MONTGOMERY, Ala. — Members of the Alabama House advanced a bill Tuesday that would significantly reform the state’s ethics laws and who they apply to, doing so just hours after Attorney General Steve Marshall came out against the proposal.
The bill’s sponsor, Rep. Matt Simpson, R-Daphne, has described the bill as an effort to clean up what he called the “gray area” in the state’s existing ethics laws, which apply not only to elected officials but roughly 300,000 state employees and their families.
The bill, House Bill 227, would reduce the number of people under which ethics laws apply to. For those that such laws remain applicable to, however, penalties for ethics violations would increase in most cases.
As recently as last Thursday, Marshall was still working with Simpson on the bill, suggesting changes and amendments to quell some of his concerns with the legislation. In particular, Marshall took issue with the authority the bill granted to the Ethics Commission to handle ethics violations.
However, any hope of Marshall eventually joining Simpson as a supporter of the bill died Tuesday after he penned a scathing op-ed, decrying the bill as an effort to weaken the state’s ethics laws.
Simpson, when introducing his bill on the House floor, broke down why he considered a major reform to the state’s ethics laws necessary.
“When I was elected in November of 2018, we came in and had orientation (where) there was a panel of three ethics attorneys; when members of the Legislature asked the attorneys what we could and couldn’t do, we got three separate answers,” Simpson said.
“If we, as legislators with experts, can’t determine what we can and can’t do in the laws of Alabama, what chance does the firefighter, what chance does a city worker and what chance does the teacher have to understand what we can and can’t do in ethics violations? That was the rhyme and the rationale for what we’ve gone through.”
Simpson said that when including the immediate and extended families of Alabama’s 300,000 state employees, of whom existing ethics laws apply to, roughly 1.2 million Alabamians – nearly a quarter of the state’s population of 5 million – are subject to state ethics laws. And according to Simpson, unfairly so.
The bill saw only minor opposition, and ultimately passed in the House with a vote of 79-9, with those voting against a mix of both Democrats and Republicans.
After its passage, Simpson said that while he was disappointed with Marshall’s opposition to the bill, he would still be receptive to feedback from his office as the bill makes its way through the Senate.
“I’m still a big fan of his, still think highly of Steve Marshall, still think highly of the AG’s office, we just disagree on this issue,” Simpson said.
Simpson said he was unsure of how the bill would be received in the Senate, though he was optimistic for its success. Were the bill to become law, it would go into effect in June of 2025, something Simpson said would also permit greater scrutiny to the proposal, allowing for changes to be enacted before its implementation.