G.S. hopes local legislators can help collect school tax

G.S. hopes local legislators can help collect school tax
Suit filed in 2021 dismissed by Alabama Supreme Court

In 2021, Gulf Shores City Schools and one of its citizens sued Baldwin County School System (BCSS) and the Alabama State Board of Education in an attempt to retain its share of a one cent sales tax that Baldwin County has collected since 1983 to support public schools. Forty percent of the tax goes to the BCSS. The other 60 percent goes to the Baldwin County District Attorney’s Office, and the Baldwin County Commission.
Unfortunately for the city and neighboring Orange Beach, which split from BCSS three years after Gulf Shores, the Alabama Supreme Court ruled in December of 2023 that it is up to state lawmakers to rewrite the tax law to include the municipal school systems. Sen. Chris Elliott of Josephine said that was the best bet before Gulf Shores officials filed suit.
Gulf Shores Mayor Robert Craft and Sen. Elliott brokered the split between Gulf Shores and Baldwin County School systems that had made little progress in the 18 months since Gulf Shores abruptly separated from Baldwin County in June of 2018. Orange Beach, on the other hand, made a clean split from BCSS in less than two months when it went its own way in 2022.
The two cities contribute 17 percent of the $28 million generated annually from the tax and rightfully believe those local education funds should remain within the communities that generate them. Sen. Elliott and Rep. Frances Holk-Jones agree are now sponsoring bills that update the tax’s legal language to allow Gulf Shores and Orange Beach to receive its portion of the funds that the cities collect from the sales tax.
“Our communities have made significant investments in our students and their future,” said Orange Beach Superintendent Randy Wilkes. “Ensuring that education tax dollars benefit the children in our cities is the right and equitable course of action.”
“This is an issue of fairness,” added Gulf Shores Superintendent Matt Akin. “Every community in Baldwin County deserves its fair share of funding to support public education, including Gulf Shores and Orange Beach.”
The series of bills introduced by Rep. Holk-Jones and Sen. Elliott will allow municipal school systems in Baldwin County to receive its rightful share of the 1-cent sales tax.
“This legislation is about fairness and making sure that all of the school children in Baldwin County get to benefit from these tax dollars being raised by this penny tax,” Holk-Jones said. “Right now, you’ve got an entire county giving sales tax with this penny tax, but you’ve got two school systems who aren’t receiving any money, despite the fact that a large amount of the penny tax revenue is generated where those two school systems are.”
“There’s more than one board of education in Baldwin County now,” Sen. Elliott added. “It is fundamentally unfair to tax folks in Orange Beach and Gulf Shores for their children’s education and then it only goes to the county school system.”
The legislation, if passed, would raise around $5 million for the two Pleasure Island cities’ schools.
“The Baldwin County Public School System is opposed to any effort to divert funding away from our school system and the children with the most need,” Baldwin County Public Schools Superintendent Eddie Tyler said.
“It’s just fundamentally unfair any way you look at it,” Rep. Elliott told al.com. “Can you imagine raising a tax in Baldwin County and it all going to, I don’t know, Mobile County or Saraland schools or somewhere else?”
The issue was not clearly addressed when Gulf Shores split from BCSS. Rep. Elliott and Gulf Shores Mayor Robert Craft both said the two groups agreed to come back to the table when Baldwin County stopped making debt payments on Gulf Shores’ school buildings in 2024.
“I am doing what I said I was going to do five years ago, which is fix this issue once that debt service rolled off,” Elliott told al.com.