Posted by Last year, Democratic state legislative candidates issued a “Covenant for the Future” saying, “We believe, as legislative leaders, that representative democracy is a covenant between the people and those they elect.” They promised that “in the first ten days of the next regular legislative session, Alabama Democrats will introduce legislation as required and ensure a vote to enact the plan presented.”
That promise was broken yesterday by Wendell Mitchell (D – Luverne) and the Democratic members of the Senate Governmental Affairs Committee when the committee voted unanimously to accept Mitchell’s proposed exceptions to the PAC-to-PAC transfer ban that had already unanimously passed the House.
The Democrats are already understandably catching some heat for being tardy in addressing the covenant’s promises, but the committee’s re-write of the bill is a slap to voters after legislators pledged that the very first issue of the Covenant for the Future was to “stop all PAC to PAC transfers.”
Lt. Governor Folsom and Senate Majority Leader Hinton Mitchem (D – Union Grove) have put a priority on passing a ban and may well distance themselves from the changes in the bill. Still, if this is the version that the whole Senate votes on, then it will be a black eye for all Senate Democrats.
This Senate version has so many loopholes that the bill’s sponsor, Rep. Jeff McLaughlinn (D-Guntersville) said that “he would ask the House to not concur in the Senate version if senators pass it.” McLaughlin also said that “he would keep working with the Senate to try to get it to pass a bill as close to the House-passed version as possible.” That would be the Senate Democrats’ opportunity to redeem themselves on this issue.
The Republicans on the committee also broke their pledge “to support the governor’s Plan 2010 initiatives” which included a ban on PAC-to-PAC transfers.
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Not arguing – just curious. How did the Republicans break their pledge?
By voting for these loopholes, the Republicans on the committee broke their pledge to “to support the governor’s Plan 2010 initiatives” which called on legislators (pdf) to “ban all PAC to PAC transfers.”
[...] the Senate Governmental Affairs Committee pretty much gutted Rep. Jeff McLaughlin’s bill banning PAC-to-PAC transfers, so that’s one legislative promise down the drain [...]
Anonymous Commenter, I understand the reason for your question as I realize now that the post did not originally make clear that all committee members voted unanimously to pass Mitchell’s proposed exceptions. I edited a sentence to make it clearer.
According to the article, the PAC-to-PAC transfer passed the committee 10-0. According to the Legislative Website there are 14 members of the committee. Any way to find out who wasn’t here and didn’t vote?
I would like to find out. I started to name the committee members in the post until I realized that not all of the committee members voted.
Little and Waggoner probably didn’t vote as they are members of all committees due to their positions as Majority and Minority leaders.
ALISON has the vote as 11-0. If that is accurate, it wouldn’t be the first time ALISON had it right and the media didn’t.
For whatever it’s worth, someone who was there told me that Harri Anne Smith was there and Jabo Waggoner was not.