It’s a new day for Alabama lawmakers, say state Senate and House of Representatives leaders.
As the 2011 regular session of the Alabama Legislature convened March 1, senators and representatives were expected to conduct business at a level not seen in recent years, said Senate Pro Tem Del Marsh, R-Anniston.
“We are going to have a lot more transparency in state government … and fiscal responsibility is being taken to a new level,” he said.
Todd Stacy, communications director for House Speaker Mike Hubbard, R-Auburn, agreed.
“The House was already operating efficiently and more openly than the Senate and that’s credit to (the previous) Speaker Seth Hammett, but Speaker Hubbard wants to continue that and build upon it,” he said. “He wants to make the business that goes on in the House more transparent, fair and accountable.”
Legislators, working together with then-Gov. Bob Riley, started down this new transparent form of conducting state government in December when they passed major ethics reform legislation to cut down on political corruption.
And during the special session in which those bills were passed, Hubbard not only demonstrated his desire for increased transparency and accountability but also for fairness within the ranks of House members, Stacy said.
“There was a clear divide between political parties during the special session, but Speaker Hubbard did not use a heavy hand to cut off debate when the minority party was speaking even though debate went into the wee hours of the night,” he said. “The minority has the right to speak, and you never want to diminish the voice of the minority. The Republicans have been in the minority for a long time.
“Now that they are in the majority, they are going to treat the Democrats the way they would have liked to have been treated.”
“As with most things in life, if we just use the Golden Rule, we’ll get along just fine,” Stacy added.
Marsh said committee appointments in both the House and Senate are another place fairness will be demonstrated. Even though this was not the case in the past, “we gave fair representation to everyone,” he said. Committees also are expected to do more work than they are used to doing, he added.
“In the past, the work on legislation was done on the (Senate or House) floor. The committee would just pass it out rather than work on it,” he said.
Stacy said Hubbard has set up a subcommittee system that will insure better deliberation on legislation as well as actually write the bills … instead of letting “the lobbyist write the bills” as has happened in some cases.
Another major change comes with rules in the Senate, Marsh said.
“In the past, the chair of the rules committee would come out with a rules calendar (on the spot) and no one would know what was coming,” he said. “The new rules requires the rules committee to actually meet … and to post an agenda online 24 hours in advance of the legislative day.”
A full copy of the rules for both houses as well as other legislative information can be found at www.legislature.state.al.us.
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