmosphere to try to influence the weather.
His bill would make it a crime to “knowingly inject, release, or disperse, by any means, any chemical compound, substance, or apparatus within or above this state for the purpose of affecting weather, including temperature or the intensity of sunlight.”
Butler said his bill came in response to concerns he had heard about plans to use chemicals to try to offset the effects of climate change.
“For many years we as a state have been at war with the federal government trying to cram values down our throats that weren’t Alabama values,” Butler said. “I see this as no different.”
Conspiracy theories about the government controlling the weather circulated last year after Hurricane Helene, including claims that the storm was steered to North Carolina.
Related: James Spann reported threats over hurricane misinformation: ‘If you hate me that is fine’
Georgia Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene helped fuel the rumors and posted on X a link to a 2016 video of CIA Director John Brennan talking about stratospheric aerosol injections (SAI), “a method of seeding the atmosphere with particles that can help reflect the sun’s heat” to “limit global temperature increases.”
A 2023 report by the Congressional Research Service, said SAI and similar methods were theoretical and that no experiments at scale had been carried out.
A House committee held a public hearing on Butler’s bill but took no vote on the bill.
Increased penalty for illegal gambling
Rep. Matthew Hammett, R-Dozier, filed a bill to increase penalties for illegal gambling operations from misdemeanors to felonies, an effort to strengthen laws that do not appear to be working.
Hammett’s bill would have raised the range of sentences and fines for possession of electronic gambling machines and other offenses and imposed harsher penalties for repeat violators.
Hammett worked with Covington County District Attorney Walt Merrell on putting more teeth in the law after seeing convenience stores in his district selling scratch-off tickets, like those offered in states with legal lotteries.
Merrell told Hammett the penalties under the current law were not severe enough to keep the illegal games from coming back.
Lawmakers who have led high-profile efforts to pass bills on a lottery and other expansions of illegal gambling have said a main purpose is to crack down on wide-spread illegal gambling.
Hammett’s bill has not advanced out of a House committee.
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