Final Day of the Legislative Session
Many legislators were ready to end the session Wednesday. They wanted to get back to their districts to campaign for re-election in the June primaries, the general election in November, or both. But a few pieces of legislation got in the way.
A bill allowing economic developers to be exempt from some of the state’e ethics laws won approval, despite opposition from the executive director of the ethics commission. One house member says it was needed.
“We didn’t want to put a disadvantage to Alabama from the selection of industry coming to our state and we’re going to continue to hold that up,” says Rep. Ken Johnson.
Johnson says the bill keeps Alabama in the running for new plants.
“The ethics commission wanted us to clarify the existing law and it’s something that we have never required from people who are in economic development,” says Johnson.
While the economic developers bill passed, a bill requiring law enforcement officers to keep a record of the race of people they pulled over, died without a vote.
“Right now, we have no real definition of what racial profiling is identified as in the state of Alabama, says Rep. Merika Coleman.
“It was just the last weening hours of the session and all of the doing back and forth with the house and the senate the calendar could never get up so we could work on the bill,” says Speaker of the House Rep. Mac McCutcheon.
Representative Coleman and the rest of the house black caucus hoped the legislation would pass.
“I still had hope that this bill would come up because of the promises that had been made by the republican leadership-that we were going to work. We had a compromised bill-we were going to work through that,” says Coleman.
“I don’t think there’s any way you can really stay away from controversy especially things. The process just moves the way it moves,” says McCutcheon.
Representative Johnson says if he had to grade this year’s session, he would give it a “B.”
All of the seats in the Alabama legislature are up for re-election this year.
