“I was very humbled by the win after I guess what I should say was a sprit-filled campaign,” said Brown. “I apologize for what you had to endure those few weeks to enable us to get there.”
Brown was elected to the House on February 16th. The next day, he reported for work, exhausted but very exited. Jumping into the legislature mid-session, Brown had a lot to learn his first few days, but said he got to work as quickly as he could studying over the bills he would be voting on.
“It has been a tremendous learning curve for me and it is definitely a work in progress, but I have enjoyed serving you and look forward to hopefully going back and serving a full term after the election in November,” said Brown.
Brown took the opportunity to explain where he stands on some of the more notable issues being dealt with in this year’s legislative session. He started with the bingo bill.
“I campaigned as being opposed to gambling and my stance on that has not changed,” said Brown. “I think there are a lot of social issues we have to consider when we consider the gambling issue.”
Brown based some of his stance on what he saw while living in Mobile.
“I came to Jacksonville 31 years ago from Mobile, and I was living down there when the dog track opened,” said Brown. “I always thought it was sad (that) you could ride by there in the middle of the day, sometimes early afternoon, and look at the cars in the parking lot and a lot of them looked like you didn’t think that they would make it around the block. These were people who really had no business gambling. A lot of them were probably using their grocery money to try to hit that jackpot.
“I think that it is wrong to tempt people like that. I think it is a social issue more than anything else. When the state of Georgia first put in the lottery that was going to be the savior for the education system over there. And I don’t know if you talked to any educators in Georgia lately, but they are laying off many teachers in Georgia, cutting salaries and so forth.”
Brown also talked about the idea of letting the people vote on gambling.
“Frequently from constituents around here, I hear ‘Let us vote on it,’” said Brown. “Well, the bills that I have seen I don’t think is what we want to vote on. A lot of them have in them the power of putting gaming in the state of Alabama basically in the hands of five or six people. I think that could be a very, very corrupt system depending on who was put in that position.”
Another bill Brown touched on was the removal of sales tax on groceries. Although he campaigned that he would be in favor of removing sales tax, Brown voted against the bill that was presented.
“The reason I voted against the sales tax on groceries bill (was) if sales tax were removed on groceries, that would leave a 465 million dollar void in our state,” said Brown. “The way that was purposed to fill that void was to take individuals who were making $200,000 or more every year or couples who where making more that $300,000 and removing their federal tax deduction on a state tax return. But what a lot of people don’t understand about that, a lot of small businesses are Subchapter S corporations. Both of my businesses are Subchapter S corporations and a lot of small businesses are. In a Subchapter S corporation, all of your profit in your company goes on your personal tax return. So, if you take an individual that is making a modest salary, say, $50,000 and they happen to have a business that made a $200,000 profit, then you put those two together and that individual would lose their federal tax deduction on their state tax return.”
Brown said in the end, it would hurt jobs.
“I don’t think any of us today want to start penalizing small businesses because small businesses are one of the few things that are still providing us jobs. The state is still close to 11 percent unemployment,” said Brown.
Brown also mentioned how the bill did not take into account monies that would be lost from the sales tax made off of vacationers traveling though and from illegal immigrants living in the state.
Brown said he would be in favor of a different plan. One plan he said he likes was to distribute vouchers according to income, but was voted down earlier.
“I voted against the constitution convention simply because I wanted to try to gather as much information as I could before I made a decision. I am not sure that is the route we need to go,” said Brown.
Brown said while is mind might change in the future; he wants to gather as much information as possible.
The last issue Brown discussed was the PACT program.
“I strongly feel like the state should be obligated to make those contracts good contracts,” said Brown. “A bill was introduced this year that would take money from the educational trust fund and make these contracts sovereign. I voted against the bill several times initially simply because the bill had tuition caps on our state universities and I did not feel like since we had been in proration in several years that the universities needed to suffer that revenue loss.
“There was no doubt in my mind that when the final vote cam that I would be voting for saving the PACTs, I believe very strongly that we needed to do that, but when I voted against it, it was to try to remove the tuition caps for the state universities. There was also some question about legalese in the bill that was purposed.”
Brown said the way the bill was worded, if it was to ever be challenged in court that the whole process might be thrown out.
Without as you say the political parties right for their appointees to contribute to them.
signed
just 1 vote.