Recommendations of the Joint Interim Patriotic Immigration Commission

The Joint Interim Patriotic Immigration Commission issued their recommendations to the Legislature yesterday. The Commission was established by SJR 22 during last year’s legislative session, “to conduct a fact-finding study on immigration issues and to issue a commission report outlining suggestions and proposals to address the issues of illegal and legal immigration in Alabama to the Legislature, Governor, and members of the Alabama Congressional Delegation.”

The recommendations span the following categories: Federal Government, Public Education, Public Benefits, Public Health, Public Safety, Workforce, and Legal.

According to the Commission’s charge, “All meetings of the commission shall be open to the public and all documents, testimony, minutes of discussions, and other commission documents shall be made available to the press and the public.” Unfortunately I can’t find any of the documentation where they say how they arrived at these recommendations.

More coverage is available from al.com.

LWV ‘Meet the Legislators’ Forum

Thursday night, January 17th (that’s tomorrow!) the League of Women Voters of Greater Tuscaloosa will be holding a “Meet the Legislators” forum at the Central High School auditorium. The forum starts at 6:30, and legislators expected to attend include Representatives Dr. Robert Bentley, Gerald Allen, William E. Thigpen, Sr., and Senator Phil Poole. Senator Charles Bishop may also be in attendance.

The forum will begin with the legislators briefly discussing their priorities for the upcoming session in February. After that, the audience will have a chance to submit written questions.

More information on the League of Women Voters of Greater Tuscaloosa can be found on their web site.

“Naming Politicians not always easy for Alabamians”

The Mobile Press-Register and the University of South Alabama Polling Group surveyed 407 adult residents of the state last week, asking them to name such political figures as the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, Alabama’s two U.S. Senators, U.S. Speaker of the House, etc.  Amazingly enough, “more Alabamians could identify [Speaker Nancy Pelosi] than were able to name either of the state’s two senators.”  Yikes!

One more time, folks: Alabama’s U.S. Senators are Jeff Sessions and Richard Shelby.  If you don’t know who represents you in the U.S. House, go to the House web site & enter your zip code + 4.  (If you don’t know your +4, go to the Post Office’s Zip Code Lookup site.]

In order to find out who represents you in the Alabama Legislature, use their zip code lookup.

Voting records

There are a number of sources for tracking how your members of congress vote on particular legislation. The Washington Post’s Congress Votes Database is one - it includes data going back to 1991, and includes information on who missed votes, most voted on bills, late night votes, etc. RSS feeds for individual members of Congress are available, as is an RSS feed for the 10 most recent votes.

OpenCongress does not have votes going back to past sessions of Congress - it begins with the 110th (Current) congress. This site includes RSS feeds for Members’ votes, for each piece of legislation introduced (the full-text and status of legislation is also included), and also allows you to subscribe to blog posts and news articles mentioning your Member of Congress.

The official federal government sources for Members’ voting records are the Secretary of the Senate and the Clerk of the House, respectively.

The only site I’ve been able to find for the Alabama legislature is their official site, ALISON. Keep in mind that ALISON only works with Internet Explorer. In order to view votes, follow these steps (from the legislature’s web site):

When you have a bill or list of bills that display the bill buttons. You click a bill button first, and then go to the History button at the top. In the history list you should see one or more Roll NNN buttons(N=a number). This button is visible for any votes except a voice vote. Also, vote buttons are available in the BIR History window, which is accessible from the History window. Yea, Nay, Abstain, and Present are the vote options.

I haven’t yet found a source that compiles the roll call votes & makes them available…but I’ll keep looking.

Update, 2008-02-24: ALISON now works in the Firefox browser!  HT: Daily Dixie.

AL legislators being paid for their lobbying

In Sunday’s Birmingham News there was an article about state legislators who were on the payroll of community colleges (which, you may or may not know, have been in the news quite a bit during the past few months - due to nepotism, graft, etc.)

What I cannot get over re: this article? The fact that no one at the community college level (or the legislator level!) seems to think that this is wrong.  The CC folks are happy because the legislators they are paying are returning the favor in terms of state funding (aka pork).  Perhaps I’m a bit naive…but I thought that’s why schools hired lobbyists?

And if those legislators who have been paid by other state agencies secure funding for those same agencies…isn’t that a conflict of interest?  At the very least, aren’t there ethics laws they’re violating?  Unfortunately, I can’t get a clear answer from the state Ethics Commission’s web site -  and I haven’t yet attempted to navigate the code.

If anyone has additional references, or points-of-view - please share!

tours

If you’re a big dork like I am, and you like to watch cspan, you might be interested in getting a tour of the capitols in DC and Montgomery - or just watching from the gallery.  Here’s how you do that:

For tours of the Capitol building in Washington, DC, you can contact your Senator’s office, or your Representative’s office.  They can also give you passes to the Senate and/or House galleries (in case you want to sit & watch the comings and goings on the floor).

For visits to the Capitol in Montgomery, the Legislature’s web site has some useful information.

Always remember - make sure that Congress or the Legislature is in session before you go!