Many things can happen during the legislative session—sometimes even legislating!
To avoid voters missing out on stories about their legislators that they might have missed, Reran Tragedy provides the following handy digest of this week’s legislative “activity.”
-Legislators have met for nearly two months now. The impending budget doomsday for key state agencies has not been addressed. Firm changes to an immigration law that could be retarding the state’s economic development have not yet surfaced. Most of the “work” legislators have done so far is hurling tax money at corporations that the state probably cannot afford to spend and dealing with social issues in which government should have little or no role.
Accordingly, next week legislators will go on Spring Break.
http://youtu.be/5kudWk5y2PQ
Got to get away, y’all!
-Despite the threat of being Hubbardo’d, Rep. Blaine Galliher, R-Gadsden, the chairman of the House Rules Committee, said he opposed the present charter schools bill because it needs to better define what is a failing school system.
Meanwhile, Alabama Education Association Executive Director Henry Mabry was seen outside the Alabama Statehouse holding an astounding tall sign that denoted the height one must be “to join the party in these political pants.”
Mabry later adjusted the pants so they would not droop.
-A bill that would create “covenant marriage”—a voluntary type of legal union that would be nominally harder to get in and quite legally harder to get out of—was carried over and may not see any action, despite being sponsored by noted experts on Alabama’s true problems, including Sen. Scott “JeffCo don’t need no Mexican government now vote me for Congress” Beason, R-Gardendale; Sen. Clay “Please don’t show me your vagina I promise I won’t put an ultrasound probe there” Scofield, R-Guntersville; Sen. Gerald “I want to bury the gay things in my hole!” Allen, R-Cottondale; and the bill’s primary sponsor and advocate, Sen. Phil “A sperm that’s thinking about being in a vagina is a person and is not to be murdered with sex!” Williams, R-Rainbow City, who asserted that the bill would drop the state’s divorce rate.
Meanwhile, every other damn problem in Alabama.
-The Senate Constitution, Campaign Finance, Ethics, and Elections Committee approved a bill that would allow recall elections for state officials.
The bill’s sponsor, Sen. Roger Bedford, D-Russellville, was shocked by Republican support for a bill allowing his former Democratic colleagues in the Senate to be re-called into service so that he could be relevant again.
-The Senate passed a bill by handsome Sen. Cam Ward, R-Alabaster, that would allow greater control for the Alabama Sentencing Commission to give out lesser sentences to non-violent offenders to attempt to fix Alabama’s prison overcrowding problem.
The non-violent offenders already in jail will be processed into pink slime to be fed to Alabama’s schoolchildren.
Forcibly.
-A bill tying legislative pay to the state’s median income was cleared by a Senate committee.
The bill would also require the remaining legislative Democrats to fight to the death to earn their paychecks.
Or as Phil Williams calls it, “covenant death-fight performance-based pay.”
-Reps. Patricia Todd, D-Birmingham, and Mary Sue McClurkin, R-Indian Springs, discussed ridding Alabama of a 20-year-old sex education law that says that gay sex is illegal.
Having heard that their colleagues in the House are discussing “S-E-X,” Sens. Shadrack McGill, R-Woodville, and Phil Williams said “Ummmmmmmmmmmm, they said a dirty word!” and promised to tell on them to House Speaker Mike Hubbard.
-The House passed a bill outlawing looting, despite, you know, stealing already being illegal in Alabama.
Though not a member of the chamber, Sen. Phil Williams defended the bill as a ban on “covenant steal-y riot theft” that will drive down the state’s theft rate.
-The Senate State Government Committee approved a bill creating a trust fund that local governments could tap to make repairs to low-income housing.
The bill faces an uphill battle, however, in the full State Senate because of the strong, longstanding belief among state leaders that poor people should not have homes.
-Sen. Rodger Smitherman, D-Birmingham, called for more minorities to be appointed as trustees for the state’s universities.
The University of Alabama System Board of Trustees issued a pointed yet terse statement saying that “an expansion of minorities on the UA System Board will only occur when minorities in Alabama prove that they can be a successful and profitable venture.”
-The House approved a bill restructuring the Alabama Department of Transportation to speed up highway projects.
Here is the new ADOT organizational chart distributed to legislators:
-A bill that would allow farms to produce and distribute their own wine will likely need to age, with several subtle flavors of compromise inserted into the bill over the legislative break.
Hopefully, by the end of the revisions, the state’s news writers will have emptied their bottle of sweet wine puns about the proposed law.
The puns have splattered on the ground with the necessity of a grape landing on pavement instead of one of those bucket things where people step on grapes and stuff and it makes the sour, alcoholic grape Kool-Aid stuff that makes me boom-happy.
Sen. Phil Williams has labeled the bill “covenant sin-drink farm container bottling.”
-A Senate committee approved a bill upping the incentives that the state offers to filmmakers who shoot their pictures here.
Though legislators were horrified after Earl “Sugar” Clemons, executive director of the Alabama Association of Freaky Old School Bus Operators, or ALAFOBO, issued a press release saying that his members were deeply excited about the bill’s prospective passage. The release says that school bus operators have been “cleaning up their buses” in advance of applying for the new incentives since they now have “a lot more time to concentrate on their porn” with the state expected to ban school bus operators from using cell phones when driving.
-On Tuesday, the House passed a bill making it illegal to impersonate a local official or law enforcement officer.
This deeply saddened Rep. Marcel Black, D-Tuscumbia, who passed on voting for the measure:
-Shockingly, a tax break was tossed at something to heed the vague assertion that it will create jobs.
-Rep. Jay Love, R-Montgomery, introduced a bill trying to salvage the state’s settlement with contract holders of the state’s collapsed prepaid college tuition plan after the Alabama Supreme Court nixed it.
Love pointed out in the text of his proposal that the settlement poses no clear threat to the Supreme Court’s vengeful corporate masters.
Yet Sen. Phil Williams defended the reversal as “covenant law-changey happening” and said it would drive down “the rate of settlements that make laws sad.”
He is an idiot, you see.
-Nothing improved in any way whatsoever.
And now they get a week off.
Reran Tragedy is Weld’s satirical blog about politics and life in Alabama and the South. Much of what you will read here is fictionalized, except for all the parts that are unfortunately true because they are about politics and life in Alabama and the South. You can like this blog on Facebook.
The artist known as Cal Alabaster Jr., if that is his or her real name, may or may not also be the author of the Alabama humor blog called “King Cockfight.” If true, you may read Cal’s work there at kingcockfight.wordpress.com. You can also follow Cal on Twitter @KingCockfight or email Cal at king.cockfight@gmail.com.
