Section 40-20-50 Collection of Severance Taxes; Deposit into Fund; Distribution of Investment Income; Trustees; Escrow Agents; Limitations.

Any laws or parts of laws to the contrary notwithstanding, any annual privilege tax levied upon persons engaging in the business of producing or severing oil or gas or other hydrocarbons from the soil or waters of this state measured by the gross value of such oil or gas or other hydrocarbons and which tax is applicable only in a particular county and under which collections were being made on January 1, 1987, or which shall hereafter be levied pursuant to legislative act, shall be continued and collected only as herein prescribed: (1) All revenues collected from such local severance taxes shall, beginning the first day of the month following August 3, 1987, be paid into the general fund of the county exclusively for transfer and deposit into a trust fund hereby established until the total sum of $15,000,000 in severance tax revenues of the type described in this section, excluding any interest income on amounts deposited therein from such total sum, has been deposited into such trust fund. Upon the deposit into said trust fund of a county of a total of $15,000,000 in such severance tax revenues, any local law authorizing or levying such tax, including, without limitation, Act No. 2120, H. 2450, Regular Session 1971 (Acts 1971, Vol. V, p. 3399), shall stand repealed and no further taxes shall be levied thereunder. Any such local oil and gas severance tax revenues in excess of such $15,000,000 amount collected in any county after the time the total of such tax proceeds paid into such trust fund established hereby for such county shall reach $15,000,000, shall be refunded as promptly as shall be reasonably practicable to the payers thereof. The county governing body shall not be authorized to make any expenditure from any monies composing the corpus of said trust fund so long as it shall remain in existence. Said trust fund shall be designated in each county as the “county oil and gas severance tax trust fund,” and is hereinafter referred to as the “trust fund.” (2) Commencing with the first year in which any trust fund provided for in this section shall receive deposits as required hereunder, and in each year thereafter, the county governing body shall take steps to ensure that the trust fund shall retain the total severance tax revenues paid therein plus ten percent of any net income or interest generated by the investment of such severance tax revenues, which sum shall be and become a part of the corpus of the trust fund. A sum, not to exceed 90 percent of the net income or interest thereby generated from said investments, shall be distributed quarterly, semiannually or annually, as designated by the trustees of the trust, to the general fund of the county for which a trust fund is established pursuant to this section. (3) The county governing body shall constitute the trustees of the trust, provided, however, that the said governing body may in its discretion appoint one or more trustees or escrow agents for the trust, which trustees or escrow agents shall be trust companies or national or state banks having powers of a trust company within or without the State of Alabama. The trustees shall invest the corpus of the trust only in direct general obligations of, or obligations the payment of the principal of an interest on which are unconditionally and irrevocably guaranteed by, the United States of America. Provided, however, that notwithstanding any legal limitation that might otherwise be applicable, the trustees shall further have the authority in their discretion to invest such trust fund in certificates of deposit of any savings and loan associations or banks, whether federally or state chartered, whose principal office is located in this state, provided that such funds so invested are fully secured by pledges of securities of the type described in the immediately preceding sentence hereof. (4) Upon the deposit into a trust fund established pursuant to this section of the total sum of $15,000,000 in severance tax revenues of the type described in this section, excluding any interest as income in such total sum, and the consequent repeal of the local law authorizing or levying such tax, the county governing body of a county for which a trust fund established hereunder shall be in existence shall be thereafter prohibited from levying or collecting, directly or indirectly, any local county severance tax of the type described in this section that was in existence prior to January 1, 1987, or that may be established hereafter, and any act authorizing such county oil and gas severance tax shall thereafter stand repealed.