The main funding source for one of the largest and best financed organizations in the state, the Alabama Education Association, has ended.
The organization is no longer able to use payroll deductions to collect dues to support its activities. AEA had a court-approved deadline of Monday to comply with a newly enforced state law on limiting payroll deductions.
To do that, AEA had to certify to school systems that it wasn't using dues collected through payroll deduction for political activity. AEA spokeswoman Amy Marlowe says the organization wasn't willing to do that because it would have silenced AEA. She says the organization is working to convert its 95,000 members to bank drafts.
The law's sponsor, Sen. Del Marsh, says taxpayers shouldn't pay to collect dues for a political organization.