Posts in category: Editorials

Birmingham, AL – Twenty dollars a month has become a flashpoint in Alabama’s state employee health insurance debate. But the discussion should include the people paying much of the benefits bill: taxpayers.

Maintaining affordable coverage for public employees is a reasonable goal. Maintaining it through continually increasing state government subsidies deserves closer attention. Alabama families paying their own premiums, deductibles, and taxes deserve to know whether the state is making a sustainable commitment or simply passing along another bill to them.

The State Employees’ Insurance Board’s (SEIB) executive board has recommended a $20 monthly employee premium increase, equivalent to $240 annually. The full board is scheduled to consider the changes September 10, with changes taking effect on January 1, 2027. The proposal also includes prescription and other benefit changes, meaning some members could face additional costs. 

The current employee contribution provides important context. SEIB’s published 2026 rates show that active employees qualifying for the listed discounts can pay $30 monthly for individual medical coverage, $220 for family coverage without a spouse, and $245 for family coverage including a spouse. Without discounts, those rates are $145, $335, and $500, respectively.

Discounts depend on tobacco use status, wellness program participation, and spousal eligibility for the state plan. Additional income based discounts can reduce premiums further. These amounts represent employee health insurance premium contributions. Members also face deductibles and other expenses. 

An employee paying $30 who faces a straightforward $20 increase would pay $50 monthly, or $600 annually. While that represents a substantial percentage increase from a low starting point, it also remains an affordable premium compared with what many private sector workers contribute toward employer sponsored coverage.

The Kaiser Family Foundation’s 2025 employer survey found average worker contributions of $1,440 annually for single coverage and $6,850 for family coverage, approximately $120 and $571 per month. The survey includes private and non-federal public employers nationally, so it provides context rather than an exact Alabama private sector comparison. Nevertheless, Alabama’s fully discounted state employee contributions are substantially lower. 

Affordable coverage is valuable. But low employee premiums do not mean the coverage itself is inexpensive. SEIB’s January budget presentation listed a state funding rate of $1,025 per active employee monthly for fiscal year 2026. Lawmakers subsequently approved $1,175 for fiscal year 2027 during the regular legislative session, and SEIB is seeking $1,250 for fiscal year 2028. 

The first increase adds $1,800 annually per active employee in the funding formula. The next would add another $900. Together, the annualized state employer contribution rate would rise from $12,300 to $15,000 per employee, around 22 percent over two fiscal years.

The financial pressure extends beyond premiums. In fiscal year 2025, SEIB made a $30.5 million withdrawal from the retiree healthcare trust to cover the premium gap. Drawing on accumulated assets can bridge a shortfall, but it cannot indefinitely close a recurring gap between revenue and spending. 

State health benefits are part of employee compensation, but that does not mean taxpayers should absorb rising costs indefinitely. The workers and families financing those benefits face pressures on their own household budgets. Although retirees pay different rates than active employees, concerns about affordability must account for both those receiving coverage and those helping fund it.

Before approving further funding increases, lawmakers should require a clear multi-year plan showing expected claims growth, employee and employer contributions, reserve fund usage, and measurable savings from reforms. The public should be able to understand whether proposed changes will stabilize the program or merely postpone another increased funding request.

That review should examine prescription spending, vendor performance, and benefit program design. Shifting costs between employees and taxpayers does not, by itself, address what the program spends on care. SEIB should explain which changes could slow spending growth, what savings it expects, and how those results will be measured.

Targeted assistance should remain available for members with limited incomes. Alabama already offers income based premium discounts that are calculated as a percentage of the federal poverty level. Directing help toward those who need it is more defensible than assuming taxpayers should absorb every increase throughout the system. 

Lawmakers must also consider the broader budget. Every additional dollar committed to health insurance and other employee benefits is unavailable for another public priority or tax relief. State employee benefits should be evaluated within the full compensation package, with attention to recruitment, retention, and what Alabama can afford over the long-term.

Public employees deserve competitive benefits and honest information about their costs. Taxpayers deserve the same honesty about the commitments being made on their behalf. The proposed $240 annual employee premium increase has drawn criticism from state employees. However, taxpayers deserve equal attention. If the latest funding request is approved, the state’s annual contribution per active employee will be $2,700 higher in FY2028 than it is today.

Alabama can support its workforce while insisting on sustainable financing and increased accountability. Taxpayers should have a seat at that discussion before they are handed another bill.

About the Alabama Policy Institute

The Alabama Policy Institute (API) is an independent, non-partisan, non-profit research and education organization dedicated to strengthening free markets, limiting government, and supporting strong families across Alabama.

FOR MORE INFORMATION, contact: admin@alabampolicy.org

Conservatives Must Reclaim the Fourth Amendment from Mass Surveillance

Every day, hundreds of thousands of Alabamians drive to work, drop their children off at school, go to church, and run errands with the quiet, fundamental understanding that unless they are suspected of a crime, the government is not tracking their every move. Americans once understood instinctively that a free citizen ought to be able to travel public roads without the government keeping a ledger of their movements. Law enforcement watched suspects because it had a specific reason to suspect them, it did not watch everybody in the hope that someday the information collected on them might become useful. Yet, quietly and systematically, that reasonable expectation of privacy is being erased across the Yellowhammer State.

From the Birmingham metro area, where nearly 1,500 automated license plate readers operate, to small towns in North and South Alabama, “safety cameras” have been installed. Nationwide, there are currently at least 120,000 of these cameras across 49 states, with more being added daily. Rather than capturing red-light runners, these stationary, AI-powered systems log the license plate, make, model, and identifiable details of every single passing vehicle into a timestamped, searchable national database. As cameras proliferate across public streets and private parking lots, avoiding them has become nearly impossible, making the data accessible to the government essentially indistinguishable from placing a government GPS tracker on every citizen’s car.

The Fourth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution guarantees the right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects against unreasonable searches and seizures. While proponents point to legacy legal precedent holding that individuals have a lower expectation of privacy on public roads, modern technology alters this calculus entirely. Our Constitution was written by men who distrusted concentrated power because they understood human nature; they did not assume that every sheriff, prosecutor, governor, or bureaucrat would always be wise and virtuous, so they built restraints for the day when one of them would not be. Modern Supreme Court jurisprudence, such as United States v. Jones, regarding GPS tracking and Carpenter v. United States regarding cell-site location data, has recognized that aggregating bits of public information into a continuous, searchable map of a citizen’s life constitutes a search under the Fourth Amendment. When interconnected camera networks allow the state or a private out-of-state vendor to build a persistent, retrospective database of daily travel, it ceases to be “plain view” police work and becomes warrantless mass surveillance.

Under the Alabama Administrative Code, state agencies are permitted to retain license plate reader data for up to five years, a remarkably long window compared to broader private standards. History teaches us that government power, once acquired, is seldom surrendered voluntarily. First, the technology is reserved for serious crimes, then seamlessly applied to lesser offenses until usage shifts to routine investigations. Normalization eventually allows surveillance for political demonstrations, personal associations, or basic commerce and citizen movement.

Somewhere along the way, surveillance becomes normalized.

Across the country and here in Alabama, citizens are demonstrating unhappiness and a genuine grassroots movement is spreading through social media groups and regional news outlets; concerned citizens are pressuring local lawmakers to rescind their contracts with surveillance companies, while more drastic dissenters have even donned masks to cut down cameras with electric saws. More than 50 jurisdictions have ended their surveillance following local pushback. In response to public pressure, one company recently announced plans to cut its default data retention period from 30 days to 7 days, require clients to tie searches to specific case codes, and remove federal agencies from its nationwide search database. 

Public skepticism is well-founded, driven in part by documented misuses of license plate databases. Reports have highlighted cases where government officials used networks to track romantic partners and private individuals without a legitimate investigation, alongside dangerous incidents where camera errors led police to pursue and hold innocent drivers at gunpoint. However, what truly drives widespread opposition is not merely present misuse, but the potential for future overreach, from detecting compliance with public health mandates to monitoring political opponents. The public backlash illustrates that the presumption of good faith toward governmental experts has completely evaporated. Government power should never be granted if that same amount of power can’t be trusted in the hands of political adversaries.

The core issue is not whether these cameras can help solve crimes, of course they can. The issue is whether we are willing to construct a system capable of tracking the movements of millions of innocent Americans because that system might make law enforcement quicker or more convenient. Convenience is a poor bargain for liberty, and we have heard this argument before:  give up a little freedom and the state will keep you safe. Two weeks to flatten the curve.

Laws and institutions must be built for the politicians we fear, not the politicians we trust. 

Conservatives in Alabama must reject the false dichotomy of security or liberty. If these cameras are allowed to remain, it is imperative that the Alabama Legislature protect our Fourth Amendment rights by establishing standard-setting guardrails: require police to obtain a search warrant based upon probable cause before accessing historical location databases, restrict data retention to very short timeframes (hours or days rather than weeks, months, or years), prohibit Alabama government on all levels from pooling vehicle location records into unrestricted nationwide private network databases, mandate public transparency with local government approval alongside third-party security audits, and make any violation of these guardrails a serious offense. 

Technological tools should never undermine the foundational principles of a free society. 

A sustainable republic requires a stubborn people with a certain distrust of government and their “experts”, whether they be in public health or public safety. We, as a nation and state, must be willing to assert that there are some powers the government shouldn’t possess regardless of utility. Conservatives are often asked  what exactly we are trying to conserve. Chief among them should be the Bill of Rights and the U.S. Constitution. 

If Alabama fails to rein in warrantless surveillance today, we risk handing future decision-makers an infrastructure capable of tracking and passing judgment on every medical appointment, political rally, religious gathering, and private encounter in the state. It is imperative for Alabama lawmakers to secure our Fourth Amendment protections.