The Leeds Area Chamber of Commerce held its monthly luncheon Thursday, June 19, at the Leeds First United Methodist Church Family Life Center with guest speaker Rep. Owen Drake, R.-Leeds.Chamber President Kelly Love introduced Drake, who was elected in 2006, saying that he had served his city on the Leeds City Council as well as his country in long military career leading to his retirement as a chief master sergeant before being elected to the state Legislature.
Drake began his speech by asking, “Who’s the boss?”
His answer to that question is that the citizens of Leeds are his bosses.
“I hope never to forget that,” Drake said. “The people are not always the boss of their legislator and most freshman legislators, which is what I am considered to be, feel the need to see who they should please in order to be re-elected.”
When the Alabama House of Representatives meets, a quorum of 53 members out of 105 total members must be present to begin making decisions.
The Legislature has 30 days, or 105 calendar days, to meet throughout the year, and will typically meet for 12 legislative days, or 30 calendar days at a time.
The two most important things for the Legislature to pass are the General Fund Budget and the Education Trust Fund Budget.
Drake said these are typically required to be passed before anything else can be discussed, however, legislators have found a way around that with budget isolation resolutions.
These BIRs allows any bill to be discussed before the budget is passed if a 3/5 vote can be obtained to move it through.
Drake said a special session has already been called this year, and Gov. Bob Riley recently sent out letters asking legislators when they would be available for another special session.
He said that during these special sessions, the only items that can be addressed are the ones the governor deemed important enough to call the session for, unless a 3/5 majority votes to discuss other topics.
In the Alabama House of Representatives, it would take 63 members to vote a topic through that had not been previously approved by the governor.
Drake said most bills go to one of various committees in the House to be voted upon.
It is the job of the representative trying to pass a bill to convince the committee chairman to place the bill on that committee’s agenda.
If the chairman does not place the bill on the agenda, the representative then has to obtain a 3/5 majority of the committee members voting to give it a favorable report, which would return it to its house of origin to be voted on, even though he said those bills usually die on the floor.
To have a bill discussed on the main floor of the House, representatives must convince the rules committee to place it on a special order calendar.
Drake said if a representative couldn’t get something on the special order calendar, there was little chance of getting it on the regular calendar.
Even if something makes it through the House, the possibility that the 35 Senators in the Alabama Legislature may vote it down or not vote on it at all is strong.
Drake said the House passed more than 200 bills and when the Legislature session ended, the Senate left 170 bills with no action taken.
He said the Alabama Education Association and higher education groups spent a good deal of the Legislature session debating about $25 million out of a $6.3 billion budget.
“Only 23 percent of students in Alabama are in higher education,” Drake said. “And right now kindergarten through 12th-grade gets about 67 percent of the budget and higher education gets about 33 percent. Tuition still went up in higher education whether they got what they asked for or not, so we didn’t think the increase they were asking for was justified.”
Drake also mentioned the tax-free groceries bill, saying it was a “Robin Hood bill” that would have cost people more money by making them pay taxes on taxes in the long run.
Regarding the PAC-to-PAC transfer bill, Drake said that passed the House, but the Senate worked on it so much that House members hardly recognized it when it came to them for a final review.
He also said he spoke against a gambling bill that limited slot machines to two locations in Alabama, Birmingham and Mobile.
On a positive note, Drake said the Legislature passed the tax-exempt rebate check bill and changed bid law to allow competitive bids to have a minimum of $15,000 to better reflect the current economy.
