September - Today's Issues and Tomorrow's Solutions
September 26, 2008
In 1996, I was the chief sponsor of legislation which is now known as the Alabama’s Unconscionable Pricing Act, which was in response to the many complaints following hurricane Opal. This piece of legislation now makes it illegal to charge “unconscionable” prices for products of necessities during a state of emergency, accepting reasonable costs that the seller may incur. It is considered to be gouging when, in emergency times, prices are jacked up more than twenty five percent. Now with the most recent hurricane, Ike, having come through, even though Alabama was not directly a target, we still saw that our gas prices immediately started to increase in unpredictable price ranges. Attorney General Troy King said recently that his office had received in excess of 2,500 price gouging complaints and that investigations from his office were underway. I applaud the Attorney General for taking this strong stand and I’m having legislation prepared to introduce in the Regular Session of 2009 which would bring the current twenty five percent ceiling down to ten percent. That would mean in times of crisis and periods of emergency, vendors could not jack up the cost of necessities more than ten percent in order to take advantage of the heavy demand. Even though incidences of this nature do take place in times of emergency and crisis, the gasoline retailers certainly should not take all the blame. There’s no question that the cost of everything from ice and plywood to generators are greatly increased by many vendors, all a part of an effort to suddenly jack prices up when the National Weather Service indicates the likelihood of severe weather.
On another matter, I made reference in a recent article to the ongoing effort to eliminate state sales tax on groceries. It was brought to my attention by several constituents that I need to elaborate more on this, and I gladly take the opportunity to do so. If the state were to be successful in removing the state sales tax on groceries, as many states have, that does not mean that the municipal and county government sales tax would also be removed. That is an issue for those respective governments to decide. In order to remove the four percent state sales tax from food items sold in grocery stores and the like, the millions of dollars currently collected from the state sales tax on groceries would have to be recouped to keep the Education Trust Fund healthy for the benefit of public education in this state. One indication of the most recently mentioned offset measure would be to eliminate the present privilege that Alabamian’s have of being able to deduct their individual federal income taxes paid from one’s states income tax billing. Presently, Alabama is one of three states that allow this very popular deduction for all federal income taxes paid though three other states allow a partial deduction for federal income taxes paid. I continue to solicit constituency input on this matter as it will come up again in February when we go into the Regular Session of 2009.
In my next article, I will give a review of my recent trip to Brazil and Argentina, accompanying the Alabama Commissioner of Agriculture, other legislative, business and civic leaders from throughout the state. On the trip, we were fortunate to have Dr. Larry Fillmer, who is the Executive Director of the Auburn University Natural Resources Management and Development Institute and Dr. Steve Taylor, Director of Auburn University’s Center for Bioenergy and Bioproducts. They are proposing a briefing agenda in October for the twenty four members of this trade mission trip. I will give you a more complete review on how research on bioenergy and bioproducts support energy independent efforts in Alabama similar as to what we observed in the two countries visited. This South American trade mission was a huge success and I believe it will allow Alabama to be one of the jump start states in showing America that we can be less dependent on oil for our energy needs.
Ted Little
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