Rumors & Rumblings

“Rumors and Rumblings” is a weekly feature that runs each Wednesday. It includes short nuggets of information that we glean from conversations throughout the week. Have a tip? Send it here. All sources remain confidential.

1. House Republican Freshmen are huddling this week in Andalusia at Rep. Mike Jones’s farm for their yearly Freshmen retreat. The Governor and the Speaker were on the agenda this morning and one Freshman Representative told Yellowhammer that they are working on ideas to downsize the government bureaucracy. “We are discussing several bills to pull useless outdated code off the books,” the Representative said. The Freshmen have built a strong presence in the House based on their numbers and their fierce loyalty to Speaker Hubbard who recruited many of them to run for office in 2010.

2. Republican Senators Dick Brewbaker and Trip Pittman and Republican Representative Jay Love are rumored to have filed a Freedom of Information Act requests to Alabama State University for all their records.

It has been a bizarre few months for Alabama State. A new president, Joseph Silver, came on the job in September and quickly expressed concerns with some of the University’s long-standing contracts. Silver was then suspended by the Board and some of his newly hired administrators were fired. William Harris, a former president, was brought in as interim president and accounting firm Warren Averett Wilson Price was hired to conduct an independent audit of the institution. As a public institution, taxpayer interests are involved and it appears these members of the legislature are preparing to step in.

3. Republican Mack Butler defeated Democrat Beth McGlaughn yesterday by a margin of 53% — 47% in the House District 30 special election. Butler carried both Etowah and St. Clair counties. Butler fills the seat that came open when Rep. Blaine Galliher took a job in Gov. Bentley’s cabinet as his legislative director.

4. David Standridge defeated fellow Republican Chris Latta yesterday by a margin of 55% — 45% in the House District 34 special election. The House District 34 seat opened up after Gov. Bentley appointed Rep. Elwyn Thomas to be the Executive Director of the Alabama Manufactured Housing Commission.

5. Senator Jeff Sessions is out in the Wall St. Journal today with a scathing critique of the Senate’s “secret negotiations” over the debt ceiling and so-called fiscal cliff. “Washington has become possessed by the idea that a small group of negotiators, meeting in secret, can solve the deep, painful and systemic problems plaguing this country,” Sessions writes. “We have seen an endless series of secret conclaves: gangs of six, committees of 12, meetings at the White House, at Blair House, in the Capitol’s labyrinth of hallways and hideaways. Meetings everywhere but in the committee room and the open air of the Senate floor.”

Sessions also points out the Democratic leaders are not the only ones to blame. In Sessions’ view, Republican leaders have not fought back against the Democrats’ strategy of avoiding the public workings of the legislative process. “Under Sen. Reid’s leadership — without sufficient resistance from the GOP — the Senate has suppressed the needed debate and dodged the accountability that comes from casting and defending votes.”

“Senator Sessions is clearly laying the groundwork for a ‘no’ vote on any compromise similar to what’s been tossed around to this point,” a prominent Hill staffer told Yellowhammer. “You’d be hard pressed to find a Senator who better represents his constituents. Alabamians don’t want these back room deals and he’s doing the right thing by calling it like he sees it.”