In the Weeds with Alabama Daily News

A new episode of "In the Weeds" is out today! This week, Mary and I welcome State Sen. Chris Elliott, whose police jurisdiction legislation recently caused quite a stir with 128 municipalities statewide forced to end collecting taxes and fees in those areas. PJs, get it? There were a lot more issues to discuss, though: occupational licensing boards, the Mobile Bayway project, and this pesky little west Alabama highway. Tune in below or wherever you get your podcasts.

A new episode of "In the Weeds" is out! This week, Mary and I host Alabama Department of Commerce Secretary Greg Canfield to go in depth on the economic development incentives bills currently before the Legislature. We also chatted about the more granular details of industrial recruiting. A truly weedy conversation! Listen HERE or wherever you get your podcasts.

Mary and Todd visit with State Rep. Rex Reynolds, chairman of the House General Fund budget committee. They talked budgets, obviously, but also hit on other issues: the Huntsville police shooting, prisons, a possible grocery sales tax cut and much more! Listen below or wherever you get your podcasts.

Todd and Mary review the week that was in the Alabama Legislature. No guests, just informed commentary about what happened and curiosity about what's next as Spring Break comes.  

Todd and Mary talk with House Minority Leader Anthony Daniels of Huntsville about the Democrats' agenda for the upcoming legislative session. Among the topics discussed are un-taxing groceries and overtime income, school choice and economic development incentives. The term triangulation refers to a political strategy used by the Clinton administration in which the former president would claim the popular middle ground on issues by making the right and left positions seem extreme. It came up in this conversation because of Daniels staking out what would seem like Republican proposals in any other year: tax cuts on groceries and overtime income. Really interesting conversation. Listen below or wherever you get your podcasts.

House Speaker Nathaniel Ledbetter comes "in the weeds" to discuss what the upcoming session might look like. We talk some issues, but mostly stick to process and how the House of Representatives will be different under his leadership. What will it mean to empower committees more? Will there be a difference in the way the floor operates? How are new members getting acclimated and is there any truth to this idea of a state-level "freedom caucus?" These questions and more get explored in the weeds!

MONTGOMERY, Ala. - As Alabama state leaders ramp up budget discussions, Alabama State Superintendent of Education Eric Mackey presented his department's funding requests during a budget hearing on Thursday, asking for an additional $984 million in new funding in the next fiscal year. Gov. Kay Ivey and lawmakers last year approved a record $8.2 billion education budget for public K-12 and higher education institutions. On Thursday, several agencies outlined their need for more money in 2024. The largest portion of the newly requested K-12 funds, Mackey said, would be used to both increase teacher salaries and recruit new teachers amid continued staffing shortages. Teacher shortages have plagued Alabama’s public education system for years, with the state’s greatest shortage areas being in special education, early childhood and elementary teachers. “Over 30 years in education, I never thought we would see the day where we have more money than we have people,” Mackey said.  “When I was a principal, I had 80 teaching applicants for one opening in third grade. The trouble was I had money for maybe one and I'd like to hire three; the problem now is they have the money but can't find the people.” Alabama State Superintendent of Education Eric Mackey shares a presentation on his department's 2024 budget requests to a joint legislative budget committee at the Alabama State House on Thursday. Mackey said $264 million of the new funding would go toward adding 3,000 teaching positions across the state, as well as additional counselors and assistant principals. “Some of our very rural communities can't find more people to hire,” Mackey continued. “They're even having a hard time finding teacher assistants, not just certified teachers. They can't find teacher's aids in some of our communities because the job market's just so tight.” Mackey said that the state’s public school system was short on teachers by 300 in special education, 104 in early childhood (K-3), and 183 in elementary. The proposed budget would also raise classroom supply spending from $900 to $1,000 per teacher, add an additional $20 million toward transportation operations, allocate $24 million toward summer math camps and other math improvement initiatives stemming from the Numeracy Act. Another hurdle facing Alabama’s public school system is the impending deadline for federal COVID-19 reliefs funds to be spent. Federal dollars went to school districts across the country by the billions with the passage of three legislative relief packages; the CARES Act, the Appropriations Act, and the American Rescue Plan Act. Mackey said that the entirety of funds from the CARES Act have been spent, most of the funds from the Appropriations Act have either been spent or committed to be spent, but that a large portion of ARPA funds still need to be allocated. “It's been a struggle in many districts to spend the funds they have because one of the best ways to spend these federal funds is on people, and they can't match people to the money,” Mackey said. “All of our districts have spent their (CARES ACT) funds, most of the (Appropriations Act) funds are spent, it's that third trunk of money that was approved by Congress and signed into law by President Biden in the spring of 2021 that was the largest bucket of money, and it has to be spent by next fall.” While Mackey said he and his colleagues are diligently working with school districts to get those funds spent, he called on the U.S. Congress to extend the deadline for ARPA spending. “We're working with districts, we're being proactive in trying to help them identify...

Mary and I welcome State Rep. Terri Collins, who chairs the House Education Policy Committee and who is known for being a subject matter expert on the issue of education. We talk about what the Legislature might tackle education wise this session, from literacy and numeracy to choice and the budget surplus. A very "in the weeds" discussion if we don't say so ourselves!

Todd welcomes Stephen Boyd, a veteran Washington operative who writes the new "MONDAY BRIEF" about the latest from the nation's capital. Topics include: The Alabama Delegation's committee assignments and what they mean; What's really going on with debt limit negotiations with historical context; The realities of divided government from someone who has seen it all; Why we haven't seen a decision on Space Command to Huntsville; And what we should think about the Trump / DeSantis poll.

Todd and Mary interview State Sen. Arthur Orr, who chairs the Senate Education Ways and Means Committee. The issues are myriad, from allocating ARPA dollars and when a special session might be called to how a tax rebate might materialize and what school choice items are actually on the table.

Todd and Mary break down the week that was in Alabama politics. Topics include the inauguration and reading between the lines of speeches, the first pre-filed bill of the 2023 regular session and where Alabama's Congressional delegation landed on the committee carousel.

As promised, we are bringing back the podcast. A new episode of "In the Weeds with Alabama Daily News" is now available wherever you get your podcasts. Mary Sell and I talk about the week that was in Alabama politics, from the organizational session to what might be coming in March. We'll try to make this a weekly thing, but what will help is readers/listeners telling us what you'd like to hear us get into. Listen to the full episode below.

In this week’s episode of “In the Weeds,” we talk to Senate President Pro Tem Del Marsh. He certainly had an interesting legislative session, both as the leader of the Senate and personally. We discussed how the gas tax and infrastructure plan sailed through the Senate, the details of his education governance overhaul, and how he went from throwing out red meat at the beginning of the session back to managing the Senate toward the end. One of our most interesting exchanges was about why he ultimately decided not to pursue the U.S. Senate seat. For about a year, he’s been on everybody’s short list for candidates for U.S. Senate, but in the middle of the legislative session, he announced that he wouldn’t be running. I asked him to walk me through the whole thing, and he had a little fun with it, while also being pretty candid. The pre-interview discussion is about the U.S. Senate race and specifically what has changed between this race and the 2017 special election that favored Roy Moore. (More on that in the column).

We’re breaking down the recently-concluded Regular Session of the Alabama Legislature with House Speaker Mac McCutcheon in this week’s episode of “In the Weeds w/ Alabama Daily News.” Caroline Beck and I discuss some of the latest developments, including two bills that received “pocket vetoes” from Gov. Kay Ivey due to legislative drafting errors. We also dive into the details of the Education Trust Fund – what it pays for and how. Plus, we explain how a last-minute revenue transfer from the education budget to the general fund will help pay for the Children’s Health Insurance Program. My guest this week is House Speaker Mac McCutcheon. I’m grateful to the Speaker for sitting down with me to review the session. Ten or twelve days after adjournment allows for a little better perspective on what happened, and Speaker McCutcheon had some interesting thoughts about what passed and what didn’t. In particular, he was proud of the gas tax and infrastructure plan that he has labored on for years. He went back a few years to explain his own history on that, and then back a few decades to talk about the legislative context of the gas tax. The Speaker talked at length about the problems facing Alabama’s prisons and what could be accomplished by a possible special session to address the issue in the fall. He also addressed some of the procedural problems the House faced this year with a handful of lawmakers acting out and slowing things down. I found his commentary on what it’s like to serve in the Speaker’s chair interesting, and I think you will, too. This is a long podcast by our standards. If you want to skip past our commentary to the interview with Speaker McCutcheon, that begins at the 39:00 mark. Interview Transcript: Todd C. Stacy: Hey, Mr. Speaker. Speaker Mac McCutcheon: Hey, how are you? Good to see you. TCS: Good to see you, too. Thanks for having me in your office today. SMM: Thanks for stopping by. TCS: You’re in Montgomery today, but we’re out of session. What what have you been doing? SMM: Well, we had a special event today.  The Chinese delegation from the People’s Congress of the Province of Hebei, came back in China, you know, and they, they wanted to talk with us about educational opportunities for their people, speaking primarily of the Space and Rocket Center, and NASA, and they were interested in that. And then we also had some very good discussions about the economy and the imports and exports between the state of Alabama and their country in China. As you know, the province of Hebei is what we call a sister state with Alabama. Back during the George Wallace administration, they signed an agreement to become sister states through trade and commerce and relationships, and we’ve kept that relationship going all these years.  I think it’s very timely, especially when you look at the national scene from their country of China, and United States and the trade war issue and the tariffs that we have. So those things are, you know, are at the top of the list. And for us to be able to come together from a state provenance issue, and talk about trade in our agreements with each other and where we are, I think it’s important for the state. TCS: Well, it’s been 10 days since adjournment.  I was joking earlier – when y’all adjourn, we (reporters) come and attack you asking, “how do you grade the session” and want your immediate feedback. I was thinking about it because, here you are at the very end of the session, just after a four day work week, which is very rare – I don’t remember many of those; pretty rare. And so it’s a little unfair, just to, you know, put you on the spot. But it’s been 10 days. You get to maybe decompress a little bit, gain some  perspective.

This week’s guest is Congressman Mike Rogers of Alabama’s 3rd District. That district runs along the eastern border of the state from Cherokee County to the north all the way down past Auburn to Russell County to the South. He was first elected to Congress back in 2002 to take the place of a guy named Bob Riley, who was leaving Congress to run for Governor. That makes Mr. Rogers Alabama’s second longest serving member in the House. For as long as I’ve been following him, Rogers has always been engaged on military and agriculture issues. He’s been on both the Agriculture Committee and the House Armed Services Committee pretty much the whole time he’s been in Washington, with a few exceptions that he gets into some in our discussion. That makes sense because his district is home to the Anniston Army Depot, where they produce and repair tanks and other ground combat vehicles. They actually just got a new contract at the Depot that will be a big deal for the 3,600 workers there. The 3rd district is also highly agricultural, which makes the Farm Bill a priority for Rogers. One thing I found interesting about our discussion was how candid he was about the history of Farm Bill negotiations, up to and including this most recent one. Mr. Rogers is now the Ranking Member on the House Homeland Security Committee. That means he’s the top Republican and would have been Chairman had the Republicans kept the House. That spot puts him in a unique position of negotiating how Congress deals with one of the more sensitive issues of late, the Russian attempts to interfere with our elections. He spoke about that issue at length, and I was a bit surprised at how much bi-partisan cooperation there seemed to be on it. But the biggest issue for Mr. Rogers is the Space Force. In fact, he might be the most engaged Member of Congress on the issue. When you hear Space Force, you might think of a highly caricatured campaign idea from Donald Trump last election. But the effort to create a military branch or department dedicated to space activity has been around for a while. It’s actually really timely right now because the last several weeks, Secretary of Defense Patrick Shanahan has been testifying to congressional appropriators about the immediate and long term costs of creating a Space Force. It’s fair to say that much of Congress remains skeptical on creating a Space Force within the Air Force. In fact, a House Defense Appropriations draft markup this week included funding to continue “studying” the Space Force, which is Congressionalese for not gonna happen this year.  You may see a lot more news about that line item in the coming days and weeks. But the Pentagon argues it’s an essential need. The United States used to not have any competition for dominance in space. Now, we have competition in Russia and China. That’s not to say they are winning, but they are trying, and the military wants more tools to defend that frontier. Congressman Rogers does a good job of explaining what the idea really is, why it is necessary, and how politics impacted the whole thing. I really appreciated the very substantive discussion, and I hope you enjoy it. Oh, the audio is picking up right as we are talking about the issue of immigration and getting into his work on Homeland Security. I spared you the pleasantries and small talk at the beginning. You’re welcome. Todd C. Stacy: … his big theme, really, is immigration. That means Homeland Security. You’re now Ranking Member.  I assume that means you would have been Chairman had the Republicans maintained the majority, but it also means you will be Chairman if things work out in 2020. Congressman Mike Rogers: Right. TCS: So how’s that going? Have yall started work yet on Homeland? MR: Yeah. I’m going to be meeting with Chairman Thompson this week about what we’re going to be doing going forward.