Crime bills go before the Alabama legislature

Gov. Kay Ivey has said public safety would be her top priority this legislative session. Ivey put that into action this week as she and several mayors from around the state took to the Capitol to promote what’s been called the “Safe Alabama” package of bills. We talk about that and other happenings in Montgomery with week with Todd Stacey, host of Capital Journal and Alabama Public Television.

The following conversation has been edited for clarity.

Now these crime bills — remind us what’s in this package.

Yeah, it’s pretty far sweeping. They want to expand on these metropolitan crime suppression units. This is where the state comes in with troopers and other personnel to really complement what cities are doing. A lot of cities are having a police shortage. They’re facing a police shortage. They don’t have the manpower to deal with violent crime. I’m thinking of Birmingham, I’m thinking of Montgomery, Huntsville and Mobile specifically. So they want to beef up these crime suppression units with funding and with policy to help cities combat violent crime and get it under control while they get to recruit police officers.

And speaking of recruiting police officers, they’ve got a number of bills aimed at making it easier to recruit police officers. One is controversial though. It would limit the liability of officers who are in officer-involved shootings. So Democrats really don’t like that. They want to see some changes. So a lot of this stuff is bipartisan, but that’s one issue where Democrats are not on board with Ivey and Republicans.

The other big one is ban on Glock switches. We know about these devices that you can attach to a regular handgun to turn it basically into a machine gun. And these weapons have been used in some of the worst mass shootings that we’ve seen. That’s also got bipartisan support and I think it’ll move quickly.

Lawmakers also delayed a bill Tuesday to reorganize the Alabama Department of Veterans Affairs. This would allow the governor to appoint the agency’s commissioner while the veterans board would become an advisory board. Now put some context around this because this department has been a flashpoint in the last year.

That’s right. It was a real public and messy dust up between the Department of Veterans Affairs, the Department of Mental Health, finance department and the governor. And it was all over the inappropriate use of ARPA money. The department is not in the cabinet, is not accountable to the governor. And so they had some disagreements, but they essentially wanted to use ARPA money for inappropriate things. It all came to a head with a big public disagreement with the governor, ultimately using her constitutional authority to dismiss the commissioner.

So we always knew a reform bill was coming to reorganize to bring it into the cabinet, have that chain of command. It also reconstitutes the board and a lot of these veterans organizations have people on the board and they don’t want change. So they have been speaking out and contacting their senators to make changes to the bill. They’ve made some changes to the bill, put more people back on the board. But as of right now, the main parts of the reform may stay in place, but we’ll have to see next week when the Senate returns.

Finally, a bill that would put more oversight on the Alabama Board of Pardons and Paroles is through a House committee. What would this bill do?

Well, there’s a lot of frustration in the legislature and around the state, frankly, about the Board of Pardons and Paroles and its drastic decrease in actually granting parole. They’ve gotten a little bit better in recent months, but they have, according to the legislation, failed to follow their own guidelines in terms of how and when to grant parole. And so this bill from Rep. Chris England would simply require them by law to follow their own guidelines. And when somebody is eligible for parole, and they must use their guidelines to actually grant parole. And so they actually got through committee, which is a pretty surprising development. So maybe it has a chance this year.