Whoops! Jim Zeigler’s State of the State rebuttal up against Super Bowl
State Auditor Jim Zeigler owned up Friday morning to what he called a “super-blooper”: Zeigler unwittingly scheduled a statewide broadcast of his conservative rebuke of Gov. Robert Bentley to air at the same time as Super Bowl 50 this Sunday evening. “How many viewers would watch Zeigler vs. Bentley instead of Peyton Manning vs. Cam Newton? Not many,” said Zeigler. Zeigler issued a statement owning up to the mishap and saying he will now try his best to “turn lemons into lemonade” by posting video and text of the speech available on the Web, where it can be accessed at any time, even during the big game. Alabama Today published the full text of the speech after Zeigler delivered it Tuesday. Video of Zeigler’s address can be found here. The speech will also air on 7 p.m. this Sunday, which will be about the same time as halftime of the Super Bowl matchup between the NFC’s Carolina Panthers and AFC’s Denver Broncos. Zeigler said he gave the address — an unusual move, as rebuttals are typically reserved for the party opposite the sitting governor — at the behest of two conservative advocacy groups, the Alabama Tea Party Conservative Coalition and the Common Sense Campaign. In the speech, Zeigler hammers at the priorities of Bentley, who the state auditor has blasted over state parks closures, the removal of official the portraits of Govs. George Wallace and Lurleen Wallace and other issues.
Jim Zeigler lays out his objections in State of the State rebuttal
The following was delivered in full by State Auditor Jim Zeigler in response to Gov. Robert Bentley’s 2016 State of the State address. See our coverage of the speech here. The State of the State is a mess. This could not have been made more clear as Governor Bentley once again betrayed Alabama taxpayers with plans for bigger government and increased spending as a solution to our problems. This embrace of Democrat principles comes in the wake of a tumultuous 2015 in which Gov. Bentley disappointed Alabamians with flip-flopping and repeated betrayal of our values and his campaign promises. This stew needs to be stirred. As the Governor said: “The urgency, the challenge is now.” The legislature has received budget requests that are out of balance. They are about $225 million in the hole on day one. The Governor decided not to present any plans for solving that shortfall. The good news is that he did not propose any tax increases. The bad news is that he did not present any plans for saving money in state government by eliminating: Waste, mismanagement, duplication, and low-priority spending. And he did not present any plans for promoting: New efficiencies, cost-savings, and better ways to get things done for less money. We have an admission by the Governor that there is a huge imbalance in budget requests over revenues. We have the Governor’s decision not to do anything about it. What we saw was a complete abandonment of budgetary duties by the Governor. He has abdicated his leadership. One of the problems in the Bentley administration is that the Governor and his advisers believe a budget shortfall can be solved only in two ways – by raising taxes on the citizens of Alabama or by cutting services to the citizens. As a result of this misconception, we saw six state parks closed by the Bentley administration. We saw a bungling attempt to close drivers’ license offices in 31 counties. And we saw the State Auditor’s office cut by about 25%, much more than any other agency was cut. I suggest a third alternative – not raising taxes on the public and not cutting services to the public – but a better option I call THINKING OUTSIDE THE TAX. THINKING OUTSIDE THE TAX is delivering needed state services at a lower cost. A substantially lower cost. This cannot be done with the same old approaches that got us into this deficit situation. It will take entirely new approaches. Thinking outside the tax. One example is the state Medicaid budget. It is one of the largest and fastest-growing parts of Alabama’s general fund budget. With the growth of our elderly population, the Medicaid budget by itself has the potential to bankrupt state government. Unless we think outside the tax. I have an option for consideration of the legislature and the Medicaid agency. I call it the LIVE AT HOME PLAN. Right now, it costs the Medicaid agency around $6,000 a month to pay for a Medicaid patient in a nursing home. And for the rest of the seniors’ life no matter how long they live. Granny would prefer not to go to the nursing home. She and her family would rather she live and die in the comfort of her own home. Unfortunately, Alabama Medicaid pays for only a small number of patients on home care. The irony is that home care can cost Medicaid less than half of what the nursing home costs. Around $3,000 a month or less, rather than $6,000. A few baby steps have already been taken toward Medicaid home care. This has been enough to show that home care works. It is cheaper – half price or less. And the seniors and family are happier with Granny living at home. What we are suggesting is not an unrealistic, novel program but an aggressive stepping up of Medicaid home care that has already been proven to work. Nursing homes and their important lobby should not be opposed to the Live at Home Plan for two reasons. One, many nursing homes are at capacity and have waiting lists. As the number of seniors increases, the waiting lists will become longer. The Live at Home Plan can help solve this problem of growing waiting lists. Second, a small but growing number of nursing homes are diversifying and adding home care services in addition to the residential nursing care, a logical extension. The legislature should look at an automatic or expedited certificate of need approval for nursing homes wanting to add Medicaid home care. This provision could help win support of the important nursing home lobby. The Live at Home Plan would save Alabama Medicaid tens of millions of dollars a year, starting immediately. THINKING OUTSIDE THE TAX. A second large and growing area of expense is state prisons. The Governor proposed a bond issue for prisons, which would of course have to be repaid by obligating Alabama taxpayers over 20 years. Studies have concentrated primarily on how to solve the prison crowding problem in order to avoid a potential federal court takeover. What the studies largely did not do was THINKING OUTSIDE THE TAX. Alabama taxpayers provide more money each year for a prisoner than for a school student. And more money for a convict that for active-duty military. Alabama taxpayers do not want to pay more for inmates than for students and military. We badly need a return to old, time-honored approaches to corrections. Approaches that cost far less than providing the present prison facilities. THINKING OUTSIDE THE TAX. We will ask the legislature to consider a far cheaper way to safely reduce our prison population than simply building more facilities at taxpayer expense. So-called experts have had years to come with solutions to Alabama’s prison crowding problem. They have not done so, at a risk of federal court intervention. When those failed experts hear of this novel approach, which is actually an adaptation of an old-fashioned, time-honored approach, they will scoff and make fun. Don’t listen to these business-as-usual failures. Consider the common sense approach I have named “VOLUNTARY RELOCATION.” Here is how it could work, with emphasis on WORK: Qualifying inmates who have served a certain amount of time would be allowed to VOLUNTEER for voluntary relocation. As a condition of early release, they would agree to go at least
In conservative rebuttal, Jim Zeigler urges Bentley admin to “think outside the tax”
As promised, State Auditor Jim Zeigler delivered an unusual extra rebuttal to the annual State of the State address, delivered by Gov. Robert Bentley to the Legislature Wednesday morning. Zeigler got straight to his point with a cutting introduction “The State of the State is a mess,” said Zeigler. “This could not have been made more clear as Governor Bentley once again betrayed Alabama taxpayers with plans for bigger government and increased spending as a solution to our problems. “This embrace of Democrat principles comes in the wake of a tumultuous 2015 in which Gov. Bentley disappointed Alabamians with flip-flopping and repeated betrayal of our values and his campaign promises,” he intoned. Zeigler faintly praised the governor for not proffering any tax increases, but he also said he failed to put forward ideas for “new efficiencies, cost-savings, and better ways to get things done for less money,” ideas Zeigler prides himself on as Alabama’s “Waste Cutter.” Surviving the $225 million budget deficit currently projected without increasing revenues will require a strategy Zeigler calls “thinking outside the tax.” Zeigler enumerated several tactics for implementing his mantra including reducing Medicaid payments by allowing seniors to receive treatment in their homes, reduce prison populations by allowing offenders to work instead of serving prison time, and change funding formulas to allow state parks to fund their own operation. Zeigler agreed with Bentley on opposing the acceptance of Syrian refugees, but hammered away at usual disagreements involving official history, college tuition, and a general attitude about the size and scope of government. “The Legislature has before it a bill to enable the Governor to appoint a ‘Taxpayer’s Advocate.’ We are 100 percent against having the Governor make this appointment,” Zeigler said at one point in the speech. “To have Governor Bentley appoint a Taxpayer’s Advocate is like having the fox guard the henhouse.” Zeigler continued in a hard-right vein calling for an end to abortion and gun control, before ending on a painful note for the administration, the failure of its payroll software which allowed thousands of payments to vendors to fall into arrears. “The State of the State is a mess,” Zeigler concluded. “The taxpayers ask the legislature to exercise their constitutional checks and balances with the strongest steps to right the ship of state.” See the full text of Zeigler’s speech here.
