By ALEXANDER WILLIS and MARY SELL, Alabama Daily News
MONTGOMERY, Ala. — With just three days remaining in the 2024 legislative session, the fate of a bill that would enact sweeping reforms to Alabama’s ethics laws will be decided this week, starting with a public hearing on the bill today in the Senate Judiciary Committee.
A substitute bill is expected but was not publicly available Monday afternoon.
House Bill 227, sponsored by Rep. Matt Simpson, R-Daphne, represents the first major overhaul to Alabama’s ethics laws in more than a decade, and made a number of changes.
“Rep. Simpson and others have worked really hard to try and make needed corrections to the state’s ethics law that affects so many Alabamians,” committee chairman Sen. Will Barfoot, R-Pike Road, told Alabama Daily News on Monday. “I look forward to discussing the proposed changes in the Judiciary Committee meeting.”
Under the original bill, criminal penalties would be increased for parties involved in bribing public servants. However, the scope of who would be subject to the state’s ethics laws would be drastically reduced, particularly by excluding most state employees and their families, which is estimated to be around 1.2 million people.
The bill would also weaken the power of the Ethics Commission by limiting the body to handling civil ethics violations, relegating criminal violations to the attorney general. A substitute to the bill further limited the commission by requiring permission from the attorney general of a district attorney for the commission to impose civil penalties.
While the bill passed unanimously out of the Alabama House in early April, members of the Alabama Senate have largely remained tight-lipped as to where they stand on the proposal.
Sen. Sam Givhan, R-Huntsville, the vice chair of the Judiciary Committee, told Alabama Daily News Monday that committee members were still debating the proposed changes to the bill provided in the substitute.
Sens. Lance Bell, R-Riverside, and Larry Stutts, R-Tuscumbia, both members of the committee, told ADN Monday they had yet to see final versions of the substitute.
Opponents of the original bill included Alabama Ethics Commission Executive Director Tom Albritton and Attorney General Steve Marshall.
Today’s public hearing was called for by the Ethics Commission, with Albriton telling ADN in an email Monday that the substitute did not “change much from the House version,” and that he and the commission remained opposed to it.
“It’s a bad bill,” Albritton said. “Good public servants will always follow the law, but this bill will encourage those with bad motives to take advantage of the loopholes within it.”
Marshall, who had engaged with Simpson in proposing changes to the bill earlier in the year, in April penned a scathing op-ed against the bill, arguing that the reforms would weaken the state’s ethics laws. His office did not respond to requests for comment on Monday.
There is a desire among legislative leadership to see the bill advance.Senate Pro Tem Greg Reed, R-Jasper, said last Thursday that the bill would still move forward in the Senate, and that strengthening Alabama’s ethics laws was still a top priority for the body.
“We’re going to be continuing to work on it and debate the ethics legislation to make sure that Alabama has the strongest ethics laws possible, and that they are clear and well defined… that’s going to be important,” Reed said.
“I’ve got some very capable attorneys that are senators, they’ve taken this issue and are very diligent about it. Certainly three days is a short window of time to accomplish anything, but as you’ve well seen in the past, the Senate’s up to the task.”
The Senate Judiciary Committee meeting is scheduled for 1 p.m. today.