MONTGOMERY — House Speaker Mac McCutcheon will not run again for his House District 25 seat and, therefore, also will be retiring as speaker after the 2022 elections, Alabama Daily News has learned. In an email to his House colleagues obtained by ADN, McCutcheon said he and his wife, Deb, made a family decision to “enjoy our golden years” away from the State House. Read more.
A bill to block the medical treatment of transgender youth in Alabama, one of the most controversial bills of the Legislature’s 2021 session, will be back in 2022. Read more.
MONTGOMERY— The Alabama House Democratic Caucus is hosting its 5th annual Alabama Pro-Growth Policy Conference this week with special keynote speaker U.S. House Majority Whip James E. Clyburn, D-NC. Read more.
A state senator says he is considering legislation to prevent government agencies from spending state money to promote ballot referendums and proposed constitutional amendments. “We shouldn’t use public money to influence voters’ decisions,” Sen. Arthur Orr, R-Decatur, told Alabama Daily News on Thursday. “The government doesn’t need to put its finger on the scale, attempting to influence decisions that the voters will need to make.” Orr’s comments were prompted by a Legislative Contract Review Committee meeting on Thursday and information the committee received from the Alabama Department of Conservation about a proposed $200,000 public relations contract. The committee was told that the contract was to inform the public about a 2022 constitutional amendment that, if approved by voters, would let the state borrow $80 million to improve parks. The committee can’t kill contracts, but it can delay them for up to 45 days. It moved to delay Conservation’s Thursday. Read more. More from the Alabama State House
The number of drugged drivers on Alabama roadways has steadily increased in recent years, and more impaired drivers were found to have marijuana in their systems than alcohol in 2019. “Last year, for the first time ever, THC (marijuana) surpassed alcohol in prevalence in our DUI cases,” Angelo Della Manna, director of the Alabama Department of Forensic Sciences, told Alabama Daily News. His department performs all of the forensic laboratory testing in DUI cases across Alabama. Meth, alprazolam (Xanax) and cocaine rounded out the top five substances found in impaired drivers. Under a law passed in the recent legislative session, Della Manna and law enforcement expect the ability to collect saliva at the roadside and more accurately detect the substances and quantities in a person’s system will get more drugged drivers off the streets. The law adds the collection of a roadside saliva sample to the state’s implied consent law, allowing for oral fluid collection at the time of a wreck or traffic stop. Read more. More news from the Alabama State House Lawmaker: Pubic Money Shouldn’t Be Used to Influence Voters
MONTGOMERY -- Alabama’s state agencies wanting to spend more than $10 million on purchases or projects will soon have to answer more questions from a panel of lawmakers. Gov. Kay Ivey on Thursday signed House Bill 392 from Rep. Mike Jones, R-Andalusia. Though the final version of the bill significantly scaled back from what Jones originally filed, the bill will give the existing Legislative Contract Review Committee, made up of about a dozen lawmakers, the ability to question the spending of more than $10 million by state agencies and departments from their General Fund appropriations. The committee can delay state contracts and expenditures for 45 days, but can’t outright kill them. Read more.
MONTGOMERY -- Going into this year’s legislative session, Sen. Tim Melson, R-Florence, said he knew the Senate would pass the medical marijuana bill he sponsored. It was the House where the bill would face a tougher vote. But when some “solid legislators” in the House said they’d vote for his bill, Melson became hopeful. “I'm not gonna say solid conservatives or liberals or whatever, but guys who are solid legislators," Melson said, mentioning specifically Reps. Allen Treadaway, R-Birmingham, and Allen Farley, R-McCalla, both former law enforcement leaders, and Rep. Bill Poole, R-Tuscaloosa, the pragmatic House budget committee chairman. "When they realized that this wasn’t about Republican or Democrat issues, it was about taking care of people, I thought we had a good chance,” Melson said. “… I knew then that the opposition wasn’t as strong as everyone anticipated.” The bill to allow people with certain medical conditions access to forms of medical marijuana cleared the House on one of the final nights of the legislative session, and Gov. Kay Ivey signed it into law last week. Now the work begins to set up the Alabama Medical Cannabis Commission. The 14 members will be appointed by July 1 and will be in charge of creating the rules, regulations and best practices for growing, cultivating, processing and selling a medical cannabis product in the state. Read more.
The Alabama Legislature on Monday approved a bill setting out rights for victims of sexual assauts. Among the provisions of the Sexual Assault Survivor "Bill of Rights" are requirements on how long law enforcement must preserve evidence in sexual assault cases. Lawmakers also approved a bill that would allow the practice of yoga n public schools, but limit the use of any changing and mantras and ban the teaching of the greeting "namaste." Other action by lawmakers on the final day of the 2021 regular session included approval of bills that would ban curbside voting in Alabama and delay the student holdback provision under the 2019 Literacy Act. Read more.
MONTGOMERY -- In one of its final moves of the 2021 session, the Alabama Legislature Monday ensured that restaurant owners don’t have to pay state income taxes on the newest round of COVID-19 federal relief. Sen. Dan Roberts, R-Mountain Brook, earlier in the session sponsored a bill to clarify the tax code to ensure restaurant grants in the Biden administration’s $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan don’t raise the state income tax liability for owners. It also would have untaxed the plan’s enhanced child tax credit, earned income tax credit and child and dependent care tax credit. But that bill didn’t move because legislative leaders said it could wait until a special session later this year, or even early in the 2022 session. Roberts instead got the restaurant language on the existing House Bill 227, which allows for an income tax credit for the construction of storm shelters. Read more.
MONTGOMERY -- A bill that would have shortened state of emergency orders and given the Legislature a say in extending them died Monday, the final day of the legislative session. Senate Bill 97 from Sen. Tom Whatley, R-Auburn, would have limited state of emergency orders, such as those issued since last spring in response to the Coronavirus, to 45 days, with a possible 120-day extension. But any extension after that would have had to be approved by a joint resolution from the Legislature. Rep. Mike Holmes, R-Wetumpka, sponsored the bill in the House and told members on Monday that the bill was not about limiting the governor’s power but allowing Alabamians more say into wide, sweeping actions taken in state-of-emergency orders. Read more.
