This particular bill was created as part of an ongoing debate among the state legislatures on Gov. Robert Bentley’s proposal to build four new prisons to address the state’s current problem of aging and overcrowded correctional facilities.
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Around 9:00pm Wednesday, a Senate conference committee came up with a scaled-back version of the bill with $540 million to build three prisons.
The bill faces a rapidly closing window to win approval on the last night of the legislative session.
Bentley also supported a plan for BP oil spill settlement money that would have paid off about $450 million in debt and closed most of what the Alabama Medicaid Agency says is an $85 million shortfall in state funding for next year. The Alabama House of Representatives will soon vote on a bill that would raise auto title fees for Alabama drivers by $13.
“It was a very tight situation, but we felt like we could do it”, Bentley said. “This is something we had worked on for months and were comfortable the numbers worked”, Hubbard said, according to AP.
The eleventh-hour failure, just hours after supporters were buoyed with optimism over the apparent compromise, was a political defeat for the governor. It was a political defeat for the governor, who has struggled to shake off a scandal after admitting to making sexually charged remarks to a former top aide. We are going to spend a lot on prisons.
“This is not about prison reform”, said the bill’s sponsor, Rep. Mike Jones, R-Andalusia.
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Bentley said he feared court rulings this summer will show that not passing the construction bill was “a mistake”.
