MONTGOMERY, Ala. — The Alabama Senate Judiciary Committee decided Wednesday to carry over a bill that would have enacted sweeping reforms to that state’s ethics laws, effectively killing the bill for the legislative session that ends today.
Both the Alabama House and Senate, however, later adopted a joint resolution that instructs the Legislative Services Agency to hire an independent expert to study the state’s ethics laws, and to submit a report on their findings to legislative leadership by the first day of the 2025 legislative session.
Sponsored by Rep. Matt Simpson, R-Daphne, the ethics reform bill would have more narrowly defined who the state’s ethics laws apply to. Today, Alabama ethics laws apply to the more than 300,000 state employees, which include teachers, police and firefighters, as well as their families.
Simpson’s bill would have excluded most state employees from such ethics laws, though also increased criminal penalties for certain ethics violations such as bribery. The bill would have also limited the Alabama Ethics Commission to handling civil matters, and delegate criminal matters to the attorney general’s office.
At the onset of the Judiciary meeting, the committee’s chair, Sen. Will Barfoot, R-Pike Road, announced that Simpson’s bill, House Bill 227, would be carried over, something Simpson appeared to already be aware of.
Nevertheless, Simpson still made his case for the bill to the committee, while also characterizing one of the leading obstacles to its passage as a “turf war” between its two leading opponents, Ethics Commission Executive Director Tom Albritton and Attorney General Steve Marshall.
“The attorney general thinks that the bill limits his office too much, (and) the Ethics Commission thinks the bill gives too much power to the attorney general; that is a fine line we are trying to dance to try to figure out what’s the answer,” Simpson said.
“I personally have a problem giving blanket power to one individual to say you decide everything.”
Simpson argued that existing law gave a large amount of prosecutorial discretion to the attorney general, which, coupled with ethics laws that a 2019 legislative report found to be “unduly broad” and “confusing,” afforded “blanket authority” to one individual when it came to ethics violations.
“Big fan of Steve Marshall, but it’s not about Steve Marshall, it’s about what happens to the next guy that comes in,” Simpson said. “If you give blanket authority to have one person make the determination for every prosecution across the state, that’s scary.”
With the bill’s fate already decided, members thanked Simpson for his efforts, and said that they largely agreed that the state’s ethics laws had room for improvement.
“You’ve put a lot of time into this, don’t think it’s in vain,” Barfoot told Simpson. “I think this conversation will continue, and I suspect we’ll have House members and senators that will be engaged in further discussion so that we will see this bill next year.”
When asked if he intended on bringing a similar bill next year, Simpson said he was uncertain.
“We’ll see,” he said. “I’m not saying no, I’m not saying I’m running away from the fight, I’m just saying we’ve got to figure out where we are and what’s going to change between now and next year.”
On the Senate floor Wednesday afternoon, Barfoot said the resolution hiring an outside expert will a make lawmakers revisit the issue in 2025.
“It forces us, because we’re spending taxpayers’ dollars on it, to take another look at this next year,” Barfoot said.