FM Talk 1065 Podcasts
State Rep Matt Simpson talked about Gambling, Jubilees and relationships in the Senate - Midday Mobile - Monday 7-01-24
There will be no personal nor direct attacks on anyone and I would ask that you please try to keep down the loud cheering and the clapping. There will be no booing and no unruly behavior. With that this is painful and it will be for a long time. After all these are a couple of high-stepping turkeys and you know what to say about a high stepper. No step too high for a high stepper. This is midday mobile with Sean Sullivan on FM Talk 106-5. Well Sean's a tough guy. I mean I think everybody knows that. You know Sean, he took some licks, he hangs in there. Yeah what's wrong with the beer we got? I mean the deal we got drank pretty good don't it? Did you hear what I said? So this is a great council. I had no dollar bounce in. That doesn't suck. If you don't like it, you're bad. Last question, were you high on drugs? Last question, kiss my ****. Right where we go, FM Talk 106-5 and midday mobile. Glad to have you here on this Monday of Independence Day week. You know it's, you look at your calendar, you know it's coming. You also know what they opened up back in June. But the heightened traffic, so I passed through the area of the area that didn't get annexed. Right when the city of Mobile was, you know, annexing areas, I said there was a lobby that was not looked at by the city fathers that talked to me in the opposition that talked to me and I said here's the thing. You don't realize that big firework is at work here as a lobbyist. If you're, so there's a zone there on Airport Boulevard where we have a couple of firework shops and traffic picked up this weekend, big time coming in and out of them. And yes, it is not inside the city limits. I would argue a thing that would not disgust. I know there were a bunch of things discussed around annexation, but the power of big firework was not discussed and they're busy out there. And reminder too, city of Mobile growing up here thinking, all right, the law says you get mom and dad with great routine said you cannot shoot fireworks in the city of Mobile. I may or may not and maybe I can, I think about the statue of limitations. This will make sense in a second when I bring on our next guest. I may or may not have shot a firework inside the city of Mobile, but thought I could get in big trouble on this. And then to find out a year ago when the Mobile City Council went through and defined an ordinance that said you couldn't shoot fireworks in the city of Mobile, except for the amnesty days. I think the third and fourth, so the day before Independence Day Eve, a lot of people don't use that term. I do Independence Day Eve, Independence Day, and then you could do it on New Year's Eve and New Year's Day, I believe. And those were the accepted periods where then you can shoot the fireworks in the city. So with that being said, prepare yourself for this week. We'll talk more about that coming up phone number text line, same as it ever was 343010634306. Also, you can leave as a talkback message using the FM Talk 1065 app available for you over at Google Play and the app store. Just look for FMTA LK1065. All right. And yes, some people commenting on it. I just said this, not saying that I couldn't function outside those hours, but the one thing that out of the actual story that came out about Biden, the fact that he does his best work between 10A and 4P, you know, and then you get to show knees by five for the buffet. Come on, we all understand that. All right, as I mentioned, the statute of limitations thing, he's got a couple gigs. We know him mostly as District 96 representative Matt Simpson joining me in studio, a prosecutor by trade. What is my statute of limitations for having shot off fireworks in the city of Mobile as a youth? As a youth, you're longer than three years away. So you're going to be 52. So I'm good. Okay. Just wanted to be clear. I started saying that. I go, gosh, a prosecutor sitting here and would be, but yes, there's now a law there for the shooting the fire that doesn't keep people from. I'm sure people were shooting them last night and we'll be shooting them every night on through. And then whatever they have left over, the fifth, sixth, seventh, eighth, ninth, 10th of July. Sure. The biggest thing I can ask for is, I hope that everybody goes to bed at night with the same number of fingers. They will put it in reverse, Terry, for sure. All right. Good to get you in here and want to talk about even though we aren't in session, something I like to point out to have folks from our local delegation that work in Montgomery, people say, well, they're out of session. Y'all are, y'all do stuff when you're not in session. Is that correct? That's correct. We have meetings that go on all the time. I'm heading up to Montgomery next week to work on some meetings. And then we've got all kind of, you know, opportunities to get down. I was speaking at a conference last week. So what we try to do is spread the message to a bunch of people about what went on this past session. So we get kind of the legislative recap is what everybody wants to hear right now. And that'll last until, you know, probably September and then around September, everybody will start looking for the legislative preview to talk about what's going on, what bills have been pre-filed and what, you know, where we're working on. It's a shift in dynamic because we're still spending time talking about what happened, you know, this past session, but we're also starting to get the gears grounded and get some legislation working and trying to get everything worked on to get things ready for next session. Yeah. And is there a competition to who pre-files the first bill? Chip Brown. Sorry. Is there any, I mean, to be the first pre-filed bill? You know, Senator Gerald Allen used to have the corner marked on that. That was his territory where he would file SB1 every year. I think Senator Gudger has kind of stepped on some and kind of gotten the way and gotten known that. I think Chip Brown has kind of jumped in and tried to do some stuff. Now, Chip falls bills all the time. Chip's great. Chip is a hard-working legislator. Yes. I'd just like to give him grief. I'm like, how many times are you going to wait to just be like a double digits, HP 10 or 11? Well, you've got to always be like two, three, four, or five, something like that. It gets in the mix. And we will look at the session that was. And part of that, though, I had speaking on the Senator side, Senator Albritton with me, I guess, last week. And we were talking about his no vote. And he'd come on and talked on gambling. And I said, you know, what do you got to see changed going forward? And I mean, really, I thought did a good job breaking down the things for him that would change. You know, I mean, it's a fair question. What changes your vote? And we got into that discussion gambling. And here we are all these weeks after session. And it's still a driving topic on this station is gambling. You came on with me. It was probably mid session or so. And you were talking about your vote for the gambling bill. The house pretty quickly passed the bill as came out. And you had said in that that you said, Sean, you would be as a citizen, if I remember, you would have been a no vote as a citizen, correct? As a congressman, as a representative, you wanted to move this along to give people if I'm trying to paraphrase best the right to vote on the gambling. I am a bottom up belief in government. I really do believe the government works best when the people are more involved. So I am all for giving people the opportunity. The Constitution of Alabama requires the people to vote on this. This is, you know, that's in the Constitution from 1901. Anything on gaming is going to require the people's vote on it. So it's not something that we can just say, yes, we're going to have gaming. If you have to have the two parts, I could tell you a very constitutional amendment that people have to have it. I just get frustrated with people from Montgomery or people from, let's start from the top. I get frustrated with people from Washington telling people in Alabama how they have to live. And I get frustrated with people in Montgomery telling people the rest of other places in Alabama, how they have to live. Just let the people vote and make their call. And if they want it great, if they don't want it, they don't. You know, the last time that people had a chance to vote was 1999, which is a generation ago. You know, it was one of the first things I was able to vote for. I was 19 at that time. The first times I was able to get involved in that in that vote, I was a know then. So it's one of the things of allowing people the opportunity to have their voice heard and see where the you can't go wrong listening to the public. So you are, as a citizen, you're no vote, but as a Congressman, you're a yes vote. And you had said also came in and said, but as an addition to this bill, I want to protect, and you know, your district 96 Daphne, you know, area, but you wanted to protect Baldwin County from having casinos or gambling in it, right? Correct. We worked really hard. And this is kind of the inside baseball scoop shine on a lot of the stuff. We worked really hard to make sure that we put limitations that this would not be in gaming. You know, one of the first versions that came out talked about, you couldn't have a casino within 55 miles of another casino. Well, we actually pulled out one of those rulers that had to measure. So we measured 55 miles and technically under Baldwin County. More orange beach is more than 55 miles away from atmore. Okay. So we were going to change the limitations to where it had to be 75 miles when that would have wiped out Baldwin County completely. Well, what we ended up working out and what finally, you know, passed the from the conference committee was we were locking in seven counties that the seven counties, seven locations where the gaming would be. Those seven counties were Green County, Jefferson County within the city of Birmingham, Macon County, Mobile County, Houston County, Lowndes County, and one location in the north, these quadrant kind of, you know, the Scottsboro. Yeah, channel. Yeah. They didn't have the right location picked just yet. So we worked with all the members of the house. We worked with members to make sure, Hey, this is what, you know, when I go to the bill sponsor, I go to Chris Blackshire, I go to Andy Witt, or I go to the speaker and say, we want to make sure that this is not in Baldwin County. What the final result was was the constitutional amendment that the people would have voted on would have mentioned those seven counties that I mentioned before those seven locations could not be moved to any locations. If it were to ever come up again to be potentially moved to any other location, it would have to be voted on by the people another time. So we were a lot. It'd be another CA. Another CA. Okay. So this is not just not just supporting legislation. It'd be an additional constitutional amendment. An additional constitutional amendment that the people of Alabama had to vote on. So this wasn't a situation of us piercing the veil where now we're, you know, now that we can trickle through some of these other, we can add more people into it. That's not what this bill did. And the people that run around and say that we we're doing this and we've opened it up. So now it's just at the whim of the legislature. They didn't read the bill. Well, and that was, yeah, and that's, I want to have some disambiguation there because it was last week on Jeff show, Jeff Porto, Mayor Kennan had talked about the entire Baldwin County delegation and said that it was, I had the words in front of him, but shortsighted or whatever, that once this would go through, it would be a go from a three-fifths to a simple majority to pass a gambling casino on the beach or something at Orange Beach. I'm a big fan of Tony Kennan. I think he's doing a great job in Orange Beach. I think he is a bright star and I think he's done a tremendous job. I just think he didn't read this bill and he doesn't know what he's talking about as far as what is actually in the language of the bill that passed on legislation because we stopped that. We stopped it where it had to be a constitutional amendment that would have had to be voted on by the people. Now, okay, to play devil's advocate for a second or a blackjack dealer advocate, what if it would be that situation where the rest of the city, we got BP on it, right? And people knew, I probably made some stripes around here complaining about how we got run over on the BP deal, that the rest of the state would decide, well, we won't win down there. There's more revenue, the state needs it. So on the CA that'll come out, we'll have the rest of the state vote for it because it's not in their back, you know, that can go old and envy, except for the people here involved in County. So they could gang up, you know, and push us through. They could do that now. I mean, that's the, that's the, you know, when you're talking about what's in a constitutional amendment, what they can do, that's why we fought the way that we fought. And when we have somebody to come in and like, we, we were together, we were saying, hey, look, Mobile wanted it. They wanted to be able to put it at the dog track. Let's help Mobile get it. Let's keep Baldwin County out of it. The Baldwin County delegation in the house was, was working together to get this done. You know, the way the Constitution is set up, the constitutional amendment that they put in front of the people, we could lose that vote as it is. So it's not like it's a, it's saying the same thing could happen. The same thing could happen now. You know, the, the, the group of people could write a, write another constitutional amendment and have people come out and vote and say, yes, we want to put it in Baldwin County. But that's not what the legislation is saying. There's not, and there in some scenario, not that it's there, but there wouldn't be enough votes coming from Baldwin County delegation to be able to overcome if the Marshall County contingent and all at all down to Montgomery decided that's what they wanted. I'm saying that's the point of having these relationships where we can go to the speaker and go to the bill sponsor and go to the person that's drafting this and say, we don't want this here and to have those relationships behind the scenes where they say, no, you don't, we don't want you to have it. If you don't want it, we don't want you to have it. We'll lock it into these seven specific locations and you won't have to worry about it coming down there. That's, that's the whole point of the legislature. That's what we do. That's what we try to do is get the best possible deal we can get. We wanted no part of gambling in Baldwin County, the bill that came out had no part of gambling in Baldwin County. Now, Tony Kennan's against gambling and good for him. I've got zero problems with him being against gaming. I think he doesn't want gaming in Alabama at all, and that's perfectly fine. That is a very, very legitimate stance, but the bill that we passed to say that, well, this opens the door for gaming in Baldwin County, that's not really true. Okay, coming right back with Representative Matt Simpson right here on Midday Mobile. This is Midday Mobile with Sean Sullivan on FM Talk 1065. That 1224 FM Talk 1065 and Midday Mobile. Good to have you. Long, good to have Representative District 96, Matt Simpson in studio and talking about so anything. I know you talked about this was kind of the rearview mirror portion of the year for a legislator, but is there anything discussion on gambling part 2.9 or whatever we'd be in? Sean, I'm going to tell you, I think that horse is dead and the more we go over and beat it, and it's just, you know, we can drum up ratings and we can talk about it and probably get an 1819 article written about it if we wanted to, but at the end of the day, the bill failed. And I don't know the cloud that it cast over the entire session. You have to understand everything was nothing but gaming. We came through this. It's always going to seem like in this chair. I was like, so it pushed just cloud over everything that we did. And I don't know that there's an appetite to to relight that candle. If you know, you know, I mean, if I can tell you, I don't necessarily, gaming is not one of the top 100 reasons why I ran for the office that I ran for. I'm going to vote with the way I believe, I'm going to vote for what I believe is right for my district. I'm going to vote to, you know, what my principles are. But at some point, you kind of have to move past where we get through this. Now, I can tell you all of that right now and say, I have no interest in gaming, no appetite for gaming. The speaker talked about this isn't going to be a priority for us that's coming up session. I have no doubt the second that, you know, Senator All Britain or any other senators decide that they want to flip. And now we have 21 votes instead of going back. The governor may even call a special session just to say, hey, we got to be, let's go ahead and see what we can do. And it'll be back. I'm not naive enough to not think that way. You know, there's a lot of work, a lot of effort have been put through this. I really want to commend Representative Blackshire, Representative Witt, the speaker for kind of what they've done is said, y'all go fix the problem. Here's an issue. If y'all want to address this, go work on it. And the bill that they worked on, it didn't come from lobbyists. It wasn't something that was, hey, look at this great master plan that somebody came together. It was legislators sitting around and putting the money where their mouth is and working and going traveling across the state and going through all these different places and seeing the different casinos and the different back, you know, back alley gaming actions they go through and seeing how we that's already in our state. So that was really legislator led. So for them to have to come through that, you know, if they're up for it again, you know, I've talked to Representative Blackshire, you know, I've talked through all this, we'll just have to see, I don't think the House is willing to want to spend wheels and just kind of keep having the same argument and the same discussion back and forth. We're going to have to see where is the Senate on this. And at the end of the day, I don't think the general public wants to hear about, well, the House versus the Senate and the animosity or the relationships back and forth at the Senate. At the end of the day, that's just government. That's the way we set up for a bicameral legislation. There's going to be problems with the House and the Senate. There's going to be problems with the executive branch and judicial branch. You know, there's going to be issues throughout this. And that's why our government is so beautiful the way it's set up. I agree with that as we go the break and then we'll come back and talk about the real contentious issues out there. But you mentioned it and you as a prosecutor is a citizen, a frustration I get in this last bill. They said, listen, we got to get this bill so we can address the illegal gambling going on in the state. Well, if the gambling's illegal representative, then do we have to wait for a bill to be passed to enforce the dang law? If it's unfortunately, yes, because there are some areas where it's against the law, and we'll talk about this in our next discussion, where some people are just not prosecuting those. You have some sheriffs who are not right. But then the state has supremacy over that doesn't. You would have to talk to our attorney general as to why the laws are being broken that aren't being prosecuted. You know, and it seemed like some were prosecuted. There was a series there outside of Birmingham Trust floor somewhere. They got certain casinos in this and that. But I keep going back to and not having a legal education, but Supreme Court making their judgment on electronic bingo, right, and saying that these machines were electronic bingo. And then it's like that is business as usual. Or if you prosecute one and you're not prosecuting the other, and then you're telling me, well, we got to get a bill passed for gambling so we can prosecute these things that right now, there is the section of gaming would be a misdemeanor. Okay, there are a lot of people that are saying, I'd be happy to set up these casinos in the back of this bar and the back of this gas station, and we'll pass out scratch off tickets. And I'll make the millions of dollars that are coming through there. And I'll take a misdemeanor. And, you know, it's it's you know, you're looking at a massive business right there. It costs a business of what they have to do. So that you've got some of these situations where you've got some stuff and and some of these casinos that are being built are multi million dollar facilities that are operating in Alabama, outside of the statute of the law, what they have. And people are just going to pay the fine and move on because they're not being prosecuted for it. Yeah. And of course, if I'm looking at this, I go, then why can't I just do the same thing and, you know, open Sullivan's place right here and take the misdemeanor and make money myself. Unfortunately, there are many people that have made that decision to do just that. All right. Coming back more with Representative Matt Simpson, we'll get your text at three, four, three, zero, one, zero, six. And like I said, we're going to get into for me, the contentious issue and all of all the all that have been, you know, at like with gigs aimed at my neck about my take on licenses for people taking part in jubilee's while your champion is here. We'll just come up next. This is Midday Mobile with Sean Sullivan on FM Talk 10065. Like 1235 FM Talk 10065 and Midday Mobile on this Monday. Hey, it's a good time to get things started on the first of the week, right? Making plans even though we've got the Independence Day holiday coming up in short and week. Maybe it's time to get that junk gone from the house or the storage building or even around the house or wherever you got junk. You need my man, Trey, Trey Bennett has been doing this for 16 plus years in Mobile in Baldwin County. He's getting rid of junk at your house, that's a storage unit at your office. I want to say the big stuff too, because he always reminds me of this. He said, you know, Sean, people get this idea, which is, which is right, of his crews going into houses and getting junk out of houses or addicts or a storage unit. He said, but with routine, they're getting storage buildings out of backyards, above-ground pools, swing sets, big trampolines, stuff. People can't move, don't have a way to get rid of it. They can. And 1-800-GOD-JUNK can handle that, just like it can handle the boxes in the guest room and everything in between. To make an appointment, pretty easy. Online 1-800-GOD-JUNK.com, pick up the phone, the name is the number 1-800-GOD-JUNK. And when I say appointment, I really do mean appointment, a specific day and a specific time. None of this, well, they'll be there sometime from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. Monday through Wednesday. Now, get an actual appointment, set the appointment. They show up. All you got to do is point the junk you went on. They quote you the price right there on the spot. You say, yes, they get to work. So check them out. My man Trey and his crew with 1-800-GOD-JUNK. Right, continue our conversation with District 96 Representative Matt Simpson. I want to read through a couple of texts here, and then we'll get to some of the real contentious information here. Oh, you never know what you're getting on the text line. Yeah. Well, I tell you what I am. So the breaking news out there, Maxima says, "Hey, Sean, breaking news. Triple A says the July 4th holiday will be the most heavily traveled whenever." Anybody that's listened to the show for a long time, you know that other than COVID, they never say anything other than that for Triple A. Fill in the holiday, Thanksgiving, Christmas, whatever. All right, from the text line here, we can, I guess, address this quickly, even though we've done it umpteen times, as Texture said, "We, the general public, would like a lottery first. Why does a lottery have to be tied in with gaming?" Simple word is greed. I don't know how I can explain any easier than it's greed. So the concern is, and you know, who knows what the lawyers, what the courts would say or how it goes, but there is a concern that if the state goes up from zero gaming to allow lottery, then that it's potential for the reservation gaming, the Porsche Creek Indian reservation gaming, they can go for up a bump as well. So everybody moves up a bump. Well, if they move up a bump from slot machines to table games, well then they're getting table games and the state of Alabama is getting zero percentage of that cut through there. So there's a concern from, you know, that's why the compact was always discussed, right? That's why the compact is discussed to get there. So there's too much money on the table for them to say, "Hey, if we, if we just go straight lottery and the, the Porsche Creek now has billions that it's not getting touched from the state, the state's not getting a percentage of," and Porsche Creek has been a very kind partner to the state and we'll say, "Hey, we'd love to negotiate with you. Let's work how we can do this to figure out to get a percentage to the state where the state can get money on them." I think they've offered a billion dollars to the state in the past to come through. The state is just hesitant to say, "Let's just turn our nose up at a billion dollars looking at us." Well, with the players in this, so how we move up, but with the players in this, I've said this over the last year, the only one that's not hungry is PCI. You know, we're deciding that we're going to go eat and people are making judgments. PCI, they just ate. I mean, the state wants the revenue. The legacy dog tracks want the revenue and the PCI can make it without this. They don't do all right. They're doing just fine. Let's see. Jerry and Fort Morgan said, "If the citizens Alabama were denied the opportunity to vote on the gas tax, it was passed by a bunch of corrupt politicians. Why would they want to vote on the gambling bill? Alabama has a Republican super majority and they grow state government like a bunch of leftist Democrats." Well, I put him down as undecided. Undecided on that one? Well, you know, gaming is specifically outlined in the constitution of Alabama. That is one topic that has to be voted on by the people is the simple answer to that. Okay. There you go. All right, and on to this, and Jim's already on the text line talking about it. He knew where I was going with this. Two weeks ago or so, you talked about making some changes to the way people would be licensed or unlicensed to take part in a jubilee. I mean, you represent the jubilee city of Daphne. I'm a two-person. The jubilee city in Daphne. Yes. And this is a, you know, as a West Cider, it's something I've been in via self. I told folks I've only been at the very tail end of the jubilee one time we're going to launch a boat. I've never seen them in person, but obviously I get all the pictures every time they're one and a what Father's Day. We were leading into the week of Father's Day weekend pretty early jubilee and people took part in it and there were some tickets written and there was an arrest made in this and this really brought it up in the news. It did. It got some attention, and I think it's a topic that we need to be talking about. You know, Sean, the best way I can describe it right now, I've got family. My wife's sister is in town. They came in town from Maryland. If I want, if for some reason there was a jubilee and I wanted to take my, my, you know, our family's cousins, you know, Elena and Caroline and my wife's sister and my son and my daughter and said, Hey, y'all want to go to experience in jubilee? There's a, we had a Facebook notification. It's on to for you. And you want to go experience jubilee? Why does that person have to have a salt water fishing license? Now, don't get me wrong. Their big fisher, their dad is always comes down here and goes fishing. They already have their out-of-state salt water fishing. So they pay the, but the general public to be able to get the alert to say or get notified or, you know, there used to be a bell that would ring that people can hear, but to come and say, I want to go experience, experience in jubilee, just like you're talking about, just to say, I want to go experience jubilee. Why should that person have to pay a salt water fishing license and have that just on standby just in case of that way they can go experience jubilee? Okay. My argument comes back the other way because they are taking from the public resource, right? That is regulated through the state by the amount and size that we can keep, you know, creole limits and size limits to maintain a healthy population of fish in perpetuity. I mean, the same way that it's not exactly the same, but if there was, it's the fall and that great delta bite is happening and I got bird schools right there by the interstate. Oh, yeah, do is catch them. If somebody's coming along and said, man, this is as easy as going out. You're going to rip that rattle court twice and you're going to catch a trout. Just go ahead and do it. You don't need a license. But if people are going to be taking part in this, and especially jubilee, there's not, it's not a catch and release situation, you're keeping those fish, then what makes you exempt from the same rules that I have to follow when we're in my boat, you know, throwing bullmen, I was trying to catch flounder. Well, that's the one of the misconceptions where a lot of the public has kind of misinterpreted from, because I get a lot of feedback. You talk about some people feedback on this and people are angry. Yeah, Sean, I want to make clear. And everybody listen, I know these, I know your audience. I know they care about them. We're not talking about changing the limits on the size, nor are we talking about changing the bag limits. Those would stay the same. You still have to have the same number of fish. I want to say it's six flounder. Yeah, five flounder. Yeah, you keep up. Keep your five, flounder at 14 inches. 14 inches. So we're not saying that you would be exempt from collecting. We're not, we don't want the first one of these things that people already text about. There's one of those stories from that event that you're not defending at all, right? The person that had 25 over the limit and undersized. I'm not defending that. I am not asking for somebody who just has much as they want to have. I'm not asking for that. That is not what the legislation I would propose. And Sean, this is early. And so we're going through the process of finding out that right line to go through. I've worked with Director Blankenship, had conversations with Director Blankenship. He isn't a superstar. Like I am, you talk about somebody that's made such a big difference for our area and our region. And it's just the unnamed, you know, those unsung heroes that come through all this. Chris Blankenship is an outstanding leader and a provider and does so much for our area. His opinion means a lot to me. And I'll tell you, his opinion right now is he's not in favor of this bill, right? But there's the reason why the bill isn't filed yet because I still want to work and figure out those dynamics. I think, you know, I sent it to him to let him look at it. He sent his team back immediately and had some responses. Okay, well, does this mean if there's a Jubilee, does that mean nobody has to have a fishing license? Or does this mean, you know, some some very legitimate concerns, you know, what is a Jubilee? How are you going to define what isn't when is Jubilee occurring? Is it occurred during that period of time? Is it during that day? If so, if there's a Jubilee in Daphne, is that mean I don't have to have a fishing license in Dauphin Island? You know, we've got we've got some there's work to be done. And they're having these discussions early to try to figure out. And I don't know that I'm going to be able to get him to agree. Right. Same way. I don't know that I'm going to be able to get you to agree. Probably not. But listen, I am open minded door to discuss in this. But at the same point, like, if if if somebody gets a call and says, Hey, there's a Jubilee in Daphne, you want to go check out a Jubilee to have the government to say, you don't have a license to be able to be a part of this. Now Chris talked to Chris and he said, we don't enforce that. We're not we haven't written a ticket for not having a license. We're not pursuing people to have had a license. Well, that's my concern as well. And it goes back to the same thing. Like, you know, if if you're not pursuing it, if you're not prosecuting those cases, then why have it on the books? Because all you're going to do is deter. Look, I wish I could tell you that I'm a wild rebel. People know me. I'm I am as straight line as they can be if the law says you're not supposed to be in the water with the without a saltwater fishing license. I'm not going to go take my kids down there because I don't want to be even if they're not enforcing it. I'm not going to go down there because I don't want to get the hit on the what happens. I'm at the mercy of that person to decide if they want to enforce it or not. And it's the same thing. I hate to bring it back to this, Sean, but it's the same thing about the ethics laws that we talked about where they said, well, we're not really enforcing the $35 luncheon. Well, if you're not enforcing it, take it off the books and put it up. And so in this part, 100% on the ethics law agree with you. You and I had those discussions. But the non enforcement thing does bother me. People know that I'm a rule law kind of person. And if if the law isn't one worth enforcing, then don't have the law exactly. And that part I agree with you on. That's not just specific to Jubilee's. That's for everything. It's this kind of selective enforcement. I don't like that. That's how you get the blindfold comes off of lady justice when you do that. And I don't like that 100%. But I'm going to get you on board on this show. That part, that part you've got me. But when it goes back still to this situation where ignorance of law is not an exception, inconvenience of the law is not an exception. I mean, I would go even, I'd take what you're discussing and agree with you and saying they should enforce it, right? If you're going to have the law, then you enforce it. That part, I mean, I agree with you, but mine is probably more draconian then because I want to take it the other way and say then enforce the law. See, now Dakota says if they don't have a rod reel or gig, it should be okay. It's primitive fishing. So, but what about net Dakota? I mean, if we're going to get floundered, if I got a long handled net, one of those big, like the Minnow dip net, those things are probably pretty good for it. So it's, and CB Carl, yes. So there's some people on here talking about the your, there's no defense of the person that ended up going to jail. That person was violating, like you said, the limits and the size, Creole and size limits 100%. But you're saying that somebody goes and obeys by those limits, should they have to have a saltwater fishing license to take part in it? Correct. Listen, you say no, and you are, listen, the majority of people are on board with you. I mean, I believe, I know that I'm on an island on this one. Oh, thank you, Dakota says, knee deep water only. Dakota, I've got some tall friends. I'm going to get them to go further out. It won't be too far out for me to be knee deep. I got some friends who'd be out in three feet and be knee deep water. You listen, John Young. But the, it's just as I had that because of this circumstance, then what is the law the rest of the time done apart to them? And then it bothers me. And there's also, we can go into, I mean, I will probably on the outdoor show, the, the fact that number of licenses sold helps the state recoup money from federal excise taxes on fishing gear that comes back and builds boat ramps and, you know, see grass planting and monitoring and water quality and all those things. So, and you know, I understand it's all for good use. Now I don't want to go off on my libertarian streak here, but you're telling me the government has to get, I have to get approval from the government to put a fish line in the water. That's a whole other conversation. Okay. And this, it's, it's, it's an interesting one because I come at it from the roots of libertarianism, but I tell folks here, I'm a pragmatic libertarian because if you shouldn't have to have a license or to go fish, or would you say regulations or just license? I would say license because, because, because if you, if you don't give me that, I don't have a good argument. If you say no limits, then I'm going to say then why do you get to take, because I could just quit my job and go to fishing all the time and while you're working and doing other things, same thing when we had market hunting for critters, you have something that's in the public trust and then people can get more of it than others. And I think if you look back, if you look and I had a conversation last night, you know, if you look at the flounder population, if from what it's gone and dwindled so far down and real tough, straight, we have gone real, real bad. Yeah. But so it's the, what they've done and what the specific, the scientists, what direct Blankenship, what they've done to try to help reestablish that flounder population, I'm not trying to hurt what they've done to do that. I really want to make sure that, that my kids and my grandkids can go out. We, I used to go flounder all that's that was the fish that we had. My parents love flounder. Yeah. So I want to be able to take my grandkids to flounder and go through this. So I'm supportive of through that prospect. Can you hang on a second because you got one more? I got to always have time for you. All right. We're coming right back more with Representative Matt Simpson right here on Midday Mobile. This is Midday Mobile with Sean Sullivan on FMTalk 1065. By 1251, FMTalk 1065 Midday Mobile. Our guest represented District 96, Matt Simpson in studio. Here we go. Ben texting. I'm going to change Ben's text being named to King Sullivan. Here you go. Matt, he said, you can catch anything other than flounder without a salt water license during a Jubilee problem solved. This is King Sullivan. You can take anything else but you know flounder. There you go. So thank you, thank you Ben for the wisdom on that. You mentioned this a second ago in reference to, we're actually talking about this Jubilee thing, but you referenced the ethics law. You came on with me a couple of times talking about this as well. I listened to what you said and I've known you for a long time and so reading it, you sent the bill, I read it and knowing where you come from, then to have it attack like it was. And I don't, not a lot shocks me. And I was shocked where it came from that people said, oh, he wants this that and the other. I'm like, really, where are you getting that from? Change is like, did you want it to be just whatever, you know, let's say fair carp launch, do whatever you want? I did not. And it's unfortunate that that's on the society that we live in right now. People aren't going to take the time to read the bill. They're just going to get the headline. So you have the news agencies that want to come out and somebody that wants to get in the press for because they want to run for office or want to take that next step and whatever office either they have or the next step that they want and they want to capitalize and say, well, this is this is week on ethics. And that's the same thing we just talked about for the fishing. If you're not enforcing this, then why have it on the books? Let's go ahead and let's take it off the books. And that way you have some teeth, the what you are enforcing or if you want to keep it, then then enforce it. And it's the same thing. It's like, you know, we had all this in-depth discussion. We had not lawyers from all over coming in. We had all these people looking at what's the law law in other states? What's the law across the country? What are we doing here? And then again, I'm terrible at messaging. I'm the worst politician. I'm terrible at getting the message out of trying to say, so my message was, hey, just read the bill and tell me what you think. If you read the bill, read the bill. Some people, now they go from a $32.50, which is what it is now to they just want more lunches. They want to go up to a hundred. What we broke it down to was if it's less than $100, then it's not a gift. But if it's more than $100, the public has to know about it. If somebody's taking trips or going on hotels or going on conferences, the public would know, you know, if you got really deep into it, it was strengthening our ethics law. It was really getting there because they have this gap of, you know, and you ask them, well, when's the last time you prosecuted somebody for a $35 lunch? Well, we have it. Well, okay, then if you're not prosecuting somebody for a $35 lunch, then let's not make it where it's prosecutable. The people that are going to walk the line that want to do the right thing, they know, hey, if this is more than $100, they can come after me, which is exactly what we wanted to do. Draw a fine line to where we are, but I'm excited about where we are on ethics. You know, I'm working with Senator Sam Givan and out of Huntsville. He's going to come with some, some, you know, work on this still. This is the House and Senate, you know, there's your headline. This is the House and Senate working together to try to come together to reach a resolution on a bill. One of the other things we've got that I can break to your readers today. It's kind of news that's coming out. We've hired an attorney. Jim Bob is like a nationally renowned ethics guy, like campaign finance. He's argued in front of the Supreme Court. You talk about some of the biggest decisions in Supreme Court, as far as campaign finance and ethics, Jim Bob is that guy. Okay. So we, so yeah, what's he going to do? So what he's going to look at our laws and he's going to say, this is bad. This is good. This is what you should do. This is what 49 other states have gone. This is what the federal government does. And he's going to look at the bill that we propose and he's going to see what type of corrections we can make. We can see what type of no, this is bad. No, this is not the direction. You know, if somebody is saying there are some states that have the no cup of coffee, well, you know, let's look and see, let's kind of take the blinders off and take it where it's not a Matt Simpson bill. It's not a House bill. It's not a Senate bill. It's not a, it's not an attorney general bill. It's not an ethics commission bill. It's just somebody that's an expert on the issue to come in and say, this is what the right, this is the best practices that you've got. So I really, I mean, there's a base of idealism, but there's a pragmatism to this. Take the politics out of it. Take it where you don't have somebody campaigning so they can run for whatever office and whatever season to say, I'm strong on ethics. Just put rational, reasonable people to the table and say, let's fix this problem. Because here's the issue. The Supreme Court of Alabama has said there's a problem. The Court of Criminal Appeals of Alabama has said there's a problem. There was a commission that was created in 2019 that said there's a problem. And then the chair of that co-chairs of that committee was Steve Marshall and Tom Albrin. Everybody recognizes there's a problem. Everybody that's looked at it that has any input on ethics that knows what they're talking about says, yeah, there's a problem with your ethics laws. They're not clear. They're convoluted. They're confusing. They're not, they're not able for the general public to be able to understand, except for the fact that there's 300,000 people that directly fall under those ethics laws and a million people while that time you include their extended family. And you mean people that are state employees. Every city county state employee falls under the ethics laws. There's more that, you know, you're lobbyists and more to go through. That's 300,000 people that directly because of their job fall under the ethics laws. By the time you include their extended family by their father-in-laws, their in-laws, their cousins, their brothers, their sisters, it goes over 12 over a million people. And so if you're talking about something that affects more than a quarter of our population, it is wrong for us to just put our head in the sand and say, well, there's problems, but I don't want to touch it because the attorney general may say bad things about me on the radio. Fix the problem and don't worry about the repercussions. If people vote me out because I saw a problem and tried to fix the problem, then I can live with it. I got zero problems with it going up and trying to, trying to solve an issue. And so that's, that's kind of my stance on this whole deal is I'm just trying to do the right thing for the people. And if people want to take arrows, if that means I get the Kyle Whitmire articles or the JD Crow cartoon, you take that as bad job, so be it. But at the end of the day, just trying to make it better for the people that fall under these convoluted and confusing laws. And I'm stubborn. You know, yeah, it didn't pass this session. I'm not stopping. And with this, will you have the review from this attorney by the time session starts again? His requirement, his contract is coming up. It has to contract has to be approved a contract review on July 11th. Once he gets at it, he's going to have to do a breakdown to us and kind of give the legislature a read-in on what you can, you know, the good, bad, and the ugly about the bill. Be interested when that comes out talking more about it. Representative, thanks for your time. Thanks for being on. All right. Matt Simpson, our guest, and we're coming right back. Hour number two of Midday Mobile. [Music]