FM Talk 1065 Podcasts
House Pro Tem Chris Pringle - Jeff Poor Show - Friday 7-12-24
[Music] Welcome back to the JetPort show, enough to talk about 065. [Music] It's like a little program. Stacey, about an hour from now, and the possibility that Katie Britt might hop on with us before now at the end of the program to talk about this $550 million grant for the I-10 bridge that was announced this morning. So stick around for that. Joining us now, he is the pro temp of the Alabama House of Representatives and represents you guys in Mobile State Representative, or shall I say House Pro Tem, Chris Prinkle joins us. Good morning Representative Arya. I'm great and I tell you what, that announcement today is incredible. People don't realize this, but when I worked for Jack Edwards back in 1984 on Capitol Hill, we were talking about this bridge across the river back in '84. That's 40 years we've been talking about this. So I mean, to see that move forward is just tremendous for our docs on the data. We've got thousands of containers coming in our docs. We've got to disperse them. We've got to get them out of our docs and onto the interstate system, out of our vehicles, as fast as possible. So we're through it. Well, that's good to hear. What do you think though? I mean, what else is there anything the state can do, or is it just what's left to be done from at least your standpoint, do you think of this? Get it built. Will you prove the contract yesterday in contract with you for a engineering firm to do in structure management? So we're moving forward on a project that's been needed for a long time. We've had an intersection going through the mobile on IPN. This time of the year, it's a talking line. Every Friday afternoon, every Saturday, Sunday, it's just terrible. And during the week, my understanding is 18 realers of 8. If they have a load and they have to go through mobile, hearing a load, they add $150 to their trip just because of the traffic problems. Well, let me ask you this. We'll get you on to what we're scheduled to talk about. What do you think of this? Is it your construction and renovation business? What do you think of this construction management approach the state's taken on some of these big, big projects? You know, that all goes back to that whole rental space that held out for 35-38 years or something. It just, it's an hour and hour and it's going to take out about a while to get out from underneath it. And that's probably the best way we have our building highways and bridges, understand, but give them a circumstance. So, okay, let's, let's think about this. And I'm, I talked to the speaker about a week ago about this, but you know, we have a law now on the books that is going to raise the penalty for fentanyl trafficking. And like, there was nothing really before this. So, what I've been told is that what we're actually seeing is some tangible results here. Is that what you're hearing? Oh, definitely. I don't know what happened. I mean, we had this problem. We created this drug addiction to opioids. You know, we had these fuel bills and they were getting people hooked on opioids. And then we, we shut down the fuel bills, but we didn't solve the demand problem. And, you know, trying to solve an opportunity and they've been sending their fentanyl into Mexico and the drug cartels have been using the open border to bring just tremendous amounts of fentanyl into this country. I mean, in one year alone, they captured a, a billion fentanyl tablets. Well, they weren't getting 10% so, how much fentanyl is important in this country? It's already been huge. I can bet. Last year, I want to know if we're fending people out from fentanyl. And so, there's kind of a two-pronged approach representing that Simpson pass a bill that enhanced the penalties for trafficking fentanyl. If you're called selling it, your penalties, your present time goes up. My bill says if you are selling fentanyl and you call somebody's death, we can charge you a manslaughter now. So, it's a two-pronged approach and it's paying dividends. We've had several people arrested. We have four people arrested and borrowing down in for some of them. They're a young teenage girl from what I understand. And until they arrested those four people in charge of the manslaughter and a week later, they arrested two of them again for an additional manslaughter charge. And I think we have a case of no meltdown on the same fine. So, it's very rewarding to see a bill that was signed into law in April and it's already taken effect and we're able to put these drug dealers away. Well, and this gets me to my next question, like these, I guess it's just this. We're like in this brave new world or whatever you want to call it and we're playing catch-up, aren't we? Like with Fit Mall, but also with some of the crime and some of the cities in this state. I mean, is that sort of like keeping you guys on your toes in this state house? Well, yeah, I remember when we had the methamphetamine epidemic and we were always finding meth because we would make a certain type of meth illegal or the drug dealers just they tweaked the recipe. So, it wasn't technically illegal. So, we'd finally just, you know, brought a lot of the capture and all of it, which is what we've done with this bill because the bill actually raised met the law and all it is. So, they tried tweaked the recipe and still get them. But, you know, the legislature, this problem was created. When we opened that border and the Chinese started taking advantage of it with the drug cartels out of Mexico, flooding the market with it and, you know, in Alabama, I can't do anything about the open border, but I can make it, you know, well-known that if you're a drug dealer and you bring that garbage into the state of Alabama and we catch you with it, you're going to spend a long time in jail. So, you don't want to bring it to Alabama. Well, now, the apple seeds and the rise, whatever the left-wing groups, all right, I'll lose track. They say, well, you just keep passing these laws, which is why we were to put these people. What do you say to that? I mean, do you worry about that? I mean, there's so much of the judicial discretion and dealing with that, that this law, it's going to be hard to enforce just because of the circuits are hard to, I guess, not enforce, but hard to exact the punishment that you would like to see because of the circumstances. Well, you know, those liberal organizations are opposed to anybody in jail, but if you're killing family members and friends or this poison, you need to go to jail. You're killing people. What crime is it that you shouldn't go to jail for? You've murdered an innocent person. I think you deserve to go to jail and you're selling poison that kills people. You need to go to jail, and that's just when the system works, you break the law, you go to jail. Well, this is sort of what I was getting at. Like, we don't have a place to put them. Do we? Do you worry about that? I guess the presidents are coming along, and we'll see someday, but we pass on these laws, and I think they do what they're supposed to as intended, but the system itself is flawed. This system is, I think we've got problems in our prison system. There's no doubt about that. That's the reason why we're building new prisons to herald these people, because we have a very violent, violent prison population, and the people who are non-violent have been paroled, but we're down to the people who are truly violent people, but so do drug dealers. These drug dealers, if they're not strong enough in their product, they will actually add fentanyl to it in order to make sure they kill some people, because their drug sales go up. That's how powerful these people are. That's the level of callousness that disregard the human life, and you're that callous, you need to go to jail for a long time. Here we are in Mobile, Alabama, or on this I-10 corridor. I mean, there are places in the state where this is trafficked, right? This is where it's not just here in Alabama, but this is the pipeline for a lot of places around the country, getting from Point A, which I would assume is probably somewhere in Mexico, across the border, and up into the rest of the country. For sure, the I-10 go up my I-10 to continue on my I-10 over the I-95 on the East Coast, right in Majora, but you know, these drug cartels, they use, you know, highway 80, use highway 82, they sometimes run the back roads, because they think there's less drug enforcement or drug eradication on those. I drive my I-65 all the time, and I see drug enforcement units on the interstate constantly, but don't necessarily see them on some of these other highways cutting through the state. Right, well, this is kind of it, like you didn't have, but you didn't have an enforcement mechanism, and the idea that the stuff was coming through the state and headed to other places now, it's not just, it's not just protecting people in Alabama, I mean, it's something other, I do think other states maybe have some more measures enacted, but particularly here in Alabama kind of doing our part to stop this. Well, you know, unfortunately, the legislative process by its very design and nature is often a reactionary process. I mean, we try and stay in front of issues, but oftentimes the issues just present themselves to us, we have to react to them, and that's what's happened with Stenbaal. I mean, nobody ever saw this play coming until it hit us. Right. Other, you know, talk about this, forcing this, I mean, and I think about this all the time, whenever you added other law to the books, you got to like, just getting the law has to be enforced. Is this coming at an additional cost? I mean, like, what resources does law enforcement need to be equipped with to handle fentanyl enforcement? Well, in the beginning, our drug top springs want catching fentanyl. So they were, they were declaring people overdosing on heroin or cocaine or something, because the drug springs want catching fentanyl. And when we've improved that, balling, counting, they have a swab that is, they swab the deceased person's gun, and that's how they were able to arrest these people so fast, because they test the positive for a fentanyl right there on the spot so they could go out to people. That's the uncrained call. I mean, you'd still have it down. You'd still have an arrest for the distribution of the controlled substance. All these laws are going at just enhancing the penalties and making it. So these, these people go to jail for a long period of time. Well, yeah, and if you're, I mean, handling this stuff is dangerous. It's hazardous, right? You're talking about Narcan, but you know, if just a little bit, these law enforcement officers have to put themselves on the line for this stuff, right? Like it's not, it's almost like handling some kind of toxic waste. I was terrible because in the meeting with the drug education council in Mobile, I do not know this. You know why they're selling multiple factors in Narcan now? Because Narcan doesn't work on fentanyl. It'll bring you back to my heroin overdose or cocaine overdose, but on a fentanyl overdose, it will get you breathing again very, you know, on a temporary basis. But eventually the fentanyl overcomes a knock-in, and you quit breathing again, so they have to hit you again with knock-in to keep you around until paramedics or somebody get there, and they can, you know, start breathing for you. Yeah, and you know, it's just a matter of like public safety and making sure that the officers are taken care of too. You know, right? Exactly. I mean, you know, these drug dealers have brought this problem to our doorstep, and we have to address it now. And this is going to cause a law enforcement more money to protect first responders, you know, firemen, policemen, everybody. And, you know, now it's kind of the point where you're scared to even provide assistance if you've found somebody on the street. You don't know that OD don't fit more, you know, or what the problem is. So it's, it's, it is a, it is a poison in our community. And out there, you know, these children, these young kids are buying stuff off the internet. They don't know if a pill that was made in China, and they, they think they're buying, you know, one thing, and they take it, and it kills them. And this is very personal for me. It's a friend of mine, a friend of mine's son, had surgery, got addicted to opioids, like so many people did back in the day, and, you know, they got them off opioids, they sent them a re-head. And this drug dealer is relentless. He would go to Narcan meetings, walk in on meetings, then grab the guy when he came out and start trying to get him to buy drugs. And he was blowing his phone up to the point where the kid got a new cell phone up. So the, the dealer couldn't, you know, call him. The dealer went and knocked on his mother's door and said, Hey, your son showed me a piece of real estate, you know, six or eight months ago, and I really, I've got the money by now, but I can't get in touch with him. And the mother thinking it was a real estate dealer, not the drug dealer. She gave them a new phone up, and the drug dealer following war just pulled boy down, fired him a bill, and it turned out it was that no one had killed him. It makes sense that y'all did something here real quick. Just a couple more minutes here, Pro Tem. We're talking about what looking ahead to the this next session and beyond. I mean, like, you've got a lot of, you guys got a lot done, I think, even if you take gambling out of it so far. What's left to do besides, I mean, we would think ethics. So what do you, what do you have that you're looking at? Well, I think we are going to deal with ethics because we did a contract. Yes, they were an attorney to analyze the ethics laws in the state of Alabama to propose changes to them. But don't forget, we've got a trial in November on the state senate districts. So we might be dealing with senate redistricting in the next session, which, you know, that would, that would consume a tremendous amount of time, you know. And then in February, we go to trial of, again, another congressional redistricting case. So, well, and I thought your counterpart said about this. I mean, do you, a lot of people tell me this all the time, pretend that it looks like, potentially, you got to get another crack at even the congressional districts too. You know, it's going to be interesting to see what the federal court rules. I mean, in 2007, the federal court slapped our hand and said, you rely too heavily on race and drawing your districts. You need to draw your districts more race neutral and not rely on race to do it. So we drew, we redrew the legislative districts. They said, project, that's what we wanted, less emphasis on race. So when we started this process, I remember telling the lawyers, always I do follow the law. We're going to be fine. We don't have to do anything nefarious. And, you know, I had the ballsters pending against me before I ever introduced a congressional plan that the league of women voters had already sued me. And we thought we followed the laws. And the court came back and said, no, you didn't rely heavily on all rights. And I think you have to draw, you know, rely on all rights to make these districts. So I'm like, tell me what I do. One time you tell me, don't rely on all rights. One time you tell me to rely on all rights. I just tell us what we have to do to comply with the law. It's too confusing. Representative Thay, you're always generous with your time. Best of luck out there that he stays safe, but thanks for coming on. Enjoyed it. Have a good, have a good week. That was House Pro tip. Chris Pringle there. We'll be right back. This is the Jeff Porte Show on FM talk. 106.5. [Music]