Week 6

February 16- February 19

Thanks to President’s Washington and Lincoln, I began this week at home. Little did I know what the week would actually bring both for the good and maybe even the bad. Some restructuring of the office may at first glance appear to be a negative, but it could, A: be a lot worse and B: work out better in the end anyway. The opportunity to speak at Samford University’s convocation service yesterday morning was an enjoyable time and seemed to go really well. Although, if I did really poorly, do you think they would have told me? To top it off, I will be at the Bassmaster Classic on behalf of the county some this weekend. If you know me, you will find that kind of funny. I’m not exactly Mr. Outdoors. But I enjoy the new experiences.

I don’t think that when the week started I could have told you that the Senate would pass as many bills as they did. There was a lot of rumbling of the Bingo bill coming up in the Senate in which things could have been shut down for some time. However, as the Democrats worked to get the right number of votes, it appeared they were coming up short. So they never brought the bill to the floor. In turn, a large number of mostly non-controversial bills where passed by the Senate, including some house bills. Every time I saw new tweet it was the Senate passing another bill. I doubt it was any sort of record, but I’d be curious to know.

We also saw the Senate version of the Charter Schools bill come up in the Senate Finance and Taxation Education Committee this week. Senator Steve French’s version of the same bill that failed to come out of a House committee last week suffered the same fate. It was indefinitely postponed and so any effort regarding Charter Schools in Alabama is certainly dead for this session.

The only real problems I heard during this week’s session in the Senate revolved around the minority party not knowing the bills placed on the Special Order Calendar in advance. It seems to make sense that we would want our legislators to be informed about the bills they are voting on with the ability to read the bill and understand it. If one party isn’t letting the other party have that opportunity there is seems to be a problem in my mind. The last time I heard something on this from the floor, it was getting better, but could still use some work.

As has been mentioned a number of times, State Representative Cam Ward likes to get his bills out and taken care of early in the session. In fact, when one of his bills came up for debate this week our own Representative Mike Hill came to the microphone to give Mr. Ward a hard time about it. Mr. Hill wanted to know why all of Cam’s bills always came up and other peoples didn’t. He was clearly saying this in jest and giving Mr. Ward a hard time. It was a fun, light moment on the floor.

However, it is true and Mr. Ward passed two more bills out of the House this week. HB 141 deals with electronic campaign finance disclosure. I think we can all agree that more transparency and easier access to information is a good thing for our state at this time. HB 376 also passed this week and create the Alabama Trails Commission that will coordinate local needs, goals and leadership in trail design, operation, build-up and maintenance for hiking, biking, running horseback riding, motorized off-highway vehicles and water sport.

Speaking of outdoors and sports, Spring Training started this week Florida and Arizona. That’s right; my Phillies have officially begun their quest to be the first NL team since 1944 to go to the World Series three years in a row. Yes, I am very excited and can’t wait for the season to actually start on April 5 in Washington D.C. where Roy “Doc” Halladay will officially take the mound for the 2010 Fightin’ Phils.

See you next week.

Stephen Frey
Legislative Director