A bill to add $5 to the annual registration fee for vehicles to support public transportation was voted down by an Alabama Senate committee Wednesday.
Alabama is one of three states that provides no state funds for public transportation, according to Alabama Arise, which advocates for policies that help low-income families.
That results in a lack of reliable options for citizens who need transit to go to jobs, medical appointments, grocery stores, and handle other essential activities, advocates for the bill said.
SB91, by Sen. Linda Coleman-Madison, D- Birmingham, would have raised an estimated $26 million a year through the $5 annual fee, according to the fiscal note from the Legislative Services Agency.
The money would have gone to the Alabama Public Transportation Trust Fund, which the Legislature created in 2018 but has never funded. The money would have been used to increase public transportation options across the state, according to the bill.
The Senate Finance and Taxation General Fund Committee rejected Coleman-Madison’s bill on a 7-6 vote. Voting against it were Republican Sens. Chris Elliott, Sam Givhan, Keith Kelley, Steve Livingston, Randy Price, Larry Stutts, and April Weaver.
Voting in favor of it were Democratic Sens. Coleman-Madison, Billy Beasley, Merika Coleman, and Robert Stewart, as well as Republican Sens. Clyde Chambliss and Andrew Jones.
Charlotte Shaw, executive director and CEO of the Birmingham Jefferson County Transit Authority, spoke in favor of the bill. Shaw said the money is needed to match federal funds, especially to support transportation systems in rural areas that use vans to provide what she called “micro transit” services, rather than traditional buses.
“I think that’s what a lot of the senators were thinking when they voted for the bill, ‘We don’t need public transit,’” Shaw said. “But yes, you do. It may not look like what you’re used to it looking like.”
Shaw said federal Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, which passed in 2021, has provided grants that have helped with public transportation in Alabama, including in areas outside of urban hubs like Birmingham. But she said that funding runs out in 2026. She said the defeat of SB91 is a setback.
“They really did do an injustice to those people that don’t get to come to these meetings and they don’t get to see on a regular basis who are in need of the transit to even get to health appointments or seniors to get to the health facility, to the doctor’s appointments, to grocery stores, to their children,” Shaw said.
Beasley, one of the Democratic senators who voted for the bill, said he sees the need in his district, which includes all or parts of six counties in mostly rural southeast Alabama.
“I know first-hand a lot of folks that have medical appointments and they have to pay somebody to transport them 50,60 miles,” Beasley said.
Sen. Rodger Smitherman, D- Birmingham, said he first helped to develop a plan for public transportation in Alabama about 25 years ago but it was never adopted because of the lack of funding. A key obstacle is a constitutional amendment approved by Alabama voters in 1952 that prohibits the use of state gasoline tax revenue for anything other than road and bridge construction and maintenance.
Smitherman spoke in support of Coleman-Madison’s bill and said it would have benefits across the state.
“This is a very reasonable way to do the resources,” Smitherman said.
Jones, one of the two Republican senators who voted for the bill, suggested that Coleman-Madison amend it to allow counties to opt out of the $5 fee as one compromise that could help the bill pass.
Coleman-Madison said she was open to suggestions and would not give up on the effort to provide a dedicated funding source for public transportation.
“I would ask those of you who have objections to it, I would appreciate you bringing me those objections of how we can make this work to move our state forward,” Coleman-Madison said after the vote. “I daresay that the people who voted against it, your constituents would have been the beneficiaries of this. But if you have a better mousetrap, I ask that you bring it.”
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