With millions of dollars left to locate, the Alabama Legislature will soon return to Montgomery for a second special session in 2015. And one local senator doesn’t think that money will be found by way of new taxes.

On August 18, speaking to the St. Clair County Mayor’s Association, Sen. Jim McClendon of Springville presented his analysis of the state’s General Fund Budget crisis. McClendon outlined several issues that he said have contributed to the state’s projected shortfall for fiscal year 2016 and predicted reason’s behind lawmakers’ inability to agree on a budget.

At the root of the problem, McClendon said, is that the three separate bodies needed to make the decision — the Senate, House of Representatives and the Governor’s Office — have not reached a consensus on how to cover the impending lack of revenue. In previous years, money has been available outside the General Fund that lawmakers have utilized, but those surpluses and streams appear to have dried.

Gov. Robert Bentley, in response, proposed several tax increases, but McClendon said some lawmakers would rather see cuts.

“These taxes are really great as long as they’re taxing someone else,” he said, explaining that opposition has been abundant.

McClendon said legislators fielded retaliation to every proposed revenue-generating measure that was proposed. He said ideas to increase income tax collection were met with broad pushback, and measures like the “soda tax,” where lawmakers proposed to collect approximately 5 cents per can on certain beverages, were fought strongly by companies including Coca-Cola and Buffalo Rock.

He also said a cigarette tax appeared the most likely to receive support until an awareness campaign informed the public about higher taxes on electronic cigarettes and vapor products.

“I received hundreds of emails a day from the vape folks,” McClendon said.

With that, the Senate sent a proposed budget to the House at the close of the Special Session that McClendon supported. Since the public outcry against new taxes had been so strong, the Senate’s budget called instead for cuts to state agencies by approximately 18.5 percent, he said. McClendon called the reduced budget “pretty devastating” for government agencies, including law enforcement.

The Alabama Law Enforcement Agency (ALEA) has been a vocal opponent of budget cuts in 2016. In a release from ALEA Secretary of Law Enforcement Spencer Collier on August 12, the department reported that an independent agency recently determined Alabama has less than half the state troopers it needs to adequately patrol state roads.

“We are operating at 42 percent of recommended staffing, according to a recent study by the University of Alabama’s Center for Advanced Public Safety (CAPS), with only 418 State Troopers to cover Alabama roadways which is also substantially less than surrounding and similar-size states,” Collier said in the release.

However, McClendon said motives for moving the conversation to cuts are connected to an idea he and fellow lawmakers are beginning to agree upon — there’s already enough money in the system.

“No new taxes is not what this is about,” McClendon told the audience at the meeting.

He said lawmakers are currently taking a closer look at agency funding in the short window before the next session in order to find specific reductions, and it’s unlikely the gap in funding — currently more than $200 million — will be filled by revenue increases.

“The governor proposed all these new taxes,” McClendon said. “He didn’t have one we went along with, and I don’t think we’re going to.”

Gov. Bentley has not set a date for the second special session. The state’s fiscal year begins Oct. 1.