Contact your senator today!
Unfortunately, the Senate is up to its old tricks again this year. Once again, they are regularly deadlocking themselves in filibusters and voting on little to no legislation. We are in the final weeks of the legislative session, and our bill is still sitting there waiting for them to get some work done. All they have to do is work.
Time is ticking, and we shouldn't reserve ourselves to just sitting around, waiting on them. So today, we're starting a coordinated campaign to let them know that we're watching, and that we want them to do the work they've been elected to do. Your state senator represents YOU in Montgomery, so please take the time TODAY to contact them and let them know how you feel. Don't know what to say? Many people have never emailed their elected officials, but it's easy. Just write something like, "My name is [name] and I live in your district. I've been watching the progress in the Senate this session, and I'm writing because... " There's really nothing to it. Remember, it's their job to represent you. They need to hear from you, and they do read their email.
To find the name and contact information for you state senator, just enter your street address and city OR zip+4 at our legislative page. We do not use the address information entered into that form for any purpose other than making the program work. When you contact your senator, let him or her know that, regardless of their position on our bill, you want to see a VOTE on HB373, the Gourmet Beer Bill. Here are some pointers to keep in mind in your email:
* Urge that they resolve the issues that are slowing business and get our bill, HB373, up for a vote.
* Stay friendly. You may be angry, but a positive tone is more likely to get them to listen to you
* Do this TODAY! Like I said above, we're approaching the end of the session, and we're not the only bill on their agenda.
We want the Senate to vote on the House Bill, HB373, because this will be final passage - the bill's next stop would be Governor Riley's desk!
If you get a reply, please let us know. You can email me or Dan Roberts at dan.roberts@freethehops.org. And please do this today. If all of our thousands of members and supporters take this small step, I promise you it will have an impact.
SB132 In The Senate Tomorrow
Maybe.
Tomorrow the Senate Rules Committee is going to propose one special order calendar with nothing but a bill that would decrease regulation on AT&T, and then if/when that bill either passes or is voted down, they intend to follow it with another special order calendar with several bills, one of which is the Gourmet Beer Bill.
If they can finish debate on the deregulation bill, then we'll have a floor vote on our bill tomorrow. But we have reason to believe they will get bogged down on that first bill and never make it to the second special order calendar. If that happens, they will carry over the second calendar (with our bill) until the next legislative day, which will be the Tuesday after Spring Break (SB is next week).
Since we can't predict what will happen tomorrow, we're asking all of our supporters to contact their Senators right now expressing their support for SB132. If they fail to make it to our bill tomorrow, then we'll update everyone on how things look for the Tuesday after the break.
Keep your eye on www.twitter.com/freethehops for live updates on what's happening in the Senate tomorrow. They will convene at 10am. Live updates may not begin until a bit later, though. The first 30 - 45 minutes will probably be a lot of procedural drudgery.
House Audio Recording
Some folks have requested an audio recording of yesterday's House debate on our bill. Which we have, of course.
FTH House Debate 2009.mp3
Be prepared to be angered and offended by the self-righteous ignorance, such as Richard Laird's assertion that the quality of a church should be judged by whether or not its members would shame a legislator over a pro-alcohol vote.
It's Complicated
This post is for the hardcore among you. If the excruciating details of the legislative process bore you, feel free to skip it.
First, you might want to review our "steps" page summarizing what is involved in getting the Gourmet Beer Bill signed into law and where we stand right now. The point to keep in mind is that although we introduce and push two bills (one in the Senate, one in the House), only one of them will make it all the way through both houses and onto the Governor's desk. Having two bills is simply a strategy to maximize our opportunities.
With that in mind, the most likely path I now see to the Governor's desk may be confusing to casual observers. For here is what will probably happen:
Although they are doing better than last year, the Senate has again wasted several days this year locked in filibuster, and I wouldn't be at all surprised to see more slowdowns in that body before the '09 session is over. So our opportunities to hit the floor for a vote in the Senate are fewer and farther between than in the House.
There is a pretty good chance the Senate will be ready to deal with the Gourmet Beer Bill next week (on either 3/10 or 3/12) but they will only be considering bills that originated in the Senate, not bills (like HB373) that originated in the House. HB373 probably won't even be procedurally ready to hit the Senate floor anytime next week as it still has to pass the Senate Tourism committee and receive its "2nd reading" in the Senate before it can be voted on.
All that to say, if the Senate votes on any Gourmet Beer Bill next week, it will be SB132. And here's where it might confuse some people. If that happens, our issue will have passed a successful vote in the House and a successful vote in the Senate, but each vote will have been on a different bill. Therefore, neither bill will be ready to go to the Governor. We'll still have to pass one more vote in either the House or the Senate (definitely not both) before we can head to the Governor's desk.
Because of the dysfunction in the Senate, the most likely scenario is that we'd bring SB132 through the House and endure one more round of fact-free grandstanding from the House's neo-prohibitionists crying about how "child-killing, family-destroying, high-alcohol beer" is about to be legal and WON'T SOMEONE PLEASE THINK OF THE CHILDREN? In other words, a repeat of exactly what we just endured yesterday, but with even more passionate pleading using bogus statistics made up on the spot.
And that would probably fall somewhere in mid-to-late April. Only then will we be poised to get the Governor's signature.
Another possible (though less likely) scenario is that we pass SB132 in the Senate next week, then a few weeks later bring HB373 to the floor in the Senate, still getting a double dose of grandstanding by Senate opponents. Or, we could skip SB132 altogether and just bring HB373 to the floor in the Senate in late April. But that's risky because the Senate might be locked up over budget battles.
And the final conceivable scenario is that the Senate skips over SB132 next week, goes on Spring Break the following week, then sometime shortly thereafter puts SB132 on their special order calendar. And once it has passed the BIR, our sponsor could move to substitute SB132 with HB373 because they are identical and HB373 could then receive a vote on final passage in the Senate. Then to the Governor's desk in late March or early April.
But as appealing as that shortcut sounds, it is very, very unlikely to become reality because the substitution of one bill for another for final passage would require unanimous consent from every Senator in the chamber. And while we're pretty confident we have enough support in the Senate to pass our bill, we do have opponents in the Senate and it's hard to imagine none of them objecting to unanimous consent on a motion that would fast-track our bill to final passage in both houses of the legislature.
See? I said it was complicated.
HB373 passes the House
By a comfortable margin - 49 to 37.
Next up, we need a functional senate!
The Debate
The past couple of years our bill has sparked some wild commentary from members of the House of Representatives. Maybe they've finally gotten the craziest stuff out of their systems, or maybe we'll hear more zany antics tomorrow. No way to know unless you tune in. They convene at 1pm, and we're 8th on the special order calendar.
If you're unable to get the audio, you might want to check the FTH Twitter feed, which will be updated with details on who is saying what and when. Classic moments like "What's wrong wit da beer we got?" will be recorded for posterity's sake, if they happen.
The House
We've somewhat ignored the House of Representatives on this blog because all the drama has been in the Senate this year. But the House is still important! Our bill has to go through both the House and Senate in one session in order to become law.
We passed the House last year and have no reason to expect any different outcome this year. That said, as I say almost every post, there are no guarantees in the Alabama Legislature. Anything's possible.
And now we are faced with an upcoming vote in the House -- almost a year to the day after we passed the House last year. I have been informed that the House Rules Committee will put HB373 on a special order calendar this Tuesday, March 3rd. We passed the House last year on March 4th. Poetic.
So now is when you are needed most. Calls, emails, and faxes have the most impact when legislators know they are about to vote on a bill. As usual, neo-prohibitionists who think all alcohol is evil will be making calls trying to sway fence-sitters to vote against our bill. We need you to overwhelm those calls so that the Representatives about to vote on the Gourmet Beer Bill know that it has strong support from their constituents.
So... call! Use our Find Your Legislator page to look up who your Representative is and find out what his or her position on our bill is. Then, send an email and/or make a call thanking them if they already support us, or explaining why you, as their constituent, want to see HB373 signed into law.
Your voice is the most powerful tool we have. Make yourself heard. Now.
Cautious Optimism
Bingo bill filibuster is unlikely to tie up Senate, Barron saysBarron, chairman of the Rules Committee, the panel that controls the flow of legislation to the Senate floor, said politics in the Senate have changed since the 2008 session.
A year ago, Sen. Myron Penn, D-Union Springs, kept the Senate tied up in a filibuster for more than a month over a proposed constitutional amendment that would expand bingo in Macon County.
Barron said Thursday that kind of filibuster isn't likely to happen this session because Democrats and Republicans are working together.
"We are in a totally different posture than last year," he said.
In 2008, Republican senators, still angry over rules changes they believed were unfair, helped Penn in his stalling tactics.
"Last year I couldn't get the Republicans to carry (postpone) the gambling bill over, and they had enough Democrat votes over there so I couldn't get a majority to carry it over," Barron said. "But we've got a good bipartisan working relationship in this body, and I think it will continue."
We shall see. We shall see.
posted by Danner at 6:53 AM permanent link 0 comments
Good News, Bad News
The really good news is that the Senate functioned today. They made it through a relatively impressive special order calendar consisting of almost all the remaining sunset bills. In other words, they functioned normally, without interference from Phil Poole. And the word I'm hearing is that Poole is probably done with his obstructionism, although as I keep saying, we have no guarantees when it comes to the AL legislature. Anything's possible.
The bad news is that now the path is clear for bingo to once again shut down the Senate exactly as it did last year. This year, this horrible specter is SB135, relating to bingo in Greene County. If it does not pass quickly, the whole legislature could again be brought to a grinding halt over the debate.
If you care more about the fate of The Gourmet Beer bill than about gambling in Greene County, then pray that SB135 passes quickly so that it won't stand in the way of the Senate passing the many other bills waiting in line this year, including ours.