MONTGOMERY, Ala. — An effort to reform Alabama’s ethics laws that has received some pushback from Attorney General Steve Marshall and Ethics Commission Director Tom Albritton will be put to the test this week.
Expected on the House floor today, bill sponsor Rep. Matt Simpson, R-Daphne, told Alabama Daily News that he was optimistic about the bill’s chances after several changes to it.
Simpson intends to introduce a substitute to his bill , as well as several amendments. The changes come from feedback from Marshall’s office and the Alabama District Attorneys Association, an organization that Simpson said has since endorsed the latest version of the bill.
“We’ve tried to take every bit of input that we can and every bit of things that make the bill stronger the best way we possibly can while still keeping the essence and original intent behind what the bill was for,” Simpson told ADN late last week.
With the last major ethics reform in Alabama occurring in 2010, Simpson said his bill was an effort to clean up what he called “gray area in our ethics laws,” particularly in how they apply to not only elected officials, but to roughly 300,000 state and municipal employees and their families. Under the bill, state employees and their families would not be held to the same standard of elected officials on matters such as receiving gifts.
Marshall voiced opposition to the original bill earlier in the session, telling ADN that he felt the bill would weaken the state’s ethics laws by further empowering the Alabama Ethics Commission.
“This bill would sideline my office and our state’s district attorneys, replacing our prosecutorial discretion with that of an unaccountable agency riddled with controversy,” Marshall told ADN last month.
Last week, Marshall suggested that there was still hope that he and Simpson could reconcile their differences on how to best reform the state’s ethics laws.
“We’ve engaged with the sponsor multiple times, offered what we believe are suggestions for improving the bill,” Marshall told ADN last week following a Republican event in Montgomery.
“He’s evaluating those now, (which) have included suggestions within the substitute itself, and what we’ve shared with him is that we’re opposed to the bill until we become comfortable. But we’re working to see if we can make it to the point that we can be with it.”
Simpson has included Marshall’s feedback into his latest changes to the bill, but has remained firm on his belief that the Ethics Commission should continue to play a role in handling ethics violations.
“What I want to do is make a clear delineation of some things are criminal, some things are civil; if they are criminal, then they should be handled by the district attorneys and the attorney general,” Simpson said.
“If they are civil, then I think that the Ethics Commission is an appropriate way to handle that, so let the Ethics Commission come up with what fine or what administrative resolution that they think is appropriate and have the DAs and the AG sign off on that. But still keep the Ethics Commission functioning… I do think they serve a purpose.”
Marshall remains opposed to the bill. He spelled out his opposition in an op-ed Tuesday.
Albritton also remains firmly opposed, saying Simpson’s bill amounts to a “rewriting” of the Ethics Code after a 2019 commission agreed that changed should only be handle piecemeal.
See Albritton’s full comments on Capitol Journal below.
Simpson said he would send a copy of a floor amendment he intends on proposing on the House floor today directly to Marshall’s office as soon as it’s completed. As to whether the changes would be enough to get Marshall on board with the bill, Simpson said he was still uncertain, but hopeful.
“I don’t know where the AG is going to land, (but) I would love his support; big fan of him, big fan of the office, (and) I would love for him to not be opposed or to actually be supportive of it, I just don’t know where they’re going to be,” Simpson said.
While the bill would significantly reduce the number of people required to adhere to the state’s ethics laws, for those whom the laws remain applicable, criminal penalties for ethics violations would be increased dramatically.
Today, it would be a Class B felony were an elected official to receive a gift valued at more than $100,000. Under the substitute Simpson intends on filing, that threshold would be lowered to any gift valued over $10,000.
Another significant component of the bill is how it would split the responsibility for handling ethics violations, deferring all civil ethics violations to be dealt with by the Ethics Commission, and criminal matters to the AG’s office.