Story By Mary Bailey
The Guntersville Parks and Recreation Gym was the place to be Thursday morning as the Marshall County Chambers of Commerce presented the 2025 Legislative Update.
A brief welcome was given by Morri Yancy, IOM, President of the Lake Guntersville Chamber of Commerce.
“We are honored to have the Marshall County Legislative Delegation with us this morning to provide insights from the recent legislative session. I would also like to say my gratitude to each one of them for their dedicated service to our community.”
Invocation was given by Jason Kirkland, General Manager of the Electric Board of Guntersville.
Pledge of Allegiance was given by Leigh Dollar, Mayor of the City of Guntersville.
The first speaker for the morning was Senator Wes Kitchens.
“What a great turn out. I think this really shows how important everything is in Marshall County. We have a lot of great things going for us right now. We have a lot of growth, a lot of excitement happening all around our county and if it wasn’t for the people in this room, it wouldn’t be possible. So, thank you,” Senator Kitchens said. “It’s not about who’s name is on a piece of legislation. When we are working on these legislative issues, it’s about what we can do for the people of Alabama, what can we do for the people of our District.”
Senator Kitchens said this was recently a tough session.
“I’ll be honest with you; this was a tough session we had this year. A lot of times there will be one big ticket item that you will hear about in every news site, there’s that one controversial issue that is affecting the state and that’s going to be a part of the Legislative Session. This year I think was a little unique because it seemed like every single week there was another new big-ticket item,” Kitchens continued. “We had a lot of controversial bills, and we will talk about those as we go forward. From the Senate perspective, we had a theme, it was protecting Alabama families and promoting Alabama businesses.”
District 26 Representative Brock Colvin was next to speak.
“It’s an honor to be here this morning. When I look across this room, I see a bunch of friends and colleagues and these are my kind of people,” Representative Colvin said. “A little history of the Alabama budgets. We are one of the few states in the country that actually has two separate budgets. We have a general fund budget which funds all of our non-educational agencies and then we have our education budget. Which is the committee I sit on. On our general fund side, that is the budget that has created pretty much every other tax you can think of besides sales and income tax. We have to balance our budget every year and if we spend too much money, we go into what is proration and go back into session and cut spending halfway through a fiscal period and that is a nightmare. That hasn’t happened since Republicans took control in 2010. We have put measures in place, stabilization funds, reserve funds, capped our annual spending. We are in a strong financial position in the state of Alabama.”
General Fund Budget for this year, according to Representative Colvin was $3.8 billion dollars.
The Educational Budget for this year was $9.9 billion dollars.
District 27 Representative Jenna Ross was the last to speak.
“When I look out into the crowd I see these people that I have worked with and grown up with. It is such an honor to represent you in Montgomery. It is very sobering sometimes to think about the impact of what we are doing and how it does directly impact each one of you, our families and our children,” Representative Ross said. “I will say our delegation is committed to those things that will make a difference. I have had a wonderful time working with Wes and Brock.”
