The Alabama Public Service Commission, which oversees utilities in the state, has been a hot topic of discussion the last few weeks of the Alabama legislative session. A bill to revamp the PSC received final passage this week with Gov. Kay Ivey signing the bill into law Thursday afternoon. But the bill that passed did so over the objections of one of its sponsors. We talk about that and other legislative action with Todd Stacy, host of Capitol Journal on Alabama Public Television. He spoke with WBHM's Andrew Yeager.
This interview was edited for length and clarity.
With this PSC overhaul there were different bills in the House and Senate and a substitute bill. But take us to the finish line. What is in this final measure that received final passage?
First of all, it would expand the PSC from three members to seven members, and those would be according to the congressional districts. It would create the job of Secretary of Energy, which would be a cabinet-level job. It would really work as a staff coordinator for energy issues and work with the PSC. And they would have some authority too, including being able to call rate hearings and things like that.
But importantly, and this is where we got into the weeds and some disagreement over policy was, under this bill the Public Service Commission would be required to have a public hearing each year for the various utilities that they regulate. In the House bill, it was a formal rate case hearing, which is a lot more complicated, a lot more litigious. And what the Senate argued was expensive.
Clyde Chambliss, the sponsor of the Senate bill, said that if we go down that path and require either annual or every three years formal rate case hearings, number one, he's worried it will lead to actually higher utility rates. And he said, looking back at the past, it almost always ends up at the Supreme Court and they set the rates. What he argues is that this has the transparency element in terms of the public hearing, but not the lawyer-driven formal rate case hearings. I know that sounds kind of complicated. I actually interviewed Senator Chambliss for Capitol Journal that's going to air tonight and I encourage folks to listen to his answer because he explains it a lot better than I do.
You referenced the Senate bill. There was original House bill that was introduced by Representative Mack Butler. Butler spoke out against what was ultimately passed. What accounted for that difference in his stance?
It's not every day you see somebody try to kill their own bill that has their name on it. That's because it got changed in the Senate and it came down to that difference between rate hearing and public hearing. Butler just really cannot support a bill that does not include that formal rate case hearing. There was a question as to when the bill came down to the House, would the House agree to it? And Butler himself asked his colleagues, let's vote to not concur, go to conference and keep fighting on this. But he was not successful. Most of the House, including most of the Republican caucus wanted to just pass the bill as it was. They were persuaded by Chambliss' arguments that this was sufficient. And I think they were also eager to get the issue over with. This has been a kind of a beast.
The House passed a bill this week which would add a tax deduction for overtime wages. But along with that came a measure affecting the sales tax on groceries. Take us through what happened here.
It's been interesting because the legislature has wanted to do something on income tax for overtime ever since the original law was allowed to expire. That's the one that eliminated income tax on overtime. And that just cost the Education Trust Fund upwards of $500 million. So this would essentially be a tax deduction up to a thousand dollars for any overtime wages. So that's a nice bonus, if you will, for working people.
But when it was on the floor, kind of unexpectedly, State Representative Mike Shaw said, well, hey, let's include another grocery tax holiday on this. They've been chipping away at the state sales tax on groceries over the last four years. It wasn't really expected, but it came up and something like that is kind of hard to vote against. So it got added to the bill. So it's not just a income tax cut for overtime wages, but it's also a grocery sales tax holiday.
The state's two budgets have been relatively straightforward as things go and they're drawing closer to the finish line in these final days of the session. Give us an update on where these two spending plans sit.
They are really close to being finished. The House this week took up the General Fund Budget that originally started in the Senate. They passed it. There were some changes, but pretty minor. And then over in the Senate, they took up the Education Trust Fund. Again, not much discussion. It's kind of amazing. These are billions and billions of dollars, but all the work is done before they get to the floor. They don't like surprises. And so both budgets passed those chambers unanimously. Now what they have to do is go back to the original chamber for concurrence, to basically get a final yes vote to send it to the governor. I expect that to happen on Tuesday.
Finally, the House took in some different surroundings on Wednesday as they met in the Old House Chamber in the capitol building. Tell us what this was about.
This is really neat. This is the last session in our current statehouse. The history there is that this statehouse was never meant to be a permanent building. Forty years ago they started to renovate the Capitol because obviously the legislature had always met at the Capitol, but it got into disrepair. So they retrofitted the old highway building into the current statehouse. But it was always meant to temporary. They were supposed to move back into the Capitol after those renovations were done, but that didn't happen. They've remained in this statehouse for 40 years. Now this building is falling into disrepair and they're building a new state house across the street.
That being the case, they wanted to go to the Old House Chamber and conduct actual legislative business. They gaveled down. They did the pledge and all that and passed a kind of a ceremonial resolution. Because these lawmakers, if they survive election to come back to Montgomery, they can say that they had served at the Capitol, the current statehouse and the new statehouse. So it was kind of a neat thing. Plus it's just the old trappings and the pictures are so fun. We did a lot of coverage on Capitol Journal. So you can check that coverage out.
