By Chris Peeks February 20, 2022
That dreadful feeling happens to every one of us. Driving down the road, the gaslight catches our eye, alerting us that we need fuel. After finding the nearest gas station, we pull in. Then we look up at the giant sign. Like a punch in the gut, it notifies us of the cost. "Three forty-five a gallon," we curse under our breath. Fuel has increased, but it didn't have to be this high.
Back in 2019, as part of the Rebuild Alabama Act, Governor Ivey signed into law this ten-cent-a-gallon tax passed by the legislature. Now many things come to mind that make this very frustrating. For starters, Alabama has the nation's fifteen most enormous bureaucracy. Instead of trimming the waste, these fat cats chose to levy a gas hike on the people of Alabama. This is not even the worst part of it.
The amount of money Alabama throws away is criminal. Did you know Alabama spent a million dollars of covid relief funds on advertising for its beaches? Two hundred and seventy-seven million went to broadband expansion. Really? Did we spend covid assistance on high-speed internet? I'm just getting started on the frivolous spending of the pandemic money.
In 2019 Governor Ivey asked for bids on building new Alabama prisons. According to Dale Marsh, the prisons would pay for themselves with the money saved from closing some older ones. Also, Alabama released a lot of inmates, but Montgomery is using 400 million dollars of covid support to construct new inmate housing. This begs the question, what happened to the money they were supposedly going to save?
This brings me back to my original point. I only touched on the reckless spending of the covid resources. If they are that irrational with those reserves, imagine the pork projects in the yearly budget. With the amount of money squandered, a gas tax is out of the question. We have to vote these RINOs out. Otherwise, they're just going to keep throwing "your" money after bad.
By Chris Peeks
Reporter and Columnist
Alabama Political Contributor
Horrible!