The 2026 Alabama legislative session is in the books. Lawmakers wrapped up the session Thursday with a flurry of activity this final week. What made it over the finish line and what fell short? We hear about that from 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.
For the last several weeks, lawmakers have been considering a bill that would move Alabama to a closed primary system. That means you'd have to register with a party to vote in the primaries. It was a particular priority for the Republican Party. And now it was down to the last day with this one. What ended up happening?
They essentially ran out of time, and that might have been by design because I think a lot of lawmakers did not want this to actually pass. That's kind of one of those "vote yes, hope no" scenarios. But there was an amendment added in Senate committee that would have required on the final day, even if the Senate passed it, to go back down to the House for them to approve. So when the House adjourned, because they were done, that meant that the bill was essentially dead. So the Senate, even if they did pass it, it wouldn't have mattered.
Again, I think that was probably by design. I don't think lawmakers really want this bill to pass. This is something that the Alabama Republican Party proper, the true activists want, but your rank and file lawmakers don't. They understand that it's really independent voters that make up the majority of the electorate. And I think they did not want this bill to pass.
A bill is on its way to the governor's desk that would create new rules for dogs that are left outdoors. Now first of all, what would this bill do? And then I understand it got rather contentious when the bill came up in the House?
It did. It was interesting. And the rift here is really from the kind of rural lawmakers and the agriculture community, I guess, farm dogs and things like that. But essentially, this bill would require if you own a dog and you house the dog outside that it has adequate water, adequate shelter, and you cannot use a tethering device, a chain that is painful, that causes pain, like a choke collar, essentially. And it would be misdemeanor if you're caught doing that.
It all comes from a situation where somebody found this dog, Beau, chained up and sitting on a tire in freezing cold snowy weather. It did pass, but not before State Representative (Brett) Easterbrook talked about, hey, "what are we gonna build condominiums for these damn dogs?" I mean, he really said that. But I tell you, the advocates for this, the dog ladies, if you will, really made their presence known in the state house this week. And I'm not surprised that they were successful because they were pretty persistent.
There is a fun tradition called the Shroud Award. This is for the deadest bill of the session. What won the Shroud Award this year?
This is an interesting year because you're supposed to award it for the bill that died the most kind of unceremonious death. But this year it was given to Representative Mike Kirkland [from] Northeast Alabama. But the bill actually passed. I guess we could probably name this year's the Lazarus Award because this this bill did kind of die.
It has to do with cameras and highway work zone situations. They're trying to cut down on speeding in work zones because we've had a real uptick in highway workers getting killed by speeders. So it would allow for a pilot program to set up speeding cameras basically.
So it got argued and it got killed early in the session and then came back at the very last week and passed. So this year it's the Lazarus Award for State Representative Mike Kirkland.
Taking a step back, what are your big takeaways or reflections on this session?
It was unexpectedly dramatic. We talked earlier in the session, I guess at the very beginning, talking about, hey, they're gonna pass the budgets and go home. It's not gonna be a big deal. That did not come to pass. It has been a dramatic session.
The Public Service Commission electricity rate issue came up. Nobody saw that blowing up and probably the biggest deal of the session. You had this drama in the House Republican Caucus where people were trying to record meetings and publish that audio. You actually had a caucus member removed for attempting to record a meeting. So this has been one of those strange sessions where nobody expected it to be dramatic, but it was.
But look. It's been a consequential term, the last one for Governor Kay Ivey, by the way. And so if you think about it, It's gonna be interesting. They come back in 2027. There's going to be a new governor. There's going to be a lot of new lawmakers and they're going to be meeting in a brand new building, because the current state house is being torn down. They'll be in the new state house. So it's kind of the end of an era, you might say, for the Alabama legislature.
