It’s imperative that Alabama legislators find a compromise solution to the state’s sagging prepaid affordable college tuition program by the time they go home in late April.

If not, the message delivered to more than 40,000 Alabama families will be deplorable.

That legislative message:

We care about our re-election.

We care about our special interests and our supporters.

We care about keeping the universities and the Alabama Education Association happy.

But we don’t care enough about thousands of Alabamians who put their trust in the state and saw it crumpled like scratch paper and tossed into the trash.

Yes, the Legislature’s top priority after its spring-break respite is to pass budgets that likely won’t include additional federal stimulus money. PACT’s problem doesn’t trump the state’s budgets.

But the urgency for a PACT solution has reached a fever pitch while legislators have been away. Why? Because state estimates now say that the PACT account will not be able to pay tuition for contract holders after the fall semester of 2011.

In other words, dismal economic trends have forced forecasters to say the 2014 date that politicians and educators were using for PACT’s demise is woefully incorrect. Instead, the PACT lifespan has been shortened to about 18 months. The ticking clock is now in overdrive.

Hence, the fever pitch.

To demonize the Legislature over its PACT efforts would be partially incorrect. The House and Senate have passed competing PACT bills; each would pump $236 million into the account, which would allow existing contract-holders — though not new ones — to have their deals honored, as they should be.

But the difference in the House and Senate bills resembles the difference between regular and decaffeinated coffee; they’re very similar except for one vital variation.

The House bill caps tuition increases for PACT participants at 2.5 percent for most years. The AEA and PACT’s supporters want this version turned into law.

The Senate bill does not cap tuition for PACT participants. The universities, particularly Auburn and Alabama, where a majority of PACT students are enrolled, strongly prefer this version.

The concerns of both sides aren’t without merit; that’s why no solution is universally appealing. That’s also why reconciling those competing bills will take more than political clout. It will take bravery to do the right thing for thousands of Alabamians.

Where the Legislature can be demonized is if it doesn’t scale the brick wall that separates these competing bills in the last month of this session. Lawmakers did not create a solution to PACT in their 2009 session, and they can’t let this one go by in the same manner.

A legislative solution is much better than one settled in the courts. It’s time lawmakers do something that helps thousands of Alabama families who believed the state would honor its commitment.

But lawmakers must hurry. Time is running out. Fast.