We’re breaking down the recently-concluded Regular Session of the Alabama Legislature with House Speaker Mac McCutcheon in this week’s episode of “In the Weeds w/ Alabama Daily News.”
Caroline Beck and I discuss some of the latest developments, including two bills that received “pocket vetoes” from Gov. Kay Ivey due to legislative drafting errors. We also dive into the details of the Education Trust Fund – what it pays for and how. Plus, we explain how a last-minute revenue transfer from the education budget to the general fund will help pay for the Children’s Health Insurance Program.
My guest this week is House Speaker Mac McCutcheon. I’m grateful to the Speaker for sitting down with me to review the session. Ten or twelve days after adjournment allows for a little better perspective on what happened, and Speaker McCutcheon had some interesting thoughts about what passed and what didn’t.

In particular, he was proud of the gas tax and infrastructure plan that he has labored on for years. He went back a few years to explain his own history on that, and then back a few decades to talk about the legislative context of the gas tax.
The Speaker talked at length about the problems facing Alabama’s prisons and what could be accomplished by a possible special session to address the issue in the fall.
He also addressed some of the procedural problems the House faced this year with a handful of lawmakers acting out and slowing things down. I found his commentary on what it’s like to serve in the Speaker’s chair interesting, and I think you will, too.
This is a long podcast by our standards. If you want to skip past our commentary to the interview with Speaker McCutcheon, that begins at the 39:00 mark.
Interview Transcript:
Todd C. Stacy: Hey, Mr. Speaker.
Speaker Mac McCutcheon: Hey, how are you? Good to see you.
TCS: Good to see you, too. Thanks for having me in your office today.
SMM: Thanks for stopping by.
TCS: You’re in Montgomery today, but we’re out of session. What what have you been doing?
SMM: Well, we had a special event today.  The Chinese delegation from the People’s Congress of the Province of Hebei, came back in China, you know, and they, they wanted to talk with us about educational opportunities for their people, speaking primarily of the Space and Rocket Center, and NASA, and they were interested in that. And then we also had some very good discussions about the economy and the imports and exports between the state of Alabama and their country in China. As you know, the province of Hebei is what we call a sister state with Alabama. Back during the George Wallace administration, they signed an agreement to become sister states through trade and commerce and relationships, and we’ve kept that relationship going all these years.  I think it’s very timely, especially when you look at the national scene from their country of China, and United States and the trade war issue and the tariffs that we have. So those things are, you know, are at the top of the list. And for us to be able to come together from a state provenance issue, and talk about trade in our agreements with each other and where we are, I think it’s important for the state.
TCS: Well, it’s been 10 days since adjournment.  I was joking earlier – when y’all adjourn, we (reporters) come and attack you asking, “how do you grade the session” and want your immediate feedback. I was thinking about it because, here you are at the very end of the session, just after a four day work week, which is very rare – I don’t remember many of those; pretty rare. And so it’s a little unfair, just to, you know, put you on the spot. But it’s been 10 days. You get to maybe decompress a little bit, gain some  perspective.