MONTGOMERY, Alabama -- The Alabama Senate approved a $1.8 billion General Fund budget Thursday, adding $14.9 million to a version passed by the Alabama House earlier this year.

The new appropriations include $4.8 million more for the Alabama Department of Corrections, including $3.5 million more for the Julia Tutwiler Prison for Women.

In another line item, the state Senate's version of the budget includes $250,000 for the governor's office to hire an ombudsman for the women's prison.

The new appropriations, if approved, are more than the Alabama House recommended, but they are far from the $46 million in new funding the Department of Corrections had requested.

On Thursday night, Sen. Cam Ward, R-Alabaster, commended the Senate leadership for finding the new fundind, but he warned that the Alabama Legislature was only kicking a big can down the road. In the coming years, lawmakers will have to enact sentencing reforms and find other ways of dealing with criminals than putting them in prison, he said, and he called the recent report by the U.S. Justice Department on Tutwiler a "wakeup call."

"There is no way to actually deal with the prison problem because you don't have enough revenue coming in," he said. "As politicians, all of us have waited so long to deal with this that we're in a bad spot here."

Ward made a veiled criticism of remarks Gov. Robert Bentley recently made on the Matt Murphy Show, when the governor said that the state would have to build more prisons. According to Ward, merely building a way out of the problem would cost too much. For the state to build its way to 140 percent capacity in its prisons would cost at least $600 million, he said – about a third of this year's General Fund budget. Currently, state prisons are crowded to more than 190 percent of their designed capacity.

Ignoring the problem is a recipe for expensive federal intervention, he said.

"If we don't deal with it in the next couple of years, trust me when I say that somebody will do it for us," Ward said.

The state Senate also approved a one-time $400 bonus for state employees, payable out of the general fund.

Sen. Rodger Bedford, D-Russellville, pushed for a 3 percent cost of living adjustment for state employees, to be paid for by raiding a rolling reserve in the governor's emergency appropriations budget, but that amendment failed.

"I'm really sad that our state Legislature has turned its back on state employees when we had to give them a raise when they haven't received one since 2008," Bedford said after the vote.

The state Senate's amended General Fund budget will now go back to the Alabama House with three days left in the session.

Also on Thursday, a legislative conference committee approved a compromise Education Trust Fund budget, but that budget was kept from the state Senate floor because of disagreement among some Republicans, lawmakers said.

At issue is the state's contribution to health insurance for education employees. Gov. Robert Bentley has recommended a contribution equivalent to $795 per month, per employee. The conference committee recommended a monthly contribution of $753.

As the state Senate adjourned Thursday, Pro Tem Del Marsh, R-Anniston, said lawmakers had reached a compromise and would be fully funding the increase at the governor's recommended level.

The Alabama Legislature will be off next week for spring break and will return to Montgomery April 1.