The Alabama Senate is likely to consider changing the rules on how long senators can debate and delay legislation.
The possible change follows a contentious final few days of the 2025 legislative session when many local bills and some statewide bills died amid a slowdown by Democrats. While they only hold seven seats in the 35-member body, Democrats have taken advantage of the chamber’s rules allowing them to prolong debate and force bills to be read at length on the Senate floor.
Republicans’ concern leaving the State House last week seemed to be the number of local bills killed on the final night of the session.
“I think on local legislation, I think there’s been some issues …that we need to change a little bit because one person can hold those up all day,” Senate President Pro Tem Garlan Gudger, R-Cullman, said on Capitol Journal on Friday.
Passing local bills is usually light work in the Legislature as long as everyone in the affected delegation agrees on the bill. Lawmakers typically don’t get involved with another member’s local bills as a matter of legislative courtesy. But this session, there was a bottleneck of bills in the Senate. More than two dozen local bills died in the Senate Wednesday night as Democrats protested the failure of Sen. Bobby Singleton’s bill affecting gambling in Greene County to get a vote in the House and the GOP-backed bill to reorganize the Birmingham Water Works Board.
“All politics are local and those are the bills that we really need for our colleagues back home so they can be the voice for their constituents,” Gudger said. “Those local bills, they matter to the city councils, the county commissions, the probate judges, the sheriff’s departments…”
The Senate did cloture Democrats several times Wednesday to limit debate, but it still took 30-plus minutes to pass each bill as Democrats spoke for their maximum allowed time and requested bills be read aloud before final passage.
Throughout the session, it was Democrats who dominated time at the mic.
On Capitol Journal, Gudger said he didn’t blame Democrats for using the rules to stall.
“That’s what they have,” he said. “They don’t have the (supermajority) vote to get things passed through, so they take their time and delay, delay, delay.”
Gudger said his job as pro tem, elected by both parties, is to make sure all 35 senators have a voice in the chamber.
“If we do a rules change, it would be so everybody knows and so both sides can take advantage of it,” he said.
Democrats aren’t the only ones who use the rules to make their points or push their bills on occasion. Sen. Andrew Jones, R-Centre, slowed House bills for a day in April to draw prompt action on his bill in the House.
Singleton, D-Greensboro, said it is “almost laughable” that the GOP supermajority would need to change the rules to control eight Democrats.
“We’re a deliberative body,” he told ADN Friday. “If you’re going to try to cut down debate, then you’re cutting the people of the state of Alabama from being able to understand how legislation is really made in the state of Alabama. That’s not a good deal.”
Singleton was frustrated Wednesday that his Greene County bill was being treated as a general bill, not a local one, because it pertained to gambling. House leadership refused to put it on a calendar for a vote. He warned Republicans the previous week he’d slow action on the final day of the session if his bill didn’t get a vote.
“All I wanted was for my bill to have a fair shot,” Singleton said.
When that didn’t happen on Wednesday, he filibustered.
“I think it’s very short-sighted for them to come out talking about rules changes,” Singleton said, saying his bill could have been handled differently. “… Even though we held up some bills, my party did not vote one time against any of those bills.”
One of the biggest delay tactics in a Senator’s arsenal is the ability to have a bill read aloud before it gets a vote in that chamber. That rule is constitutional and can’t be changed by the body, but others related to the length of debate or debate on types of bills can be altered.
The House has more recently altered its debate rules, creating the option for what’s referred to as a “cloture calendar.”
“We can come with a special order calendar that limits every bill to 10 minutes total debate,” House Rules Chairman Rep. Joe Lovvorn, R-Auburn, told ADN. “And our cloture motion makes any debate down to 10 minutes of debate.”
Typical special order calendars allow for one hour of debate per bill in the House and the alternative calendar still allows for debate, Lovvorn said.
“I am excited to see what the Senate comes up with as far as ideas to give everyone time to have a voice (but also) move forward at the appropriate time to do the things the people of Alabama elected us to do,” Lovvorn said.
Sen. Arthur Orr, R-Decatur, said he’s previously recommended some new Senate rules allowing for better time management, including 10-minute calendars and consent calendars for non-controversial bills.
He thinks those suggestions will be revisited soon.
“I know it will be discussed and given serious consideration,” Orr said.
Rules changes are typically done in organizational sessions at the beginning of new terms, Senate Majority Leader Steve Livingston said. That would be in early 2027.
“We will analyze and discuss,” Livingston, R-Scottsboro, told ADN.