Birmingham, Ala. – This week, as the state legislature meets to debate Congressional redistricting in the special session, a bill was introduced that is being touted as a way to streamline state government. While API is all for streamlining state government, that is not at all what Senate Bill 3/House Bill 2 would do.
The only obligation of the Alabama Legislature is to enact state budgets each year. The Alabama Constitution requires that the annual budgets be considered before all other legislative items. However, since 1984, a process has been in place where a 3/5th majority of the Legislature can adopt something called the Budget Isolation Resolution (BIR) before moving on to the consideration of non-budget related bills before the budgets have been enacted. It is, in effect, a double vote on every bill until the budgets are passed; the intent is to make it harder for legislators to ignore the constitutional directive to focus on the budgets.
For general bills, the 3/5th vote requirement is a simple yes or no process because most legislators cast a vote. However, there is a gentlemen’s agreement for legislators to abstain from voting on local bills that do not directly impact their districts. That agreement and practice caused a question of the integrity of the process. In 2015, a County Circuit Court judge declared a Jefferson County local law invalid because the Legislature had not met the 3/5th BIR threshold due to hat-tip abstentions.
To counteract the Jefferson County ruling, statewide voters approved a constitutional amendment in 2016 that retroactively validated all local legislation passed between 1984 and November of 2016. Since 2016, the Legislature has operated under the premise that a 3/5th vote of a quorum (11 members in the Senate and 32 in the House) satisfies the BIR requirement. However, legal challenges have continued.
Senate Bill 3 and House Bill 2 would retroactively validate all local legislation passed since 2016. After March 5, 2024, a BIR would no longer be required to debate and pass local bills that come before the Legislature in the absence of the state budgets being enacted. The point, proponents say, is to be able to pass local bills faster and easier while the lingering ameliorating legal issues. That is not streamlining government, it is fast-tracking it. Legislative hurdles are there for a reason. The process is supposed to be arduous, messy and methodical, not quick or easily manipulated from the top-down.
API has several concerns with no longer requiring a BIR for local bills. The BIR debate is an important part of the legislative process and can halt (or at least slow down) bad policy from passing. Doing away with the BIR vote for local bills would also make it easier to pass local constitutional amendments, such as the “local” expansion of gambling bill that passed the Senate during the regular session of this year. In fact, many bills being presented as local bills have the potential to have an impact on the entire state, beyond the geographic area that they directly affect.
The solution to the problem isn’t a further subversion of the constitutional duty of the legislature to accommodate questionable legislative practices. The solution to the problem isn’t more control from the top or having fewer votes. The clear solution to the problem is for our legislature to participate in less hat-tipping votes and abstentions. Members of the Alabama legislature should accept the accountability of voting for or against every piece of legislation that is brought to the floor; that is the only way to truly be accountable to those of us they represent.