From ou statehouse studio in Montgomery.

I'm Todd Stacey.

Welcome to Capitol Journal.

Today was the 20th day of the Alabama Legislature's 2025 regular session, bringing us to two thirds of the way through with ten more legislative days remaining.

Lawmakers today started the process of passing next year's education budget.

The Senate Education Budget Committee considered and unanimously approved a $9.9 billion Education Trust Fund budget, the largest in state history.

Committee Chairman Arthur o who crafted the spending plan, says the budget reflects major investments in student achievement, teacher support and school infrastructure.

But while it sets a new high mark or also emphasize the importance of planning ahead, saying the state must be prepared for a potential economic downturn in the coming years.

The school breakfast program is also in there.

The money for workers compensation.

Our educators didn't have workers compensation.

And we had they got injured on the job, fell in the school, on the playground, injured themselves.

They may have their health care insurance, but what if they're out on disability and they can't work for three months because their knees are all torn up?

So this would address that problem.

We also, included, money for summer school, all the summer school programs that we have.

Those are kind of new funding.

Also, the maternity leave and, for those that have children, be they the father or mother, and are educators, that they can be paid while they're off, taking care of their newborn colleges and universities usually get around 25%, 27% of, whatever the K-12 world gets.

So they're going to be getting additional resources, in this budget, because we removed 375 from the savings account, put it towards K-12.

We are still in a good plac with resources, for our public educational institutions be they universities, colleges, junior colleges and K-12, pre-K and other, elements.

But we've got to be very mindful going forward, of the future.

And we've had it good for round of years now, and we want it to budget cautiously.

The full Senate is expected to take u that education budget tomorrow.

Alongside the budget lawmakers are now moving forward with a plan to modernize how Alabama funds schools, with a greater focus on students with particular needs.

The Raise act, short for Renewing Alabama's Investment in Student Excellence, passed out of committee today as well.

The proposal is the resul of a yearlong study by a state task force that reviewe Alabama's K-12 funding system.

The plan would create a new formula starting this fall, giving schools additional funding based on specific student needs such as poverty, special educatio and English language learning.

Districts would also be required to show how that money is being used and whether it's improving student outcomes.

Senato or says the goal is to make sure those dollars deliver real results will mean more resources for local school districts to help educate children that the research shows it just cost more in English language learner that doesn't speak English, it costs more to educate that child than a native Alabamian that's, comes from an English speaking home.

And so we want to help those school districts that have those challenges with additional resources.

But it will take time.

That's the reason we sai we're going with a hybrid model.

So we're keeping the base funding on untouched the foundation program.

It will continue to grow over time, but then we're adding two out of our savings account to help these schools get started, on these, children that just require more resources.

The raise act now heads to the Senate floor as well for a vote tomorrow.

The Senate was locked down in a filibuster for most of the day, but lawmakers finally got going in time to consider legislation that would prohibit cell phones in schools.

Senate Bill 92 from State Senator Donny Eksteen would make it state law that students cannot use cell phones during instructional time.

A substitute bill was adopted that removes the penalties in the bill.

Lawmakers said they want to collect data on how the law is working before enacting punitive measures.

The research shows that a couple of things want to point out teachers.

80% of the teachers won't cell phones out of the classroom.

There there to teach.

I think we got to go back and remember what we have these kids in school for.

That's to get an education.

And teachers are spending too much of their time trying to get kids to put their cell phones up.

And, that's not what they're there for.

So this bill would eliminate that during the instructional time.

Senator, I appreciate your work on this bill.

And I've thought long and hard on it, and I've and you've laid this out and done good work, and I think narrow the scope of it some here's here's my concern and I've, I've talked with the sponsor about this.

I communicat with my kids throughout the day about some mundane but very important things.

Practice got canceled.

My ride home, changed.

Or I'm not able to ride home with Will, Johnny, little Bobby.

I think a reasonable exception would also be for the student or to communicate wit their parent or legal guardian, and that's the that's the amendment is adding another exception to let the parent us communicate with our child.

I don't want to outlaw me communicating or prohibit me communicating with my child o my child communicating with me.

That amendment that Senator Elliott was talking about did not get adopted.

The bill did pass, and it will now go to the Senate, where similar legislation from representativ Lee Hulsey has already passed.

The House Judiciary Committee met today and considered many bills but at the top of the list was legislation aime at cracking down on teen vaping.

Some technical amendments were made to the bill before the committee approved it, marking an important step toward final passage for State Representative Barbara Drummond's House Bill eight.

I understand some people tha are trying to get off cigarets use these kinds of of delivery systems to get nicotine vape products.

If this part of the of the bill remains in, that's going to eliminate that whole part of the the market.

So I would ask that that the amendment be considered.

Mr. chair, I've worked with just about every group that I can think of, from tobacco to vaping industry.

And, I have asked those two parties to get together.

I even that's why I held the bill up one week to give them an opportunity to work together.

I'm a very, very compromising person, and they have not reached any kind of agreement.

And my my sole goal is to protect the welfare of our children.

And I've had revenue meet with with these parties as well.

I understand what they're talking about, but my desire in this piece of legislation is to not allow any of those bad products.

And you're talking about the pre-market registry, which was passed in 2019.

Revenue keeps that registry.

And there are a lot of bad products that are on there, and there are some that are pending, as from federal law that was actually put in place under the first term of the Trump administration.

So, sir, I.

The committee also took up Senate Bill 156 from state Senator Will Barfoot, which pertains to convictions under the state's Habitual Felony Offender Act.

Sentencing guidelines have been updated since that law was enacted, meaning there are some inmates that are right now serving harsher sentences than they would if convicted today.

The bill would allow such inmates to have their case reviewed by a judge.

The committee advanced the bill to the full House, but not before some pointed debate.

SB 156 creates a legal pathway for judges to simply review old cases of individuals who were sentenced to life without the possibility of parole under the Habitual Offender Sentencing Scheme, when there wa no physical injury to a person.

That means to be eligible for review.

An individual cannot be physically injured or have a physical injury anywhere in their record, not just the underlying offense, but with anything in their criminal record.

It would only mean a opportunity that that individual serving life without parole has an opportunity to file a petition and therefore get in front of a court to see whether or no there's since could be reviewed.

I firmly disagree that someone who has three prior felonies who one of those prior felonies being a class A felony, who gets out and commits another one of those offenses that I've named to you deserves more of a chance to continuously come to court and continuously drag the victims through the process of saying, yes, now you have to come back here.

I know this was 25 years ago.

I know the judge granted life without the possibility of parole.

I know this was the closure that you and your family had, but the Alabama Legislatur really wants arsonists, robbers, kidnapers, burglars, traffickers and manufacturers to have another shot at through the judicial process of getting out of prison.

I fundamentally have a problem with that.

Again.

That bill now goes to the full house.

The Alabama law enforcement agency has launched an investigation after several suspicious letters were delivere to the state House this morning.

Special agents with the state Bureau of Investigation responded just after 9 a.m., after lawmakers reported receiving unexpected mail.

According to Alea, each envelop contained pornographic material.

A person of interest has already been identified, but the investigation is still ongoing.

As of tonight.

We'll be right back with tonight's guests.

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Welcome back to Capitol Journal.

Joining me next is State Representative Phillip Rigsby from Huntsville.

Mr. Rigsby thanks for coming on the show.

Thank you for having me.

Appreciate it.

You've had a big week, with the passag of the pharmacy benefit manager.

Build the PBM bil locally here in the state House.

I know it was a Senate bill in terms of the actual legislation, but you've been working on this issue.

So talk to me about it.

What was it like finally getting this over the finish line?

And maybe just start from the beginning about what this bill does and why?

Sure.

Yeah.

This bill is it was it was termed the Community Pharmacy Rescue Act.

What this doe is, you know, pharmacies across Alabama were closing, and the main reason they wer closing is under reimbursement from the pharmacy benefit managers or PBMs.

What this bill did i it requires fair reimbursement, modele after the Alabama medicaid model so that the pharmacy is paid for the drug.

They they dispense, plu the cost to dispense that drug.

And a lot of people have used that cost of dispensing in a lot of ways.

Last year it was called a tax.

And it's been kind of touted to hold a whole bunch of different ways.

But the gist of it is, is that 1064 covers the cost of doing business.

So the label, the bottle the computer, the payroll, the the rent, the electricity all comes out of that.

1064 in pharmacy, the cost of the drug does not include a markup.

It is literally the cost of the drug.

So that 1064 helps to cover all those other costs.

So pharmacies were not getting paid a fair reimbursement.

So they could pay all those costs and stay in business.

I personally had a pharmacy that I sold in February of 23 that I was two months away from going bankrupt, and I was face with that same decision, really.

And so thi this bill helps those community pharmacists continue to serve those patients in Alabama.

To me, this was a win for not just pharmacy, but for those patients in Alabama.

And it took us a while to get there.

A lot of negotiating, a lot of working together.

I said yesterday on the floor.

This was a team effor and it truly was a team effort.

I learned a lot.

I experienced a lot.

But I was just, humbled and honored to be a small part of that to help to get, help Senator Beasle get 252 across the finish line.

You mentioned, last year, but it was about this time last year you were on capital where we're sitting right here, and the result was the opposite.

The bill had basically just died.

That's right.

So and pretty quickly, by the way, like, what was the difference?

What happened in the off?

Maybe, what was the differenc between last year, Bill failing and then this, this year passing unanimously in both houses?

Yeah.

One of the one of those coupl a couple of things that happen.

Number one, there was some national conversation around this same issue.

There was patient national legislation, federal legislatio that didn't make it to the end.

In Washington.

That would have actually don something very similar to this.

That same conversation stil happening in Washington today.

So that was going on.

We also had a study grou in the legislative off session that continued this conversation that the speaker allowed me to participate in, so that we could do a little more education, little more conversing behind this issue.

But the big difference was the grassroot efforts, by the pharmacies, pharmacists in the offseason were reaching out to their local legislator, inviting them in to their pharmacy, showing the the numbers of where they were being under reimbursed, and really doing a great job of telling our story of why pharmacies won't stay open if this did not change.

And that's important, because every time a pharmacy closes, about 5000 Alabamian lose access to that health care.

And so we wanted to make sure that that did not happen.

So pharmacists did a great job.

And Senator Beasley made a comment yesterday that he had never seen so man white coats in the state House.

I would agree with that.

We saw him everywhere in the building for weeks.

Really.

It wasn't just that one day it was a sustained presence.

Yeah.

And and this was a process and we we had two Senate bills that started out the session, similar, but a little different.

And the Senate worked real hard and I and I'd like to thank them publicly for their work up there.

Senator Beasley, Senator Stut and Senator Jones pro tem, your for what they did upstairs to continue that conversatio that we had started last year, and they really did a lot of the work this year.

And so they were able to get those two bills, combine them into one and really get behind it.

And it unanimous unanimously passed in the Senate.

And it also unanimously passed in the House.

So the support was there because the education piece was done very well this year.

Yeah.

I was watching the Senate take up the bill and they there was a real legislating going on.

A lot of that stuff gets worked up behind the scenes.

But there was some sausage being made on the floor which is really interesting for, for us and our viewers.

Yeah.

Let me ask about this early in the process, the business community, BCA in particular I suppose BlueCross and others had a real problem with the bills specifically on that $10.64.

They would say, you know, it that's going to raise costs for their employers who are members and maybe their employees.

Has that been a part of the negotiation, as have some of these amendments addressed concerns from the business community?

Yeah.

The amendment we took on the floor yesterday was a piece of that.

What that did is the current ledger or the previous legislation said that 100% of the manufacturer rebate would be passed to the employer.

And what the business community wanted there is they wanted that rebate to be able to be negotiated by the employer to help cove some of the administrative cost that come out of the PBM.

That 1064 really goes back to a lot of misinformation.

A lot of people though that the way the bill would work is that they would take the cost that they're currently paying and add 1064 on top of that.

That's not how this bill works.

The bill completely changes the reimbursement model that's currently in place.

And it's a it's a long pharmaceutical calculation of how that happens.

But what this doe is recalculates that altogether.

Many of the states who've gone to this have actually save considerable amounts of money.

Medicaid, for instance, been doing this same model for 15 years, and the federal government mandated that every state had to use their Medicai according to that model they had they had to put their Medicaid under that same model.

And so, you know, I thin a lot of that is misinformation.

There still may be some concern.

And we're going to watch how that plays out.

Sure.

The Senate's going to do a study.

Behind this.

Senator Butler is going to put it put forth a piece of legislation to put a study group together to really look at this from the from the manufacture all the way down to the patient and follow those dollars and make sure we know the biggest issue when you talk about the behind the scenes issue.

This is a transparency issue.

We don't know where the dollars are going.

If you were to ask an employer, how much are you spending on your prescription coverage?

Will they'll go back to the PBM and say, how much are we spending?

They give them a numbe and they just take it as gospel.

So this would allow them to negotiate that.

Correct.

Okay.

And so the for the business community, there's some protections in there hopefully that they'll utilize to their benefit.

The other issue in here with spread pricing, spread pricing is the practice of charging the employer one price and paying the pharmacy a different price, and then the PBM keeping the difference in the middle.

And so a lot of times they did not have to disclose that.

Well, in this piece of legislation, they have to at least disclose that to the Department of Insurance every year.

So if they're charging the employer 20 and the pharmacy ten, paying them ten, and they're keeping ten in the middle, they have to at least disclose that.

So the employer knows.

Well, this is what we're really paying.

Yeah that would be helpful in negotiations.

Correct Well, look, we're out of time.

Congratulations on that.

I mean, that's something this big unanimous in both chamber is a significant accomplishment.

And yeah, we'll be watching this because hopefully it will lead to some savings.

Understanding that pharmacies are in tough, in rough shape, but also people are paying a lot more for medicines that they need.

Mr.. SB, thanks again and we'll we'll see you soon.

Thank you for having me.

We'll be right back.

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Welcome back to Capitol Journal.

Joining me next is Derek Chen candidate for state auditor.

Derek welcome to Capitol Journal.

Thank you so much for having me today.

Really appreciate it.

Well, you're running for state auditor is a reminder that campaign seaso is really here upon us.

Right.

I guess, sir, you star raising money in about a month.

But you've put your name in the hat saying you're going to run for state auditor.

That office is coming open.

So let me ask you the obligatory question I ask all candidates.

Why do you want to run for state auditor?

Thank you so much.

I really appreciate it.

Yes.

You know, I've alway had a heart for public service.

You know, I don't need the job.

I don't need the title.

But all I want to do is to do the right thing for the people of Alabama.

That's something that I'm really passionate about.

And I really mean, that it's so important to me, as a citizen.

Well, I know you've got a lot of you've been a Republican activist, if you want to call it that, a very involved in the party.

Anybody that's been to a Republican Party event has seen you over the years.

So talk about that.

Your background and what led you to eventually seek public office?

Yeah.

So I've been a Republican all my life since I was a little kid.

I was born and raised i Southern California, actually.

So not in your traditional pathway to a candidate here.

But I was born and raised in Southern California, but I made it out of there as soon as I could.

And now I'm a proud residen of the great state of Alabama.

Right.

Talk about the job.

Your state auditor, because I think it's one of those, you know, we we have a pretty good grasp on what the governor does and the lieutenant governor and even the treasurer and something like that.

The state auditor isn't in the news every day.

Can you remind the audience a little bit about what the job of the state auditor is?

Sure.

The state auditor has several duties outlined in the Constitution and the Code of Alabama.

They're in charge of the state orders, in charge of property audits of and market value of $500 or greater for all state agencies.

As we were coming into the studio here today, you see the tags, with, State of Alabama seal on their blue tags.

Right?

Yeah, absolutely.

So that's, being tracked by the state auditor to make sure that those items are accountable.

And are still here, when the audits are done.

And they also sit on several board and such as the penny Trust Fund Board, the Board of adjustments.

And the state auditor also makes registrar appointments in 66 of the 67 counties in Alabama.

The only county where they don't make an appointment, is Jefferson County, because of a quirk in the law where Jefferson County appoints her own registrars.

But in all of the other counties in the state of Alabama, the auditor gets, appointment for the board of registrars, which is an often overlooke but important part of the job.

Sure.

And you know, again, we're no it's not in the news every day.

But it sounds like it's a job, just like the title says, auditing, you know, the property and things like that.

For the state.

So I think you're the only announced candidate so far in this race.

Any, of course, will invite any candidates that want to come on the show to come on.

But I'm curious what your message is.

What's your message, as in this Republican primary to voters to try to get them to, you know, send you to the Capitol?

Yeah.

Todd.

So, I have, unique family background.

My great grandparents actually fought in Chiang Kai shek's army, in the Chinese Civil War against the communists.

And when, the communists started taking over large areas of land in mainland China.

My family, my great grandparents, were treated with Chiang Kai shek to the island of Taiwan.

And from there, in the late 70s, President Carter's administration decided to switch diplomatic ties from Taiwan's government to China's government.

And when that happened, folks thought that the communists were about to invade Taiwan.

So everybody who could get out got out.

They applied for their visas went through the legal process, and finally immigrated to this country.

And it's really given me a perspective of knowing my family and hearing the storie about them growing up overseas, how good we have i in the United States of America.

And it's so important to preserve freedom and liberty and our government, and to make sure that government is held accountable to the people because the power, belongs to the people.

And to recognize that I think it's so important.

Well, that is an interesting story.

I've never heard that before, so I appreciate you sharing.

We'll.

Look, we're out of time.

But good luck on the campaign trail.

I hope you'll keep us updated.

And look, congratulations.

Just on putting your name out there.

I think people sometimes forget.

It takes a lot of courag to put your name on the ballot.

You've done that.

S good luck on the campaign trail.

Thank you so much.

To his granddaughter.

We'll be right back.

Born Henry Louis Aaron on February 5th, 1934, in mobile.

Baseball icon Hank Aaron first honed his baseball skills while growing up in Alabama.

He is best known for breaking Bab Ruth's record of 714 home runs, ultimately hitting 755, a record that stood from 1974 to 2007.

During his career, Aaron was a member of the Milwaukee and then Atlanta Braves for 21 seasons and made the National League All-Star team every year from 1955 to 1974.

He won three Gold Glove Awards for outfielder, and his lifetime records for most runs batted in and most extra base hits still stand.

Aaron was elected to th Baseball Hall of Fame in 1982, with 97.8% of the votes cast in 2002.

He received the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation's highest civilian honor.

That's our show for tonight.

Thanks for watching.

We'll be back tomorrow night at the same time, right here on Alabama Public Television for our Capital Journal team.

I'm Todd Stacey.

We'll see you next time.