Governor Robert Bentley set against state legislature after giving his advisers sizeable raises – some of which topped $73,000 in increased annual pay

Alabama’s governor outraged his critics and disconcerted his allies recently by handing out gigantic pay raises to his advisers, while the state tumbles into financial crisis.

The maneuvers set the governor, Robert Bentley, against the state legislature just as it created the state’s general fund budget for 2017. So legislators took the opportunity to carve money equaling the pay raises – some of which topped $73,000 in increased annual pay – out of the governor’s own budget and put it toward Medicaid.

Bentley is expected to veto that general fund budget on Tuesday – he has said its $700m Medicaid budget still falls short of the $785m needed to keep the program functional.

Meanwhile, workers around the state who have seen budgets and their own salaries slashed – especially in education – reacted with shock at Bentley’s generosity to his inner circle.

“It’s disheartening as a teacher,” said Jennifer Gilmore, who works at an elementary school in Baldwin County. She said this is her seventh year teaching, and that she has never had a raise of any sort – in fact four of those seven years, she said, her pay went down. “When I heard about these nice, fat raises for the governor’s people I was taken aback. It’s a slap in our faces.”

Bentley quietly doled out the raises late last year, after a piece of legislation removed salary caps. Four of them – department of economic and community affairs director Jim Byard, alcoholic beverage control board head Mac Gipson, revenue commissioner Julie Magee and insurance commissioner Jim Ridling – received increases of $73,405, bringing their salaries to $164,419.

There were numerous others. Medicaid commissioner Stephanie Azar, for instance, received a raise of $64,008, bringing her salary to $205,792.

The governor’s moves created a rift in the state’s political landscape, even among Bentley’s fellow Republicans.

On the night of the vote on the state’s budget, state representative Allen Farley, a Republican from McCalla, Alabama, wrote in a statement to his supporters: “Tonight we passed a terrible general fund budget. But, I held my nose and voted for it because we, the House, added an amendment that would take the total of all Bentley’s staff and cabinet member raises from the governor’s budget and move that amount to Medicaid. We are sure the governor will veto it, but we had to send a message. If we don’t have the resources for state worker raises, we sure as heck don’t have the money for the governor’s inner circle.”

State workers aren’t the only Alabamians feeling irritated by Bentley’s raises. Last month the city of Birmingham voted to raise its minimum wage by $2.85 in 2017. Bentley swiftly signed a bill banning any Alabama city from raising minimum wages in their borders.

Meanwhile, news from around the state is a cascade of financial failure.

Last year in many of the state’s poorest counties Bentley closed driver’s license offices, claiming the state was too broke to keep operating them. Since voting requires state-issued photo identification, voters’ rights advocates decried the closing as a ploy to disenfranchise the residents of those counties.

Five of Alabama’s state parks have closed in the past year, and more of the remaining 17 are expected to close this year.

In the past year, state police budget cuts have led to scores of state troopers being laid off.

The state’s prisons are crumbling, and building new ones will cost at least $800m.

All of which means that while Bentley’s round of raises for his confidantes, which totals less than $1m per year, may not be the fatal blow to Alabama’s financial well being, but it doesn’t exactly inspire the electorate.

“It’s bad optics, as they say,” said Lisa Graybill, an attorney for the Southern Poverty Law Center who tracks prison spending in Alabama. “It’s terrible.”