With the seasonal flight of jolly beneficence behind us, we turn from children’s wish lists for Santa to the more sober exercise of New Year’s resolutions. The Alabama Policy Institute (API) offers a worthy starting point with its 2025 Blueprint for Alabama – less a collection of aspirational promises than a concrete agenda for state governance.
From this capacious document emerge several proposals warranting particular attention.
Consider the state’s Byzantine maze of occupational licensure. Alabama’s labor force participation rate of 57.6% speaks to a peculiar paradox: more than two-fifths of working-age Alabamians have opted for economic hibernation. The culprit, in significant measure, is a regulatory labyrinth ranked 47th nationally in its complexity by API’s 2018 analysis.
The reforms proposed are both sweeping and sensible: protecting whistleblowers from bureaucratic retribution, conducting a thorough audit of existing licensing requirements (with particular attention to those requirements that exceed neighboring states’ standards), and embracing universal license recognition. The latter reform, already adopted by 20 states including Mississippi and North Carolina, would recognize licenses granted by other states – a modest genuflection to interstate comity.
Equally compelling are API’s prescriptions for tax reform. Alabama finds itself in the enviable position of record revenue collection – $14.115 billion in fiscal year 2024, with the Education Trust Fund experiencing nearly 80% growth over the past decade. This embarrassment of riches suggests the time is ripe for tax relief.
These two proposals thus merit attention: reducing individual income tax rates to a flat 3.95% – which would give Alabama regional preeminence among states that still burden their citizens with income taxation – and the complete abolition of the state’s business privilege tax, an archaic levy on the mere existence of commercial enterprise within state borders. The latter reform would liberate Alabama businesses from a $200 million annual tribute to the state’s regulatory apparatus.
Among the more grotesque manifestations of government paternalism is Alabama’s certificate-of-need (CON) regime, requiring healthcare providers to grovel before state authorities before expanding services or facilities. Reminiscent of a medieval guild system, whereby incumbent firms oppose newcomers’ entry into their fiefdoms, the CON system persists in 35 states. Alabama’s encompasses 17 distinct services.
The process is as costly as it is complicated: applicants must tender up to $25,706 just to petition the CON Review Board – a sum that grows substantially should one’s supplication be contested. This setup produces a predictable result: existing providers wield regulatory authority as a cudgel against potential competitors, creating an artificial scarcity of medical services.
The broader regulatory landscape also calls for reform. While the public imagines elected representatives crafting rules governing quotidian life, the reality is more prosaic: countless anonymous bureaucrats translating legislative frameworks into regulations, often with substantial economic consequences. The proposed Regulations from the Executive in Need of Scrutiny Act (REINS Act) would require legislative approval for regulations exceeding certain cost thresholds – a modest proposition that democracy should not end where bureaucracy begins.
The federal government’s tentacular reach into Alabama’s educational system – accounting for 17.3% of K-12 spending – invites scrutiny, not least for the conditions attached to this pecuniary largesse. Recent controversies over Title IX interpretations regarding bathroom access and the Obama administration’s school lunch decrees hint at the regulatory excesses accompanying federal dollars.
The web of requirements attached to federal education money remains curiously opaque to the very citizens whose children and tax dollars are subject to its dictates. While Alabama’s Department of Education maintains certain transparency requirements for local school boards, no comparable obligation exists regarding the federal mandates that increasingly shape educational policy.
The proposed remedy – mandatory disclosure of federal guidelines accompanying educational funding – represents good governance and democratic hygiene. Recent years have witnessed Alabama’s laudable progress toward educational transparency; this reform would extend that principle to the federal dimension.
API’s agenda extends beyond economic reforms to address substantive cultural concerns: restricting abortion-inducing pharmaceuticals, incentivizing pregnancy resource centers through tax policy, proscribing certain public performances oriented toward minors (think drag queen story hour), permitting chaplaincy programs in public schools, and establishing guardrails against gender ideology in educational settings.
This only scratches the surface of API’s encyclopedic compilation. The curious reader would do well to examine the full document, to which I might add one modest proposal for consideration: a constitutional amendment to overhaul the composition of the University of Alabama System’s Board of Trustees.
The present constitutional architecture for this university’s governance is curious: a self-selecting board with limited external accountability. The arrangement – allocating three trustees from the congressional district housing the Tuscaloosa campus and two from each of the other six districts, with the governor serving ex officio – suggests democratic representation while facilitating institutional inertia. Board members, elected by their peers and confirmed by the Alabama Senate, may serve three consecutive six-year terms, fostering conditions that tend toward preserving the status quo.
The result is predictable: a board often more inclined toward institutional harmony than robust engagement with fundamental questions of university governance and direction.
The challenge of revamping this governance structure – ensuring both institutional stability and active, principled oversight – needs more extensive examination than space permits here. But the principle is clear: effective university governance requires more than passive stewardship; it demands active engagement with the institution’s core mission and values.
Although personal resolutions often fade with January’s waning light, these API proposals for long-term improvement supply something more substantial: a roadmap for lasting measures that extend beyond individual resolve to systemic renaissance. The question remains whether Alabama’s leadership will demonstrate courage equal to the moment.
Allen Mendenhall is Associate Dean and Grady Rosier Professor in the Sorrell College of Business at Troy University and Executive Director of the Manuel H. Johnson Center for Political Economy. Visit his website at AllenMendenhall.com.
The views and opinions expressed here are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the policy or position of 1819 News. To comment, please send an email with your name and contact information to Commentary@1819news.com.
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