From our state house studio in Montgomery, I'm Todd Stacy.

Welcome to Capitol Journal.

On Tuesday, the Alabama legislature will reconvene its 2025 regular session.

More on that in a bit.

But first, some news we are catching up on from late last week.

Governor Kay Ivey on Friday commuted the death sentence of Robin Rocky Myers to life in prison, saying there were enough questions about his guilt that she could not move forward with his execution.

Ivey said that Myers, who is 63 years old, will spend the rest of his life in prison without the possibility of parole instead of being executed later.

This year.

Ivey noted that this was the sentence that jurors recommended at his trial back in 1994.

Ivey said she's a staunc supporter of the death penalty, but, quote, I have enough questions about Mr. Myers guilt that I cannot move forward with executing him.

In short, I am not convinced that Mr. Myers is innocent.

But I am not so convinced of his guilt as to approve his execution.

I therefore, must respect both the jury's decision to convict him and its recommendation that he be sentenced to life without parole, unquote.

Myers was convicte of the capital murder of love.

You May Tucker at her Decatur home back in 1991.

He has long maintained he is an innocent and a juror at his 1994 trial supports the push for clemency.

The reprieve came over the objections of Alabama attorney General Steve Marshall, who said he was astonished by the governor's decision.

It will be day 11 with the House and Senate convene tomorrow.

There are three legislative days expected this week, with all the committee meetings thrown on top.

That can make for a pretty busy week here in the state House in the House of Representatives.

We could see legislation on crime and immigration continue to move.

There's also legislation allowing nursing mothers to be exempt from jury duty, and a bill prohibiting judges from granting youthful offender status to anyone 16 or older accused of murder.

Lawmakers are also talking about government efficiency and some ongoing efforts they've had to trim the fat within state government.

We'll be working just fine, and we're going to be working on some issues probably in the next few weeks at all.

We've got a comedian house call, a financial responsibility committee, and we've had a, a group of for about three years that has been working on different agencies, making sure the money is spent the way it's supposed to be, making sure the money goes where it's supposed to be.

When we've been doing the Downs Committee before, it was popular.

And so what I've aske them to do is to come together and get those the people that's been working on it and to have some public hearings.

And so everybody understands what they've been doing, what they've seen and transparency that they've gotten.

I think it's important, especially in today's world.

I think it's something to be positive in the Senate.

There are early whispers about gambling legislation resurfacing this year.

You might remember that last year it was the House that passe a comprehensive gambling bill, which included everythin from sports betting to a lottery and class three Vegas style casinos.

However, that bill faced significant opposition in the Senate, where it ultimately failed despite Republicans holding a supermajority in both the House and Senate.

Such a bill would likely require suppor from Democrats to move forward.

To gain insight, we spoke with Senate Minority Leade Bobby Singleton to get his take on what the prospects are of a new gambling bill.

It's chances of gaining Democratic support and where he believe the proceeds should be directed, you know, is still looking at trying to bring in sports wagering, a lottery and some kind of a game.

In which level?

Whether it would be class two and or class three, which we think that we can get passed.

And, you know I don't think all of this money need to go to roads and bridges.

I think that that we have a lot of things going on.

The federal government takes care of a lot of our roads and bridges, but yet still we got Medicaid, this need money.

We need to do some more healt care in rural health care, say, some of our hospitals.

I think there's a lot of places that money can go before we go to Rolling Bridges.

I don't have a problem with some of it going to Rolling Bridges, but that does not need t dominate for the dollar scope.

And until you know me and my party see it, we can't commit to vote for it until we see it.

And joining me no to talk about what we can expect when the legislature returns are my Capital Journal colleagues Randy Scott and Jeff Sanders.

Gentlemen it' going to be an interesting week.

It looks like that's putting it mildly.

Well Jeff you had the reporting from the Senate on the possibility of gambling going back.

So I gotta start there because, you know, the conventional wisdom as the session bega was that no gambling this year because of all the drama that happened last year.

House didn't want to touch it all that, but it sounds like maybe som whispers going on in the Senate.

Whispers.

Seems like there are always whispers.

If not this year, it's har to think it would be next year with it being an election year, but there are whispers of maybe after spring break.

I don't know how to take too seriously some of those whispers, but basically I haven't heard a whole lot from Republicans.

Talk to Bobby Singleton, as we saw earlier.

And, you know, Democrats are all for this.

But as we've discussed so many times, it's such a complicated layered issue from the existing, bingo halls in the state to a possible lottery to sports betting.

I think a lot of things have to fall into place.

And right now it's really when you look at the math, it's the overall math.

In the Senate, especially losing Greg Ree to the Department of Workforce.

He was a yes vote.

It just it's hard to really figure out where the math adds up.

Right.

And it was interesting because one week we had Senator Singleton here on Capital Journal asked him about gambling.

He said, well, yeah, you know, we're some talk about it and all that kind of stuff.

The very next week we had Senator all Brennan, obviously very involved in gambling conversation, and he said, I don't have the votes.

So until we have the votes, there's not even talk about two very different things to do here.

But we'll we'll be following that going forward.

Randy, in the House, you did some reporting on this Dodge.

Those is all the, kind of a watchword in DC right now as Elon Musk and his group go through the federal governmen with some pretty dramatic cuts, the House and Senate legislative leaders here.

And to add the governor o that, to want to do some things on the government efficiency.

But they say their Doge has been around for years.

Talking to House Speaker Nathan Ledbetter, he said that as a matter of fact, they've been doing something like this before.

As he said, Doge was doge for the last 3 or 4 years.

They've met at what they call the Financial Responsibility Committee.

For about three years, they've been taking looks at different agencies around the state, how they get money, what do they do with the money, and where does the money go?

They've been going through it with a fine tooth comb.

So it's kind of like the Alabama version of Doge.

But is one that has been focusing a lot on financial responsibility.

And again making sure if they get money, they spend it correctly.

And where does it go?

And just follow the money trail as they say.

I remember when Senator or I King was back in 2019, he brought the legislation establishing the Alabama Commissio for the Evaluation of Services.

So those things like I'm proud of you remember.

Yeah I say that five times.

I had to really try and it was like okay, is this one of these government things that gets set up because it happens every ten years or so.

Somebody will say, we need to be more efficient.

We need to find ways to cut.

But my understanding i this commission has been working behind the scenes a lot to evaluate what's going on.

And now they're going to be called to testify before you.

Like I said, the, Responsibility Committee.

So that may be something really dramatic, I guess.

Is that plan for, when they come back from spring break that week in between after spring break, the speake said they want to basically not take it on the road because of course, they are here in session, but have some public hearings, bring people into the state House, let them look at it, ask questions of lawmakers, he said.

The main thing we want to d is make sure this entire process and what happens with it is transparent.

We want people to see it.

We want people to talk to us We want people to ask questions.

So we want to be fiscally responsible, but we also want to be transparent and responsible.

Well, I know that'll be appreciated not just from the general public, but for those in working in state agencies.

I don't think they really want to happen.

What is really happened in Washington so far with a lot of uncertainty, what in the world is going on?

And don't forget Alabama.

We have to have a balanced budget every year.

So, you know, it is a little different than running up the trillions and trillions of deficits we do on the federal level.

Oh, world of difference.

Night and day.

Jeff, we had this last week, we had this filibuster, to end the week, I think it was six hours, something like 6 or 7.

Somewhere in that ballpark.

You lose track after a while.

Obviously.

You know, we reported a lot of that last week, but sometimes things can kind of carry over into the following week.

Sometimes they burn out and not not aren't a big deal at all.

What are you hearing in the Senate in terms of this filibuster?

Are feelings hurt?

Are we going to have more filibusters this year or this week?

Where are we headed I you know, it's hard to tell.

So this is over the archive bill and changing the structure.

The more Democrats worry if these changes are made, you know, could you go back and, you know, as they said, change the history of black Alabamians, you know, that's that maybe that's a worst case scenario.

They say they're going to fight this bill.

In fact, Bobby Singleton said Senator Singleton said they will use every tool in their box to divide this.

If it comes back up, they'll do it again.

Senator Chris Elliott, who has brought the bill, has stated in some interviews that, you know, cloture is always a possibility to shut down the debate.

But senators are really hesitant to use cloture.

It is what they call the nuclear option.

They would rather find a workaround.

So I think they will figure out something with this bill or it just may die a slow death.

So we'll see what happens coming up this week.

And, you know I think they would like to get this out of the way and over with as soon as possible.

But at the same time, you know, feeling, I think if you cloture, that's when people get hurt.

And I think that's when you start having some resentment.

And then that could really eat into the rest of the year with the Senate.

And everybody's got legislation they want to pass.

Randi, real quick on the House seems hasn't seemed to be a lot of blow ups down there.

You know, everybody's kind of waits and season and what's going on.

What has been the mood in the House in terms of the majority in the minority working together?

Filibuster offers long and drawn out debate.

What's the mood been so far?

Things, for the most part, especially this past week, have been even keel They have been working together.

They have been asking questions about various bills, whether it is crime fighting bills.

Are you starting to also hear bills dealing with immigration starting to come up?

But you can tell that there is a genuine push to work together to get legislation to pass because they know, a couple of weeks from now, the budgets are going to come up, and they definitely want to make sure everybody's on the same level.

And as we said, there are no hard feelings for anything that did not pass or was cut out.

So for the most part, you know, there have been a ton of of of of law legislation, if you will, crime fighting legislation that has come up and is continuing to come up.

And as we said, you starting to see immigration measures.

There was one in the House Judiciary Committee the other day come up and be talked about.

So they're getting along.

They're having tough talks about these bills, but they're getting along.

It's nothing like the the WWE in the House chamber.

So they're getting along right now.

There have been been moments a long time ago that that resembled that.

Well gentlemen, we're out of time.

We'll be looking forward to your reporting all week.

It's another long week.

We'll get the spring break coming.

It's on the horizon.

What's the spring break?

We got two of them this year.

We have two of them.

That's right, that's right.

We'll look.

Thanks for your time.

And, Well, we'll be looking forward to your reporting this week.

And we'll be right back with state health officer Doctor Scott Harris.

Stay with us.

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Welcome back to Capitol Journal.

Joining me next is Doctor Scott Harris, public health officer for the state of Alabama.

Doc, thanks for coming on back on the show.

Thanks for having me, Todd.

Good to see you.

Yeah, absolutely.

It's been a while.

And, but I wanted to have you o to ask about this measles thing.

We're hearing reports of this measles outbreak in Texas which, if you think about that, it's no something we're used to seeing.

Measles is supposed to be a thing of the past.

But what's going on with this measles outbreak?

Yeah.

We don't tend to think about measles much in this country, which is a good thing because we don't see a lot of it.

But measles remains a really dangerous disease throughout the world.

It's probably the most infectious disease.

It's probably the easiest to spread of any infection that we know of.

And so when you get t populations where people aren't fully vaccinated or aren't vaccinated at all, they can really spread really quickly.

If you have an A person who's not vaccinated, who's exposed to measles, about 90% of the time they'll get infected.

People with measles, you know, can do.

Okay.

A lot of our maybe parents and grandparents had to experience that.

But even today, even with modern medicine, about one out of five kids with measles is going to end up in the hospital.

And somewhere around on out of 100 may, may not survive.

So what's happened in the past few weeks is that in West Texas, there's been an outbreak in a community there that did not have very good vaccination rates.

Not sur where the first case came from, but probably a good traveler from somewhere, you know, came there.

And they've had almost 150 people vaccinated, I'm sorry, infected most of them children.

They've had, about 25 kids in the hospital and they've had one death, in a I think it was a third grader or a second grader.

And so it's really wears them because it can easily spread to other places.

Oh, goodness.

Well, I was going to ask you about because I, I did assume that it was probably a vaccine thing because we've seen a lot of vaccine skepticis over the last couple of years.

Obviously, a lot of that tied up into Covid.

Now, I'll get to that later, but it's okay.

So if, if I did not get my kids vaccinated and they are, they come into contac with somebody, they're probably, like you said, very infectious.

What if you are vaccinated an come into contact with somebody?

Are you very protected?

Almost always, if you're fully vaccinated.

And so, it the recommendation now is to get two shots of MMR vaccine.

Most of us get one about age, one about age 12 months, and then you get your second one.

And by the time you start school.

And that protects almost everyone for life.

Almost the only time that won't work is that occasionally you'll have a person in who the vaccine just doesn't work.

But that's really rare.

But there are people out there who are unvaccinated all the time, such as every child under age, 12 months.

You know, the vaccine's not available if you're under 12 months of age.

So every baby, is fully unvaccinated and really highly susceptible to measles.

You also have kids who just have immune system problems and aren't able to take that vaccine.

They're not protected, and they're very susceptible to measles.

So so we're always going to have some people who can't be vaccinated or in whom the vaccines don't work, even when the.

And that's really the reason that you need the population fully protected.

So the disease doesn't spread to those folks.

Well we're a long way from West Texas.

But should we be worried at all in Alabama about a potential measles outbreak.

Well we should be vigilant.

You know, you know during the, the pandemic, vaccination rates of all kinds, including measles really fell because of all these disruptions in the in the medical system.

And people just weren't gettin routine primary care and so on.

The rates are getting better.

But we're still below where we would like to be with Miguel's vaccine.

We have enough unvaccinated people that if we were to have a case, it could really be dangerous.

The last case in Alabama was in about 2002.

So it's a very rare situation.

And the last death in Alabama was in 1973.

So those are really unusual.

But you can see what can happen just in a single communit within, you know, 2 or 3 weeks, 150 cases pop up.

Back in 2019, in New York City, there was, over 100 cases that happened associated with an outbreak.

So it can really spread quickly if it gets into the right population.

I don't want to get into more of that, but what are th what are the protocols, right.

Like, let's just say it happened here.

What are some of the things they're doing in that Texas town?

In order to stop the spread?

I'm, I'm guessing this is when public health becomes really important in terms of the protocols for how to go about stopping the spread.

Yeah.

So, for, for everyone who lived through Covid, you know, you're probably familiar with some of that advice.

I mean, the advice is go see your doctor, you know, find out about your own vaccination status and get vaccinated as soon as you can.

Even one shot will protect pretty well.

Not fully like two shots, but if you're unvaccinated, even getting that first shot can protect you right away.

And then we also, just like in Covid, want to remind people, please stay home if you're sick, you know, if you've got, fever, if you've got some concern that you might not be well, and that's not a good time to travel and be around other people.

We are.

So much of this vaccine skepticism comes from Covid.

Hey, look, it was a tough time.

Nobody knows that better than you.

It was a tough time.

You saw a lot of frustration in the public.

Sick people saying, look, I don't want that in my arm.

I don't.

Maybe it was the speed with which it got developed.

There were other factors.

But that's in the past, at least for now.

How do we, build confidence in vaccines?

Considering how much life saving medical research has gone into this for a reason, to put these diseases behind us, polio, measles, all these things.

Mumps.

How do we build confidence, restore maybe confidence among parents and things like that to, for an early ag is make it part of the routine.

Yeah.

You know, there's not a real simple answe to that or we would have tried to fix it, you know, already, it does take time for people to develop confidence, to, build trust again.

We're living in a low trust society, in a way, and there's so much, information out there that people get from so many different sources.

It's really hard to know how to sort it out sometimes if it's if it's conflicting.

I think what I would ask people to do again is reach out to your health care provider that you trust, you know, the doctor or the pediatrician or the person you see that knows you know your family, someone who's trained and understands this and ask them you know, for their best advice, for things like measles vaccine.

We've had this vaccine essentially this same vaccine, for over 40 years.

You know, we've had measles vaccines for over 60 years.

The current one has been around for, you know, a long, long time.

That's true wit most of the childhood vaccines that the kids get.

You know, the one for whooping cough, for tetanus, even the hepatitis vaccines now, or, you know, more than 30 years old, these are safe and effective vaccines.

It would be my opinion as the guy in public health.

But, you know, you don't have to take my word for it.

Go talk to your your own physician.

You know, ask the what you think they should do.

Certainly those tried and true vaccines that have been around for so long, I think we know very well that they're effective and that they're safe.

And just look at what's happening to to point out what happens when, you know people don't take that advice.

Switching gears, I guess we're kind of coming off of flu season, or at least I hope we are.

I mean, the weather changes day to day, but what kind of flu season did we have?

How infectious it was?

Was it severe?

How severe was it?

This was, one of the worst flu seasons we've had in the past decade.

It's certainly the worst one since the pandemic, for sure.

We are getting better now.

Those case numbers are starting to fall.

We also have the ability around the country right now to monitor wastewater, for evidence of flu vaccine, to see what's going on in the communities.

And those wastewater numbers, levels of flu virus are declining as well.

So that's a good sign.

The vaccine was, this year, this particular version of the flu vaccine was an okay match, but not a great match.

So we're not surprised.

You know, sometimes tha when you see spikes like that, in order to make a flu vaccine, you know, they start manufacturing it a few months before flu season starts.

So you're you're making an educated guess about which strains you think you're likely to see in this year what wasn't the best match.

And that happened sometimes.

So we we do want to remind people, you know, flu shots are a great idea for, anybody, 12 months of age and up, particularly for older people for pregnant women, for people that have immune syste problems, flu vaccines really do lessen the severity of disease and really ought to consider thinking about those.

What about bird flu?

I know that this is more of an agricultural issue, but I mean, you can't turn on the news or read a newspaper without seeing bird flu and how it's impacting eggs an chickens and things like that.

Maybe other, barnyard animals.

But should we be concerned about bird flu at all?

Just kind of sounds like a a bad thing you don't want around.

Yeah.

So.

So the risk of bird flu to people is low.

It's not something that we are really worried is going to be a big problem in humans.

But, you know there's always the possibility that the virus could change or could mutate.

So that's our job in public health is to monitor that.

The bird flu, on the other hand, is really been devastating for agriculture.

Right.

And so, not only do you see these poultry populations that are having to be cold and that's why, you know, you can't find eggs, you know, when you go to the grocery store, but now for the first time, just in the past year or so, we've seen bird flu start to infect dairy cattle.

And that's never happened before.

There were more than 900 dairy, cattle farms in the state of California that are seeing bird flu, as well as, you know, about a dozen other states.

The cattle actually do.

Okay.

But, the milk is not used because there's virus in the milk, and so the milk can't be used, and you still have to have people taking care of those cattle, because they're dairy cattle.

And so you have a lot of human animal exposure even during that time when the cows are sick.

The theoretical concern is that, the virus can mutate and become easier to spread.

So a person infected with bir flu might have a mutation that leads to that virus spreading, just like human flu does.

And then that would be you know, potentially a problem.

We haven't seen that.

I hope we never see that.

We're not expecting that.

But that's our job to monitor that.

So we're spending a lot of time working with our colleagues in agriculture, and other public health officials just trying to be vigilant for that.

That sounds all too familiar when you talk about mutations and and humans and animals.

We don't want to see that movie again.

Yeah.

Absolutely.

Right.

We're almost out of time.

But I wanted to mention, you talked about heading to DC next week for your.

You are the president of your fellow state health officers association.

You're also kind of a group of, so congrats.

Quite a quite a titl for what it entails with that.

Oh, well, thank thanks for that, Don.

So so it's called the Association of State and Territorial Health Officials.

It's been around for, about 87 or 88 years.

And it's, it's the, group of my counterparts in the other states and U.S. territories and DC.

So there's like 58 of us.

I think, and so we we do have a hill week, every year and, usually in March where we go and meet with Congress, talk to them about public health concerns and, you know, other business.

It's a really a wonderful organization that does a lot for state health department, you know, and in many places, your state health official, turns over pretty quickly, you know, the average tenure in this country, particularly since Covid, it's been only a year or two.

And so the real, the real knowledge of public health many times is in an organization like this where you have public health folks who've been working for decades, you know, working with state health departments.

And so they're just a great organization that helps state health departments figure out how to do things, how to get things accomplished, how to understan dealing with certain problems, institutional knowledge and sharing it.

And best practice is always a good thing.

Absolutely.

Doctor Harris, thanks again for your time.

We'll look forward to catching up with you.

And thanks for this information about measles and everything else.

It's very helpful for our audience.

Great.

Thanks very much.

Look forward to seeing you again.

We'll be right back.

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Chia mountain, often called Mount Chia, is the highest natural point in Alabama at 2407ft above sea level.

It is located in north centra Alabama and Georgia State Park, surrounded by the Talladega National Forest in the foothills of the Appalachian Mountains.

This dramatic landscape gets its name from the creek Indian name for the mountain char, meaning high place.

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.