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 [...]
Monthly Archives: February 2009
The House
Cautious Optimism
Bingo bill filibuster is unlikely to tie up Senate, Barron says
Barron, 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 [...]
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 [...]
In Case You Were Wondering
And of course you were wondering, if you didn’t tune in yesterday.
The Senate passed a few sunset bills and then we all got Pooled again. He’s still at it, still preventing normal business in the legislature.
It’s pretty sickening.
Today is committee day, then they’ll reconvene for the last time this week tomorrow at 10am.
As The Senate Turns
Here we are again, at the start of a day when the Senate will convene (2pm), wondering what soap opera drama will unfold today.
Listening live to a session of our state Senate ought to be boring. It ought to be filled with lots of mundane business surrounding the passage of basic bills that address [...]
We Got Pooled (Again)
The Senate conducted a little bit of business yesterday, receiving committee reports and even working one very brief special order calendar (4 bills all expanding state benefits for veterans) before Phil Poole stood up and began filibustering once again.
Apparently he had been about ready to let the Senate do some work until they passed a [...]
HB373 Passes House Committee
Yesterday a group of us went to the Alabama legislature to make our case in the Travel & Tourism committee as to why our bill deserves to pass out of committee. As you may already be aware, the committee voted unanimously to allow our bill to head to the floor of the House (on a [...]
Senate Watch the Second
To follow up to Danner’s previous post, the Senate on Tuesday worked in a routine fashion, debating and voting on a number of bills. This is great news, of course, because a functioning Senate is required for the Gourmet Beer Bill to pass.
Tomorrow, however, is a new day. The Senate didn’t convene today as Wednesdays [...]
Senate Watch
The Alabama Senate will reconvene today at 2pm. If you enjoy watching sausage being made, you can listen live here: http://www.legislature.state.al.us/audio/senateaudio.html
Today’s drama centers around whether the “Phil Poole Issue” has been resolved. The business the Senate conducted last Thursday was only possible because Poole agreed to pause his filibuster for one day to [...]
Last week in the legislature
Last week was the second week of the 2009 Alabama legislative session, and that usually marks the first week of action in Montgomery.
So far the Alabama House of Representatives has gotten off to an early start, passing several of the required “sunset laws.” These are noncontroversial bills that must be passed periodically to continue to [...]