Work on Medicaid, prisons and budget remains for lawmakers in the post-Bentley era

April 11--MONTGOMERY -- The day after an Alabama governor resigned in disgrace and another governor was sworn into office, leaders in the legislative branch struggled to get back to business as usual.

"We as a state have a lot to get done," Senate President Del Marsh, R-Anniston, said Tuesday.

Marsh is now second in line to be governor, after the resignation Monday of former Gov. Robert Bentley.

Bentley's departure was both agonizingly slow and surprising. More than a year after a recording surfaced that seemed to implicate Bentley in an affair with a married aide, Bentley seemed prepared to fight his way through both a criminal trial and impeachment. Late Monday afternoon, however Bentley announced a guilty plea to misdemeanor campaign finance charges related to the scandal, and announced he was stepping down. Kay Ivey, the lieutenant governor, was sworn in an hour later.

By Tuesday morning, there was little sign of any change in the capitol. The State House was quiet; both houses had planned to meet late in the day to make way for impeachment proceedings that never happened. If Bentley, now a dermatologist with a criminal record and 42,000 Twitter followers, was moving out of the governor's mansion, there was no sign of moving trucks. In Ivey's State House office, no one was rushing to pack boxes and move them across the street to the governor's digs. Alabama law has no provision for a successor to a lieutenant governor who becomes governor, so no one was waiting for the office space.

Staff for the new governor said she wouldn't be available for interviews Tuesday. But there was evidence that she was already at work. Ivey signed a bill to prohibit judges from sentencing inmates to death when juries recommend life in prison -- ending an only-in-Alabama practice that many lawmakers believe was ripe for a challenge in federal court.

Ivey also accepted the resignation Jon Mason, head of the state's faith-based initiatives office and husband of Rebekah Mason, the aide Bentley was accused of romancing.

Ivey's staff had little comment on Mason's departure.

"The governor has asked for the resignations of all of governor's office staff, and she has accepted this one," said Eileen Jones, the new governor's spokeswoman. Jones said that requesting those resignations, and accepting some of them, was typical of a new administration. Asked if any others on the governor's staff -- a few dozen spokespeople, policy analysts, legislative go-betweens and administrative assistants -- had also seen their resignations accepted, Jones said "not yet."

Former Gov. Jim Folsom Jr. said staffing the governor's office is always the first challenge for a lieutenant governor who ascends to the governor's office.

"It comes at you very fast when you assume the office like that," said Folsom, who was lieutenant governor in 1993 when Gov. Guy Hunt left office due to a felony ethics law conviction.

Alabama grants few powers to its governor, compared to many states. A simple majority vote can overturn her veto, and much of the pardon power has been handed to a separate board. But there are state secrets, of a sort, that have to be passed on like a nuclear football.

Folsom said he'd been governor two days when he found out that Mercedes had been interested in building an auto plant in the state -- the plant the company would eventually build in Vance. Work to land major industrial developments is typically hush-hush and is done by top state officials.

"She's probably being briefed about what's going on in every department in the executive branch," Folsom said.

The sudden end to the Bentley impeachment left lawmakers with a little more time to deal with a heap of issues that are still unresolved at the midpoint in the legislative session. Bentley's plan to build new prisons may be dead, though lawmakers fear a federal court intervention, based on prison overcrowding, that could tie the state's hands. The perennial struggle to fund the state's Medicaid program continues, and this year lawmakers are also looking over their shoulder to possible federal funding changes that could break Medicaid's budget. A judge has ordered the state to redraw its legislative districts, and lawmakers still have to pass the state's budgets.

They have a little more than one month to work, and a little more than a year to rebuild the public trust in government before primary elections in 2018.

"We are halfway through the session. We really don't have a lot of time," said Sen. Linda Coleman-Madison, D-Birmingham, "We know what next year holds for us."

Ivey pledged to rebuild the state's faith and run a transparent office in her brief swearing-in speech. The state's second female governor and the only unmarried governor in recent memory, she could be well positioned to succeed Bentley, whose tangled personal life became an uneasy, can't-turn-away obsession for many voters.

"Trust in female elected officials can be higher than trust in male public officials." wrote Lori Owens, a political science professor at Jacksonville State University, in an email to The Star.

Democrats in the legislature Tuesday stressed the need to support Ivey and move forward. The story was different Monday night, when party leaders blasted Republicans for producing not one, but three career-ending scandals at top levels of government in a single year. Former House Speaker Mike Hubbard was convicted on felony ethics charges last year and Roy Moore, still technically the chief justice of the Alabama Supreme Court, was permanently suspended after defying the U.S. Supreme Court's ruling on same-sex marriage.

Owens said the Bentley resignation was a gift to Democrats. She predicted the minority party wouldn't be able to capitalize on that gift because the internal and financial troubles that have left the party unable to organize in recent elections.

"The Republicans might have something to worry about if the Democrats had any kind of party structure at all," Owens wrote.

Calhoun County Democratic Party chairwoman Sheila Gilbert said the party is seeing a surge in interest, partly because of the issues of the Trump administration and partly because of the Bentley scandal. She said the local party is seeking people to actually run for office, a problem the party has faced in the past.

Marsh, Calhoun County's most powerful politician at the state level, is one of the few Republicans still largely untouched by the year's scandals. She said the party is seeking a candidate to take him on, if he does seek re-election.

"It would have to be someone with good name recognition," Gilbert said.

Capitol & statewide reporter Tim Lockette: 256-294-4193. On Twitter @TLockette_Star.

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