AlabamaGroceryJan2017Final

GOVERNMENT RELATIONS

2 0 1 6 : A Y e ar t o F o r g e t

PATRICK MCWHORTER LEGISLATIVE REPRESENTATIVE THE MCWHORTER GROUP

ate the last night of session, but failed to be passed by the House. Governor Bentley has declared prison reform his No. 1 priority for 2017, and he plans to bring that same proposal back. He has said he may call a special session within the regu- lar session to isolate the issue. This whole thing is fraught with politics. Those legislators with prisons in their dis- tricts do not want to lose those jobs. But the biggest concern in Montgomery is the provi- sion to exempt the construction and bond issuance from the state’s bid laws. Corrections experts also had questions about the size of the facilities. And many legislators were skeptical of the Administration’s claims that the bonds would be repaid from savings in staffing and other areas. For our industry, the AGA’s top priority will be passage of legislation that will eliminate our members’ issues with on-premise tasting requirements and allow for tastings in off- premise locations as well as on-premise loca- tions. Senate Rules Chairman Jabo Waggoner will be introducing the bill shortly. We will continue to advocate for funding of the Healthy Food Financing Initiative; work to be sure we are protecting the SNAP program (HB 2 already introduced – prohib- its waivers to work requirement); continue to be involved in the fight for privatization of the Alabama Alcohol Control Board and get the state out of the alcohol business; and, if

Almost everyone in Alabama is glad to have 2016 behind us.

Governor fought all spring and summer over Medicaid funding, finally covering most of the projected shortfall with yet another Band-Aid solution. A lottery proposal made it through both houses, but objections came from all direc- tions and doomed the measure. We will see it again, but with Indian casinos, local gambling interests, and those who oppose gambling for moral reasons, it’s very unlikely a bill will pass. The Medicaid funding issue will likely come up again this year, but the main crisis for 2017 will be prisons. The state faces a possi- ble federal takeover of the system; violence is getting worse and worse; riots at one prison resulted in the stabbing of two corrections officers, and two inmates were killed in 2016. The Governor and his staff proposed an $800 million prison construction package, intend- ing to replace all but two existing prisons with four super prisons – three male pris- ons that would hold up to 4,000 inmates each, and one female prison to hold up to 1,200 inmates.

Almost everyone in Alabama is glad to have 2016 behind us. We saw all three branches of our government disgraced; House Speaker Mike Hubbard was convicted of 12 felony ethics charges and removed from office, Supreme Court Chief Justice Roy Moore was suspended for the remainder of his term for telling Probate Judges to ignore a U.S. Supreme Court rul- ing, and the House started impeachment proceedings against Governor Robert Bent- ley’s activities related to an extramarital affair and his firing of the law enforcement agency. Other than all that, we only had to worry about budgets. The Legislature and the

A scaled-back version made it out of the Sen-

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