League of Women Voters trains citizens to engage in legislative process

The League of Women Voters of Alabama last week hosted a webinar training attendees on how to engage with lawmakers.

Panelists gave viewers the nuts and bolts of how the legislative session works and advised them on how to advocate for and against bills in the statehouse.

One important resource the experts shared is the “find my elected officials map” from the Alabama secretary of state’s office. The site allows users to simply type in his or her address, which will return a list of representatives at the state and federal levels representing that address.

Katie Glenn, senior policy associate at the Southern Poverty Law Center, used last year’s Senate Bill 1 as an example of how a bill becomes law in the state. SB1 made it a felony to provide certain forms of assistance for absentee ballot applications.

“It was pre-field before the session starts—that doesn’t mean anything except it was filed before the session starts,” Glenn said. “Sometimes that means it is a priority issue, sometimes it means a legislator had a bill ready and just wanted to go ahead and get it through the process; for this one it certainly did signify that it was a priority for the caucus and the bill’s sponsor, Sen. Garlan Gudger, who is now the pro Tem.”

Glenn explained that the first stop for the bill is with the pro Tem for assignment to a committee, and the broad discretion that the pro Tem has to choose a committee.

“Oftentimes leadership will use committee assignments as an opportunity to send bills to either a really friendly committee, or for bills they don’t like, to a really unfriendly committee,” Glenn said. “I’ve had bills go to committees that make no sense whatsoever other than the leadership knew that the chair would never give it a hearing.”

The chair then has near-total latitude on what to do with that bill, Glenn said, whether that means putting the bill up for discussion and a vote on the next available committee date or never giving it a hearing at all.

It is up to advocates looking to speak out about a bill in committee to contact the clerk of that committee and call for a public hearing on the bill.

“The most powerful thing you can do to influence the legislative process—other than calling, emailing, contacting your legislator—is often showing up in person,” Glenn said.

Once a bill gets out of committee, it must go before the rules committee of whichever chamber it originated in. Those processes are very different between the House and Senate

“In the House, the Rules Committee is a very open and transparent group of people, they take turns, they go in order and you get to go to those committee meetings and listen and hear what’s going to be on the calendar the next legislative day,” Glenn said. “In the Senate, it is a secret room that Jabo Waggoner and Arthur Orr and a few others go to and they come up with a calendar—I couldn’t tell you how that happens.”

Once the rules committee decides to put a bill on the calendar for discussion on the floor, a simple majority can pass the bill only after 60 percent of present legislators approve a “budget isolation resolution,” a procedural hurdle based on the Alabama Legislature being required to pass a budget before it can pass any other bills. It takes a budget isolation resolution to remove that requirement only for the bill being considered at that time.

Once it passes one house, it swaps hands to the other and goes through the same process once again before going to Gov. Kay Ivey. Ivey can veto bills, but that rarely occurs.

Patricia Todd, who spent 12 years in the Alabama Legislature as the first openly gay lawmaker in the state, talked to attendees about the importance of advocate relationships with lawmakers to get bills through the weeds of the legislative process.

“[Lawmakers] are bombarded with information,” Todd said. “Every time I’d walk into my office, there was a pile of stuff from advocacy groups about one bill or another. I can tell you that petitions do not work in the legislature; that personal contact is the most important thing. Whether they’re having a town hall meeting, or you send them an email or you show up at the Statehouse.”

Todd also warned advocates that most of the time, that doesn’t work because lawmakers have sadly already made up their minds on a bill. She also said not to expect a response for lawmakers.

Lawmakers can be as much in the dark as the public sometimes about what might come up in committee or on the floor more than 24 hours in advance.