State Sen. Arthur Orr (R-Decatur) said he believes one of his bills will make it through the upcoming special session.

In response to a Supreme Court ruling that ordered the state to create a second district with a large Black population, Gov. Kay Ivey called for a special session to redraw the district lines. The session will begin July 17.

While the main focus during the session will be reapportionment, lawmakers will have an opportunity to file other bills, which can be taken up if they receive a two-thirds vote.

Friday on WVNN’s “The Dale Jackson Show,” Orr discussed his bill to help schools hire more resource officers.

“I think those margins can be achieved for certain pieces of legislation,” Orr said. “I’ll have one that relates to school resource officers and broadening the pool for eligibility to include retired state troopers.”

Orr’s legislation will add to a 2023 regular session bill that allows retired law enforcement officers to earn more as school resource officers or correctional officers without suspending their Retirement Systems of Alabama benefits.

“Representative (Rex) Reynolds and I worked on a bill in the regular session that broadened that to a capability to get retired law enforcement folks into schools at a compensation level that will attract them to do so, but we didn’t put retired troopers in there,” Orr said. “So we’ll expand that law.”

Orr it’s a good idea to pass the bill in the special session so it becomes law before the start of the new school year.

“I think it’s timely because school starts in a couple weeks and if we can get that through that will certainly … expand the pool of available SROs to protect our schools,” he said.

Orr said any bill making it through the special session will depend on the priorities of the current leadership in the Legislature.

“It boils down to … the leadership in both chambers, have they signed off on this? Will it come out of the basket, so to speak?,” he said. “Those kind of things.

“Those questions have got to be answered before you can be proof positive that there would be extraneous bills passing.”

Yaffee is a contributing writer to Yellowhammer News and hosts “The Yaffee Program” weekdays 9-11 a.m. on WVNN. You can follow him on Twitter @Yaffee