Alabama Senate advances Birmingham Water Works Board overhaul

A fight erupted this week in the Alabama legislature over a bill that would remake the Birmingham Water Works Board. We dive into that controversy and talk about other legislative action with Todd Stacy, host of Capital Journal and Alabama Public Television.

This interview was edited for length and clarity.

Now this bill would restructure the Birmingham Waterworks Board into a regional authority. It ultimately passed the Senate. But this had some sharp differences between Republicans and Democrats. What happened?

Well, when you think about the Birmingham Water Works, it’s no secret that that has been a pretty difficult issue for the area. Of course, it is not just Birmingham. It’s also some of the surrounding counties from Blount to Shelby. There’s been a push for a long time to remake the board. In this instance, this legislation would have taken it from nine members currently to just five members.

What the Democrats perceived was that it was gonna take away some of the influence of the city of Birmingham and increase the influence of the surrounding areas. That’s why they were absolutely opposed to it, especially Sen. Roger Smitherman, who has been a part of this situation for a long time. He helped pass the last legislation that dealt with Birmingham Water Works.

In the end, they were able to reach a compromise where they settled on seven, seven members of the board. And these board members will be appointed by top leaders, the governor, lieutenant governor. That’s pretty typical for how state boards work. And they’ll also have to have expertise in engineering and infrastructure and things like that. So the point is lawmakers are tired of this being an issue. They’re tired of the drain that it is on greater Birmingham. And really it’s affecting economic development. And so they want a fresh start with the board to really reform the Birmingham Water Works.

Also, there’s no question that police face high-pressure, even deadly situations. Because of that, some lawmakers say we need to expand police immunity. A bill to do that received a committee hearing this week. It was also contentious. So what would this bill do?

It’s called the Back the Blue Act. And we’ve seen a shortage of police officers, especially in cities, Birmingham, Montgomery, Huntsville, Mobile. And they say a lot of it has to do with the threats that law enforcement face, the lawsuits that you’ve seen really in this post-George Floyd era. And so what this bill aims to do is give those on the front lines, those police officers, some limited immunity in terms of when they have to discharge their firearm. Republicans see this as common sense as a way to really help boost police recruitment because they know that they need better protections. Democrats see this as way too much protection for police and little protection for those who might be targeted wrongly for crimes.

Finally, a House committee passed a bill this week that would affect the tests midwives are allowed to administer after a baby is born. But midwives say that changes to the bill constitute a hijacking of it. Todd, can you break down the situation for us?

The midwives alliance and midwives association have been active this session, trying to get legislation that will really give them more flexibility over the required screenings for newborns and there are certain screenings that newborns go through. It’s pretty common practice in the hospital and that’s the thing, for a lot of these things, you have to eventually go to a hospital even if you had used a midwife. So they’re trying I get more flexibility on that. But a new version of the bill really kind of gutted it and so the original sponsor of the Bill Sen. Arthur Orr was kind of caught unawares that his bill had been hijacked. So it’s interesting, the midwives don’t want to pass it because of the changes made to the bill. This has been an issue for really several years and so this late in the session it really could threaten the ability of this bill to get across the finish line.