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State Rep. Leigh Hulsey of state House District 15 joins other state legislators from Shelby County in giving an update to The Shelby Chamber on legislative mattters at The Grande Hall in Columbiana, Alabama, on Thursday, Dec. 4, 2025.
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State Rep. Arnold Mooney, R-north Shelby County, (left) joins other state legislators from Shelby County in giving an update to The Shelby Chamber on legislative mattters at The Grande Hall in Columbiana, Alabama, on Thursday, Dec. 4, 2025. Legislators seated include state Reps. Corley Ellis, Russell Bedsole, Jim Carns, Leigh Hulsey, Susan DuBose, Kenneth Paschal and state Sen. Lance Bell.
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State Rep. Susan DuBose of state House District 45 joins other state legislators from Shelby County in giving an update to The Shelby Chamber on legislative mattters at The Grande Hall in Columbiana, Alabama, on Thursday, Dec. 4, 2025.
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State Rep. Arnold Mooney, R-north Shelby County, joins other state legislators from Shelby County in giving an update to The Shelby Chamber on legislative mattters at The Grande Hall in Columbiana, Alabama, on Thursday, Dec. 4, 2025.
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State Rep. Jim Carns of state House District 48 joins other state legislators from Shelby County in giving an update to The Shelby Chamber on legislative mattters at The Grande Hall in Columbiana, Alabama, on Thursday, Dec. 4, 2025.
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Anna Catherine Roberson, chairwoman of The Shelby Chamber's governmental affairs group, serves as moderator for a discussion with state legislators from Shelby County at The Grande Hall in Columbiana, Alabama, on Thursday, Dec. 4, 2025.
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State Rep. Kenneth Paschal of state House District 73joins other state legislators from Shelby County in giving an update to The Shelby Chamber on legislative mattters at The Grande Hall in Columbiana, Alabama, on Thursday, Dec. 4, 2025.
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State Rep. Corley Ellis of state House District 41 joins other state legislators from Shelby County in giving an update to The Shelby Chamber on legislative mattters at The Grande Hall in Columbiana, Alabama, on Thursday, Dec. 4, 2025.
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State Sen. Lance Bell of state Senate District 11 joins other state legislators from Shelby County in giving an update to The Shelby Chamber on legislative mattters at The Grande Hall in Columbiana, Alabama, on Thursday, Dec. 4, 2025.
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State Rep. Russell Bedsole, R-Alabaster, joins other state legislators from Shelby County in giving an update to The Shelby Chamber on legislative mattters at The Grande Hall in Columbiana, Alabama, on Thursday, Dec. 4, 2025.
State legislators representing the parts of Hoover in Shelby County said Thursday some of their priorities in next year’s legislative session will be to address issues affecting children, such as education and health care.
The legislators joined other representatives from the Shelby County delegation in speaking to the Shelby County Chamber at a luncheon in Columbiana.
State Rep. Leigh Hulsey, who represents Alabama House District 15 (including parts of Hoover, Helena, McCalla and Bessemer), said one of her big goals is to pass legislation that would ban teachers from using the three-cueing method of reading instruction as a primary teaching method instead of the more traditional phonics-based instruction.
Three-cueing involves guessing the meaning of words based on context clues, such as syntax or associated pictures.
“We want you to teach kids how to read using phonics,” Hulsey said. “We don’t want ’em being taught how to guess or how to use context clues or syntax clues to figure out how to read because that’s not reading. That’s just memorization, and it is absolutely a disservice to our children and future workers in this state and this country, wherever they end up.”
Some parents whose children are being taught this way in public schools are having to hire reading tutors to teach their children the more appropriate way, but many families in rural areas don’t have the resources available to them to do that, Hulsey said.
“It’s a huge disadvantage to those children and those families,” she said. “It’s a really important piece to our kiddos in learning. … If you do not have kids coming out of school who can read and do math, you do not have a workforce.”
Hulsey has gotten the bill passed in the Alabama House the past two years, but it has never passed in the Senate. “It’s critical that we get that out this year,” she said. “That’s a big priority for me this time.”
There were more than 50 bills that died in the Legislature in this past session due to inaction, and “that can’t happen this year,” Hulsey said.
State Rep. Arnold Mooney of House District 43 in north Shelby County said his priority will be to regain the trust and confidence of parents by taking better care of the greatest assets in this state, our children.
“We have been working towards that, but we have got to turn that ship around so that people believe that those of us who serve in Montgomery intend to put first the best interests of our children, whether its educationally, further education, training and job force things, whatever it is — higher education, health care, everything,” Mooney said. “That’s the asset we’ve got that we cannot lose.”
State Rep. Jim Carns, whose House District 48 includes parts of Greystone, Vestavia Hills, Mountain Brook and north Shelby County, said 70% of the tax dollars received by the state of Alabama go toward education, but “we can improve that.”
The Legislature needs to continue to cut out wasteful spending, Carns said. “If we can do that, we will have a lot more money for these absolutely valid programs that we’re doing,” he said.
State Rep. Susan DuBose, a Greystone resident whose House District 45 includes parts of Chelsea, Greystone, Highland Lakes, Leeds, Mt Laurel and Shoal Creek, said there is an effort being made to start basing some of the funding for higher education institutions on the outcomes of the students they produce, such as whether the students are employable and how much money the students make when they graduate.“We want educated students that can work in our state, and we’re tired of these dead-end degrees that really don’t help students,” DuBose said. “They come out with a lot of debt, and they can’t get a job.”
HEALTH CARE
DuBose, who is on a House committee on health, also talked about the need for Alabama to add more long-term care beds for mental health care. There are fewer than 200 long-term mental health care beds in the state, and Alabama House Speaker Nathaniel Ledbetter is trying to find money in the next state budget to add 500 more, she said.
In Shelby County, there are only 15 mental health care beds, and those are for short-term stays, DuBose said.
“It’s a critical need,” she said. “We know it’s a strain on our jails. Our hospitals are having to keep these patients long-term, and it’s hurting our population because there are people that are not being treated.”
DuBose also she is pushing to improve maternal and infant health in Alabama.
“Alabama is one of the worst in the nation,” she said. “We have the third highest maternal and infant mortality death rate in the whole nation.”
Alabama recently received $16.5 million from the federal government to be used for maternal health over the next 10 years, and she will be keeping her eye on that money and how it is used, she said. She wants to see more work done with midwives and doulas, she said.
“I know that hasn’t always been popular, but the fact of the matter is we have mommas showing up at the emergency room to give birth to babies and they haven’t seen the doctor the whole time,” DuBose said. “That’s part of the problem with the infant death rate. So if we can get doulas and midwives out to see these mommas in some of these rural areas, we’re going to be much better off.”
State Sen. April Weaver in Senate District 14, which includes some parts of southwestern Hoover, is chairwoman of a Rural Roadmap Initiative Committee that is exploring ways to improve health care in rural areas, DuBose said.
That committee is exploring ideas such as expanding paramedicine so that paramedics can be trained to provide additional health care services and providing more resources for community clinics so patients don’t have to travel to a faraway hospital.
“We’re going to have to be innovative,” she said. “We’re going to have think outside the box.”
State Rep. Russell Bedsole, an Alabaster resident who represents parts of Shelby, Bibb and Chilton counties, said as many as 20 rural hospitals in Alabama could close soon. Of course, that would be bad for people in those rural areas, but it also could overburden hospitals in suburban and urban areas as more patients come there, he said.
BUDGETS
Mooney, who serves on the House General Fund Committee, said fiscal 2025 was a good year and fiscal 2026 has gotten off to a good start. For the first two months of the fiscal year, general fund revenues totaled $639 million, an increase of $38.5 million from the same period the year before, he said.
The Legislature has established a strong reserve fund if problems arise in the future, but Mooney said he doesn’t foresee any negative effects for Shelby County regarding the general fund.
Corley Ellis, who represents House District 41, including parts of Chelsea, is on the Education Ways and Means Committee, which manages the Education Trust Fund. He said the Education Trust Fund in fiscal 2025 took in $10.95 billion and had expenditures of $9.35 billion, leaving a $1.6 billion surplus.
The Legislature has built a strong reserve for the Education Trust Fund to avoid proration if revenues fall below expectations, he said. For fiscal 2026, revenues are expected to be $10.9 billion, while budgeted expenditures are $9.9 billion, leaving an expected $1 billion surplus for fiscal 2026, Ellis said.
However, the state expects to have a $400 million shortfall in the health insurance program for state employees and a $122 million reduction in sales tax revenues due to another 1 percentage point decrease in the state grocery sales tax, Ellis said.
Ellis said he’s a little worried about the economy because sales tax revenues for this past November were down about 6% from the previous year, but the overall outlook is good.
“We’ve prepared ourselves for the day that’s coming, so we’re well prepared to weather that storm without doing proration with major layoffs,” he said.
