State Rep. Sorrell on COVID-19 executive orders: ‘Where is the legislature on this? Why are people not speaking up?’

For the past several months, the executive branch of Alabama’s state government, primarily Gov. Kay Ivey and State Health Officer Dr. Scott Harris, have exercised an unprecedented amount of power in the name of mitigating the threat of the COVID-19 virus.

Seemingly left out of the discussion at this time of expanded executive authority over daily life has been the Alabama legislature, which has been out of session since May. It has not gone unnoticed by the observers, including the Alabama Policy Institute’s Phil Williams, who on Tuesday questioned why more members of the Alabama Legislature are not speaking out.

On Wednesday, during an appearance on Mobile radio’s FM Talk 106.5, State Rep. Andrew Sorrell (R-Muscle Shoals) answered Williams’ call and said he agreed that the legislature should take a more active role.

“The criticism from API is 100% fair,” he said. “I’ve been wondering myself, where is the legislature on this? Why are people not speaking up? And I think it is because there is no risk for them right now. If people don’t like the shutdown orders, all they have to say is, ‘I didn’t do it. It was the governor. It was the state health officer. I didn’t have anything to do with that. And if people say, ‘Why didn’t you do something about it to fix it? Well, we’re not in session.’ So, I think the API criticism is 100% fair, and I hope more of my colleagues begin speaking up and say, ‘No, we don’t need to shut Alabama down again.’ Our economy cannot afford another lockdown, especially — how many more small businesses are we going to lose, Jeff, if we shut the economy down for six to eight weeks? We’ve already lost thousands. We could lose thousands more.”

Sorrell also addressed the reluctance by some members of the legislature to meet given that the COVID-19 virus poses a direct threat to them, and therefore willing to allow the Ivey administration to take the lead on this issue.

“How would that strategy have worked in this past session?” Sorrell said. “I mean, coronavirus has gotten worse since we were down there in May, passing those very, very oversized, in my opinion, budgets, and everything. There is no guarantee if we go in session in February and gavel out, it will be any better in April. But I think we need to go down there and do our job. I mean, there’s a certain occupational hazard that comes with being a legislator, that comes with being in a leadership position. If you’re an 84-year-old member with asthma — OK, you probably don’t need to go down there. But the rest of us — there’s plenty of us that are my age, that are not at high risk for corona, or by the way, that have already had it, right? I think we can get a quorum together, and we can go down there and do the business of the people of Alabama. I think that’s what they expect when they elect us. And I don’t care if we have to meet outside on the capitol grounds. I don’t care what we have to do, but we need to get back down there and do the people’s work.”

@Jeff_Poor is a graduate of Auburn University and the University of South Alabama, the editor of Breitbart TV, a columnist for Mobile’s Lagniappe Weekly, and host of Mobile’s “The Jeff Poor Show” from 9 a.m.-12 p.m. on FM Talk 106.5.