Last week on the final day of the 2020 legislative sessions, both chambers of the Alabama legislature voted by an overwhelming margin to accept an executive amendment to a supplemental funding bill dealing with monies appropriated by the federal government for coronavirus relief under the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security (CARES) Act.
However, it did not come without controversy as members of the Senate cried foul after a deal was reached between the House and Governor Kay Ivey without involvement from Senate leadership.
During an appearance on Alabama Public Television’s “Capitol Journal” that aired Friday, Speaker of the House Mac McCutcheon (R-Monrovia) downplayed the differences, chalking it up to the end of the legislative session.
“There’s always tension towards the end of any session between the House, the Senate, the executive branch,” McCutcheon said. “There’s always that opportunity for disagreement. It’s just part of the process. I look at it as part of the process. I don’t take it personal. And it’s just part of the politics of the day if you will. But in this particular situation, nobody was purposely left out of anything. The Senate had put together a list of expenditures for the coronavirus money. Then they showed that to us. It was being negotiated.”
According to McCutcheon, the motivations of reaching out to Ivey without the Senate was done to stave off the governor’s threat of a veto.
“Then, at the end of the day, what was happening was we were in a situation that the Governor could actually veto the budget,” he continued. “And because of the work that had been done by the members in the House and the Senate, especially in the House. Members coming down — we had members in the gallery, we had members on the floor operating under very, very difficult circumstances. Because of that, Don, we felt like that we needed to address the veto issue from the governor because we didn’t want to see that work just go down the drain, or wasted if you will. Because of that, I reached out to the Governor to see if there was a compromise, to see if there’s anything that could be done. I did not do that to try to exclude anybody. It was just trying to work the process to see.”
McCutcheon also raised the issue of the proposal for $200 million in CARES Act funding for a new State House, about which he said some members of his body were facing questions from constituents.
“Because of that, we just went to work on a list to try to help the Governor find a compromise,” he added. “It was not designed to leave anybody out. It was just designed trying to work the process and see if there could be a compromise in the mix somewhere.”
Later in the segment, McCutcheon pledged to do “everything he can” to keep the working relationship between the House and Senate “strong.”
@Jeff_Poor is a graduate of Auburn University and the University of South Alabama, the editor of Breitbart TV, a columnist for Mobile’s Lagniappe Weekly and host of Huntsville’s’sHuntsville’s’s “The Jeff Poor Show” from 2-5 p.m. on WVNN.
