Thursday is the 29th day of the 2023 Alabama Regular Legislative Session, and the Alabama Constitution limits the legislative session to just 30 legislative days. The Senate has an ambitious 27-bill special order calendar to address today, as well as remaining local bills and senate confirmations. All of this was delayed this morning because some Senate Democrats are filibustering confirmations and local bills to keep the Senate from adopting Thursday’s special order calendar.
Two issues were responsible for slowing the legislative process, potentially killing dozens of bills before time runs out on the session.
State Senator Rodger Smitherman (D-Birmingham) said he is filibustering a controversial provision in the grocery tax cut bill. That provision would prevent a county or municipality that elects to cut its own sales tax on groceries to then come back later and raise the grocery taxes. The legislation, as written, cuts the state sales tax on groceries but does not cut the county, city, or school district sales taxes on groceries. The legislation does, however, bar them from raising the tax on groceries from this point forward. Even if a city council or county commission cuts the tax, they then can’t restore it.
Smitherman said that this potentially could “bankrupt my cities.”
Sources have told Alabama Today that the second issue is the status of illegal gambling in Greene County.
Greene County has legal dog racing and charity bingo, but Greene County dog track, Greenetrack, was not satisfied with that. Because of that, they began offering electronic bingo machines instead of charity bingo. The Alabama Supreme Court has repeatedly ruled that bingo, under Alabama law, is a game played on paper cards. Therefore the gambling machines at Greenetrack are illegal and should be shut down. Greenetrack has also been found guilty of not paying income taxes. Greenetrack argued unsuccessfully that they are a nonprofit corporation and never owed any income taxes.
Last week the Alabama Senate passed a controversial constitutional amendment that would allow Greenetrack and potentially other facilities in Greene County to operate historical horse racing machines where players play a machine that shows a previously raced horse race on an electronic video machine.
Senate Bill 324 (SB324) is sponsored by State Senate Minority Leader Bobby Singleton (D-Greensboro).
“This is a constitutional amendment,” Singleton said when the bill was in committee. “By rule 50, this has to be approved in both the Local Legislation Committee and the Tourism Committee. This has to do with “Racing and Parimutuel for Greene County.”
“The Greene County Racing Commission asked me to carry this bill,” Singleton said. This will “add in historical horse racing at one or more tracks in the county.”
“This bill has nothing to do with bingo in the county at all,” Singleton told the committee.
The Senate Tourism Committee voted to give the bill a favorable report in a 12 to 0 vote, and 24 Senators voted to pass the bill out of the Senate. The House committee did not meet this week to address the legislation. Sources say that gambling proponents want the House Committee to meet in an emergency committee meeting and advance the legislation so that it could be brought to the House floor for a vote before this session ends.
To this point, the Legislature has avoided taking up the divisive issue of gambling, which has wasted hours and hours in previous legislative sessions.
A source close to the House of Representatives told Alabama Today, “They are not going to advance that legislation.”
Sen. Greg Albritton (R-Atmore) said, “It would sure be nice if we could get that same vote on a much bigger type of gambling bill.”
As of this morning, Thursday’s special order calendar has been adopted, and legislation is moving. What concessions, if any, have been granted to the minority is unknown at this time.
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