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WEST POINT — State Representative Bob Fincher was the guest speaker at last week’s meeting of the West Point Rotary Club. He has represented House District 37 in the Alabama Legislature for the past ten years.

District 37 includes all of Randolph County, much of rural Chambers County and portions of Lee, Clay and Cleburne counties. Fincher has two years remaining on his current term. He was introduced by Program Chairman Monroe Smith, who represented District 37 in the 1970s. Fincher thanked Smith and his brother in-law Gary Vaughn, on having supported him in his time in office.

“I want everyone to know that it has been a pleasure for me to have represented District 37 in the state legislature,” Fincher said.

Fincher is a retired history, civics and government teacher from Woodland High School and lives in the New Hope community between Wedowee and Woodland. Noting that the Alabama House has 105 representatives and the State Senate has 30 members, Fincher said it takes a lot of people working together for a common cause to get anything done in Montgomery.

“Over 850 bills were introduced this past session, and a little more than 200 of them were passed by both houses and signed into law by the governor,” he said.

Fincher joined many critics of the state’s 1901 constitution, saying that it was a cumbersome document that required voters to decide many issues they were ill-informed of. As an example, he cited an issue that was on the ballot in the November general election. It involved allowing Franklin County to sell some land the county-owned that was not in Franklin County. Why should that be decided in a statewide vote? Alabama’s big-spending item every year is the education trust fund budget.

For the current year it’s more than $9.35 billion. Everything that’s not education-related is in the general fund budget. That comes to around $3.36 billion for the current year.

“We spend three times as much for education as we do for everything else combined,” Fincher said. “Two-thirds of the education budget went into K-12 education.” Education spending included a two-percent raise for teachers. “Since I have been in the legislature, we have had a teacher raise just about every year,” Fincher said.

To keep good teachers, state government just about has to do that or they will lose them to a surrounding state. There is a movement to have more pre-K classes in Alabama.

“It’s still not completely funded, but we are getting closer every year,” Fincher said. Something else Alabama is getting closer to is a comprehensive bill on gambling. The House passed it this year, but the Senate couldn’t get it through. Fincher commended State Senator Randy Price for the work he is doing as chairman of the Senate Tourism Committee.

Tourism is big business in Alabama, and that committee has important business to do each year. One major project that’s underway right now is the building of a new hotel on Mount Cheaha, the highest point in the state. Another area the state is moving forward with involves prisons. Two new ones are being built, one in Elmore County and one in Escambia County.

“This is something that needs to be done,” Fincher said. “Our present prisons have gotten in bad shape. We can put some of our Covid money into this.”

The Alabama Department of Economic and Community Affairs (ADECA) got a funding increase this year as did the Alabama Law Enforcement Agency (ALEA), which will allow more overtime pay for state troopers. The state legislature is in the process of getting a new State House. The Retirement Systems of Alabama (RSA) will be paying for it, and it will be a significant upgrade over the current one. The state will build a $200 million parking deck next to it.

Fincher said the state’s population is shifting to the northern part of Alabama and that this will likely be reflected in new leadership in the House and Senate.

“Our budgets are in good shape,” Fincher said. “We were able to pass some legislation that needed to be passed. We approved some legislation that will prevent minors from accessing sexually explicit materials online, and we got some legislation through that addresses human trafficking. We now have a new law where you can be charged with manslaughter if someone dies from fentanyl they somehow got from you even if you didn’t know it was in it.”

This is known to happen in the illegal drug trade. The legislature also passed a new law on what’s known as swatting. This is the common term for a prank caller sending police or EMS personnel to someone’s address to harass someone they don’t like. Law enforcement or fire and EMS personnel do not need to be called unless it’s an actual emergency.

There’s also a new Alabama law addressing what’s commonly known as squatting, or moving into an unoccupied house and carrying on like you own it. Alabama now has what’s known as the Choose Act. This allows up to $7,000 in tuition help for parents who wish to send their children to a private school. It was signed into law by Governor Kay Ivey on March 7th and makes refundable income tax credits called education savings accounts, or ESAs, “to support the success of every K-12 student in Alabama.”

The law requires the Alabama Department of Revenue to establish a framework and funding for ESAs, which may be used by eligible families to cover tuition fees and other qualified education expenses at approved Education Service Providers (ESPs) in Alabama.

Fincher said the state is building a nursing school for high school students in Demopolis. There’s also a new law that requires kindergarten students to be prepared to enter the first grade. The legislature also took action to prevent what’s known as Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) in higher education and to protect in vitro fertilization (IVF) clinics.

Fincher mentioned an incident that reportedly took place in Mobile when someone broke into such a clinic and destroyed some embryos. The new legislation provides criminal penalties for doing something like that.

“We had a busy session this year,” Fincher said. “A lot of legislators who have been there longer than me told me they had never seen a session that had been as contentious as this one had been.”