Gambling proposal likely dead for the legislative session

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If there’s any topic that hovers over the Alabama legislature, never quite going away, it’s gambling. The perennial issue has always fallen short. The discussion is back this year, and we hear about it with Todd Stacy, host of Capital Journal and Alabama Public Television.

The following conversation has been edited for clarity.

Why is this such a tricky issue and what’s been going on with it this week?

It is a tricky issue. That’s really just because there’s so many components involved. Of course, you’re talking a lottery. You’re talking casinos that kind of exist in the state in a quasi-legal way. And in sports betting, that’s the real growing gambling component. All of that is not legal right now. And so there’ve been efforts over the years to pass a comprehensive gambling bill that would allow voters to vote, to say whether or not they want these things to be legal, to get revenue from those gambling operations.

So there was, talk this year of the bill coming back. We did some original reporting on that from Rep. Greg Albritton. He’s the sponsor of the gambling bill and has been for several years now. But at the end of the day, late on Thursday, the leader of the Senate, President Pro Temp Garlan Gudger, issued a statement saying, we’re not doing this this year. We’ve only got 12 more days of the legislative session. We have to pass the budgets. We have other really important issues. We don’t have time to take up gambling. So effectively, as of late Thursday, gambling’s dead for the session yet again.

Does that mean it truly is dead?

I think so, and the sponsor himself said it’s not just dead for this year, but it’s dead for next year because next year is an election year and it’s really hard to pass something that controversial during an election. You’re not going to see, I don’t think, significant gambling legislation, at least not on the legalization side, until after the next election.

Well also, a bill making changes to how logging trucks are regulated in Alabama passed the Senate on Tuesday. It’s a bill that’s drawn fire from state transportation officials. Explain what this is all about.

The the forestry industry, logging, you see the logging trucks going up and down the road, they want to increase the axle limit — the amount of weight that each axle on the truck can carry. They say their trucks are having to run too many routes. They’re getting penalized when they’re going to weigh stations and things like that. So the logging industry has sought increasing the weight limit per axle. Well, the Department of Transportation and the Alabama Law Enforcement Agency push back hard on that. They say, look, increasing that weight, all it will do is add to the wear and tear on Alabama roads. We know we have some problems with the roads anyway. And so we don’t want to deteriorate our roads and bridges.

There’s been a big fight over this. At the end of the day, they reached a compromise where the loggers didn’t get what they wanted in terms of a weight limit increase, but they did get a reduction in the number of trucks that can be pulled over at one time. That’s really what they were irritated about. And so, compromise of sorts. It passed the Senate, going to the House, and so the conversation could start over in the House. But it’s a thorny issue, and one I think we’re gonna see re-emerge next week.

Finally, lawmakers held a public hearing this week on a bill that would allow a different kind of health care plan for farmers. It has the health insurance industry lined up in opposition. What would this bill do?

Alabama Farmers Federation, better known as ALFA, is seeking state permission to allow them to offer their members exclusive health care plans. It’s actually not insurance because technically insurance is regulated both on the federal and state level. Think about the Affordable Care Act. Think about all the different regulations. And all that is meant to offer consumer protections. Pre-existing conditions. You have to cover that as an insurance company. You have offer guaranteed coverage of this and that. You can’t drop people, things like that. Very important to the insurance industry.

Well, those rules wouldn’t apply if this law were to pass. And so that’s what the healthcare industry is pushing back on, saying, hey, we’ve got to follow all these rules for consumer protections for keeping people healthy. But ALFA says, look, it’s designed not to be a typical health insurance plan. It’s designed to be a health plan that suits their members. And what they’re really seeking to do is make it cheaper. They say that farmers in this state have a really hard time paying these high health insurance premiums and that they’re trying to give them a break.

So they did amend the bill to put some more oversight, especially from the Department of Insurance, to kind of calm those fears a little bit. But the insurance industry, healthcare industry is still opposed to it. It’s going to come up for a committee vote probably next week and could be on the House floor as soon as Thursday.