There is a tradition in the Alabama Legislature that on the last day of the session an award for the "deadest-of-dead" bills is given. There is specific criteria when evaluating who is going to be given this award: The bill would change the way things work but never even got out of committee and be totally ignored by the legislative leadership probably in the future as well.

This award, if you call it such, is known as the Shroud Award. In a mock ceremony legislators give the "Shroud" to the House or Senate member who was sponsoring the ill-fated piece of legislation. There are numerous candidates for this award and many runners-up. Remarkably, many of these "dead" bills are very direct challenges of the status-quo, such as ethics reforms or transparency of state spending. It is almost a cynical and brazen work of satire by the professional political class to mock the serious reform efforts of those legislators who earnestly want to see real change. Some say it is a light-hearted way to end an intense nearly four months of legislative work.

We have been told by a couple legislative friends that a bill that we actually worked on is a definite candidate for the Shroud Award. As part of the SPN state transparency efforts, we had introduced earlier this year the Alabama Transparency in State Spending Act.

Here is a brief overview of this legislation:

We would require that the state comptroller establish and maintain on the Internet a database of state expenditures and all state contracts and grants. The bill would list the amount, date, payor and payee of expenditures. No exceptions. The database search would be easy to use and intuitive to users.

A 21st-century effective state government has to be thoroughly accountable to the public and citizens must be able to see how their tax money is being spent.

Well, this isn’t the first time one of our efforts was given this award! A bill we introduced many years ago that would require a simple identification (drivers license, library card, Social Security card, fishing license, etc.) to vote was also awarded the Shroud the first year it was introduced. Thanks to some cheerful persistence it was finally adopted into law after six years.