FM Talk 1065 Podcasts
State Senator Chris Elliott - Jeff Poor Show - Friday 9-27-24
(upbeat music) ♪ Have a real bad morning ♪ ♪ Up from San Antonio ♪ ♪ Everything that I got ♪ ♪ Is just what I've got on ♪ - Welcome back to the Jet Force Show it up and talk with 06.5. Hey, just thinking with us on this Friday morning, what's left of it at least? - If you want to try to get in 2513430106, I'm sure I upset some of you, but I don't care. Joining us now on the line, he's our returning champion state senator Chris Elliott. - Senator, good morning, how are you? - I am doing well about as well as you can be for a Friday in Montgomery. I wish I was back involved with Henry. - What are you doing? What are you doing there? - Well, I think you had taught on earlier where a group of us that have just gotten back from the Texas border are going to be speaking with him on Capitol journals at night. And of course, we just adjourn a meeting with legislative services working on some legislation to try to see what the state can do to just make it awfully uncomfortable to be an illegal immigrant here in Alabama. - Well, yeah, I think, I mean, how about this? And we had your colleague yesterday, Lance Bell on, and he said you're really like kind of spearheading this effort, but like who regulates these sponsors, who regulates these NGOs that they'll look like you're just raking in cash, hand over fist, exploiting these people, getting them to come to the United States. - Well, first of all, Senator Bell's kind, but he was just in the meeting along with Senator Weber, Senator Kitchens, Senator Kelly, and there's a host of House members, you know, the usual good guys in the House that are working on this pretty hard too. But you're right, I mean, we need to look at the sponsors and the NGOs, who are really facilitating the trafficking of these illegal migrants. And even the ones that have some sort of protected status granted that them by an executive order that are taking advantage of and moving these folks around the country. And in Alabama, that's an activity we think we can at least require documentation and registration and try to figure out if we know who these people are right now, we don't even know who they are. They're bringing folks in here. They're sometimes they're putting them to work, sometimes, I mean, who knows what they're doing with others, you know, are we in a human trafficking scenario or a situation? And so that's something we're looking very closely on to see if we can figure out who is vouching for these folks, who is housing them, how are they getting here and what's happening to them once they're here? - I mean, Senator, you guys are pretty strict about foster parents and adoption and who can like braid hair, you gotta have a license or whatever. You can't tell these people they got to pass a background checks or something. That's why it makes me scratch my head about some of the stuff that's going on here. - Well, and that's exactly the things that we're looking at. The occupational licensing from a different direction than what I'm usually going out from is doing some of that already. But we need to be looking at that a lot closer and we're trying to use some of the authority the state has either from a business, regulation side of things, a labor side of things or if it's just registering with the Secretary of State, there are options there to try again, more than anything to just make Alabama inhospitable to folks that are illegal migrants. If you come here legally, if you're on an agricultural visa or a J-1 visa working in the hospitality industry or something like that, that's one thing, you're here legally. But if you're not here legally, we don't want, we don't want you to Alabama. And we want you to move on somewhere else. I cannot fix the disaster that is going on through federal policy at our border. But there are steps we can take and we learned that from our colleagues in Texas in Florida a couple of weeks here, last week, rather. Well, some steps we can take if they've been successful with to try to make it just hard to be an illegal migrant here at Alabama. Well, even the ones that are here legally, these Haitians that we've discussed so much, they're here legally, but the communities, just they're not ready for that sort of influx. And there's a pop, I mean, there are people who are facilitating that and just saying, well, we're just gonna do it anyway. Senator, I mean, that to me kind of looking at it makes me think, well, there's gotta be something you can do to keep these. You know, what do you think they're here or not? They should be here not, but I think there'll be an exploited. There ought to be something to keep that from happening, right? Well, and those are all options we're looking at. You know, this is, I hate to say it that it's fresh 'cause it's a problem that's been going on for a long time. It's for too long and I will take some blame for this too, for too long, state lawmakers have thrown their hands up and said, this is a federal problem. It is a federal problem, but our federal government for the last three and a half years has driven us further and further and further into the ditch. The Biden-Harris administration has no interest in solving this problem. They wanna make it worse. I think the vice president is down at the border for the first time, which is about the most ridiculous thing I've heard of. You've talked about this before in your show. They're selling off as surplus pieces of the border wall instead of installing it like they should be doing, which is not just dumb but wasteful, and what state legislators need to do is wake up and realize that we have got to take some action because at the end of the day, this is happening in our backyards. It's not happening in the federal government's backyards. It's happening in our backyards. It's happening to our schools. It's happening to our hospitals. It's happening where our law enforcement is having to deal with it, and so we need to figure out what we need to be innovative and figure out a way to make it hard to be here as an illegal migrant. - Well, and maybe this is a better question for like a lawyer, but I mean, I mean, at least the export options. Can you pursue the federal government here for causing an undue burden on the state of Alabama or on municipalities and county governments? - Yes, and that is being done across the country right now. And so we're, I think the state and the Attorney General are looking into that as options as well. And I think, look, there's much talk about the Beeson-Hammond Act of 2011 and how that was put on ice by the federal courts, right? Well, we've got different federal courts. We've got a different Supreme Court thanks to President Trump. And I think some of those things are working and looking at it again, I'm not opposed to looking at some of those restrictions yet again. Yes, the federal courts have ruled who encouraged this, but it's fine. I think we need to look at, seriously we need to take another swing at that because nobody can argue that there hasn't been a change in the federal courts and it's certainly the sprinkle. - Well, in the meantime, I mean, you have these, you have one mayor in particular in the state, it is, but you have a bunch of other people saying, the state of Alabama needs to pass a clock switch ban, which is, you know, based on the same philosophy senator, if the federal government says, this is our lane and we got the prohibition here, we got the ban, the state can't come in and it can, they enforce federal gun law, could they pass their own law that runs parallel to it? I mean, I think it's not the same sort of philosophy. - You know, in talking with law enforcement personnel who I support almost uniformly, you know, they tell us they need the authority locally because they can't wait on the federal government, right? They can't wait on the ATF agents. The ATF agents aren't there to do whatever they need to do with somebody who's got this clock switch thing. You know, do I think it can solve this problem? Absolutely not, unequivocally not. Will it give a local sheriff or a local police chief one more tool in their toolbox to detain arrest or sting the weapon that is clearly illegal or even obtain illegally or there's an illegal migrant that has the weapon, we've seen some of that here lately. Then I can see my way to getting to a yes on that, but it is the rhetoric out there that this is the problem and this is the panacea is hyperbolic, as I've ever seen. It makes no sense and it's not gonna fix the problem. The problem we have is societal and the problem we have is leadership in these cities that instead of rolling up their sleeves and trying to fix the problem are more intense on blaming everyone else for it. - Well, and I tell you, it's blaming, it's Sam Gavan on Dale's show yesterday. I mean, it's all, it's a red herring, he thinks that, oh yeah, sure, we'll passing locks which ban, but this isn't the problem and you're scapegoating the legislature because you can't get a control of a spiraling situation. - You can't, you can't keep people at your police department and that's in two major cities in Alabama that are running 30 plus percent below their total staffing level. That's a, that when you have a vacancy rate like that, you know, of physicians, you have a leadership problem and those leadership problems go to the top. You're, it's not just how I can't find good people, you get a leadership problem and I think that's clearly what's an issue in Montgomery and Birmingham. It's just as clear as a bell to me. And so we need to figure out, you know, those municipalities need to figure out how to get their staffing up at their police departments. It's clearly not a money thing 'cause they've got, you know, unfilled positions that aren't, you know, aren't costing them anything or you're sitting there. So they got to get that under control. No question about it. - Well, as you said, question asks Senator Barfoot. I mean, I think a lot of your colleagues, both in the House and the Senator, kind of cool to the idea of any sort of takeover of a police department, like reading or months, but you and I have talked about this. I mean, you may be forward or against it, but is it something that's realistic under the makeup of the current legislature? - Well, I mean, let's look at Montgomery for an example. And so you've got the little legislators that represent Montgomery wanting to take over the police department because it is such a, you know, it's got problems, okay? And take that control away from the city of Montgomery. And then yesterday I think it was, you had the Chamber of Commerce come out and say they want the state to take over the board of education because it's such a disaster. I mean, look, the state can't fill all these municipal responsibilities. At some point, the residents of Montgomery are gonna have to wake up and elect qualified, competent, capable of elected officials that can run this city and run their education and run, you know, city all in the police department. What's happening now is the failure of leadership. - Right, and that, and it's funny, it's like these places are really, really struggling. They want more state government in their lives or they want the state government to be the solution to their problems. And, you know, elections have consequences. I mean, that's gotta be the message. I don't know who's out there going to say that. Like, look, stop electing these guys you're electing and then get people who kind of want to get with a different program. But to me, I mean, it starts at home. - Well, I just said it. I mean, I'm a big fan of local control. I mean, here I am sitting in Alabama State House and I'm telling you, I think these are responsibilities for local governments. And I think that's very true. I mean, policing is different in urban areas and it isn't rural areas, it's different. You don't want the state trying to solve, you know, all of your problems. Now, can we help? Sure. And I do think there's some programs in Montgomery that have, you know, has helped some. They may need to continue. And frankly, I think the state needs to be reimbursed for some of these efforts that are clearly local responsibilities. But to the extent that we can help with some of this, fine, but most of this is a local issue. And these folks need to do exactly what Senator Bell was in our kitchen, Senator Weaver and Senator Kelly and I are doing. As well as the police, figure out what you can do. Don't blame it on somebody else and see how you can address and the issues that are facing your constituents right now. Just don't blame it on somebody else since there's nothing I can do about it's their fault. Well, that's what we're doing. And then one, I mean, Mayor Woodford gets invited to the Biden White House and you see that. I mean, I don't know, it's almost like a perverse incentive or something, but it really is. I mean, can you put your really finger on in here and say this policy or this action or this is leading to, from these mayors that aren't really doing it, is leading to this deteriorating situation. And that's hard. It's hard to pinpoint because no one really, we want to say DEI or whatever, but like offering a specific example. I don't know, do you have any insight into that? - They're soft on crime and it's not just the mayors or the police farmers, they're soft on crime. They don't back up their law enforcement and they have judges that let people back out on the street after they've been arrested. It is disheartening and demoralizing for law enforcement officials to see leadership in the executive branch in their cities, not support them. And it is, and it is the law enforcement all judges that don't put the bad guys in jail, let them back out on the streets and then they re-offend and re-offend and re-offend again. And so, soft on crime is a horrible way to run a city and it will lead to people leaving your city. It will lead to crime problems that are out of control and it will lead to societal problems because you'll have people more worried about what the gang members in their city think about them than what the outstanding citizens are. You have changed society by allowing bad actors to stay in society, they need to go to jail and they need to stay there. - What I tell you, and we'll wrap it up on this, I tell you what's kind of amazing is that like, mobile and even Baltimore County, I know there's problems, but they've avoided any of this really like these other cities are going through. I think even this may be a little underreported, but even Huntsville's got some problems and you're not really, you know, mobile's got problems with this police department. There's a lot of drama going on there, but the crime is, and the crime's not great, but it's much, much a better situation. I, you don't feel as unsafe walking down the office street as you do around the Capitol building or anywhere downtown Montgomery or anywhere in Birmingham. - Not at all, it's certainly better in our state than it is in Montgomery and Birmingham as well. And that's why you see people moving out of those areas to suburbs or just flat moving to, you know, they're moving to Auburn or they're moving to, you know, Hoover or Stadia, they're getting out of the inner cities and they're leading it. And then you see a lot of people moving to Boeing County, but we have great law enforcement officials in Baldwin County, of course, Sheriff Mack, it's done a great job for years and years and Sheriff Lowry is a tough on crime sheriff and it's doing a good job. Just got, he was at the border with me last week. He is serious about it, got a good staff and they're working on it and our mayor is involved in county. They understand and they get that public safety is an important part of place making. You can get all the parts you want to. If they're not safe, nobody's gonna go to them. You know, the best schools that you want to, that you want to, but if they're not safe, nobody's gonna wanna go to them. And so public safety has to be the number one priority for local elected officials without a doubt. Senator, we always appreciate it. We'll do this again next week. - Thanks for having me. Enjoy the weekend and prayers to the folks to the east of us. - Yes, that's true. Say Senator Chris Elliott, we'll be right back. This is FHIB talk, one of six, five. (upbeat music) (upbeat music) (upbeat music)