Free the Hops bill before State Senate tomorrow

03.11.2009 by Andre Natta · 14 Comments

UPDATE: 5.14.2009 – This afternoon, the Alabama State Senate passed HB 373 – The Free the Hops bill. Click here for more info.

The folks at Free the Hops just sent a Tweet out a little while ago that will have many in Birmingham and Alabama sitting on the edge of their seats tomorrow. Alabama State Senate Bill No. 132 will be on the calendar for a vote tomorrow. A similar bill, which would raise the alcohol limit to 13.9% passed the Alabama House of Representatives late last week.

The fact that the vote is coming up tomorrow allows us to tout a rather cool feature on the Free the Hops website that allows you to find out who your elected officials are in Montgomery. We’ll keep an eye on their Twitter account tomorrow to see what happens…

Filed under: food · politics

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  • Jarrod

    Free the Hops has a nifty little tool on it’s website that allows you to enter your address and find out who your legislators are and whether or not the support the bill. See it here: http://www.freethehops.org/legislative/

    As for Beason, the system says he opposes the bill. http://www.freethehops.org/legislative/result.php?senate=17

  • Jarrod

    Free the Hops has a nifty little tool on it’s website that allows you to enter your address and find out who your legislators are and whether or not the support the bill. See it here: http://www.freethehops.org/legislative/

    As for Beason, the system says he opposes the bill. http://www.freethehops.org/legislative/result.php?senate=17

  • Michael

    Thanks for the clarification Jarrod. I’ve definitely been bugging my senator but I doubt he will vote yes. Do you know which senators have openly opposed the bill? I’m just curious if Scott Beason is one of them. I can’t get an answer out of his office.

  • Michael

    Thanks for the clarification Jarrod. I’ve definitely been bugging my senator but I doubt he will vote yes. Do you know which senators have openly opposed the bill? I’m just curious if Scott Beason is one of them. I can’t get an answer out of his office.

  • Jarrod

    sorry for the above spelling errors… darn coffee hasn’t kicked in yet

  • Jarrod

    Michael is correct. The bill coming up tomorrow is not the same bill as the one that just passed the house. Each year, Free the Hops gets two bills (that are the same in intent) started in each house. This better increases are chances of getting one bill to get through all three steps to become law: pass the house, pass the senate, pass the governor.

    SOMETIMES, you can ask for a bill substitution, meaning the senate could substitute the house bill for the one they were about to vote on. But the current set of circumstances, if I heard them correctly, would mean we would need at unanimous vote by the senators to make that substitution(which will never happen).

    So tomorrow is an important step in pushing the cause forward, but will not actually get us to the governor’s desk yet. Should it pass, however, we will be farther along than we have ever been.

    CALL/EMAIL YOUR LEGISLATORS!

  • Jarrod

    sorry for the above spelling errors… darn coffee hasn’t kicked in yet

  • Jarrod

    Michael is correct. The bill coming up tomorrow is not the same bill as the one that just passed the house. Each year, Free the Hops gets two bills (that are the same in intent) started in each house. This better increases are chances of getting one bill to get through all three steps to become law: pass the house, pass the senate, pass the governor.

    SOMETIMES, you can ask for a bill substitution, meaning the senate could substitute the house bill for the one they were about to vote on. But the current set of circumstances, if I heard them correctly, would mean we would need at unanimous vote by the senators to make that substitution(which will never happen).

    So tomorrow is an important step in pushing the cause forward, but will not actually get us to the governor’s desk yet. Should it pass, however, we will be farther along than we have ever been.

    CALL/EMAIL YOUR LEGISLATORS!

  • Michael

    Someone correct me if I’m wrong but I believe this article is slightly off. There were two bills introduced, one in the house (HB373) and one in the senate (SB132).

    The bill that has already passed the house is HB373 and it still has to go through the senate. Tomorrows vote is SB132, which if it passes, will have to go through the house.

    Follow more on this page:
    http://www.freethehops.org/featuredcontent/thesteps.php

    The article above implies the bill going before the senate tomorrow is the same bill that has passed the house. I don’t believe that is the case.

    • http://bhamterminal.com/ Andre Natta

      I’ve updated the post to read “a similar” instead of “the” in the sentence in question.

      The good news is that the worst case scenario is that if the bill passes tomorrow, there will be two competing pieces of legislation doing the same thing.

  • Michael

    Someone correct me if I’m wrong but I believe this article is slightly off. There were two bills introduced, one in the house (HB373) and one in the senate (SB132).

    The bill that has already passed the house is HB373 and it still has to go through the senate. Tomorrows vote is SB132, which if it passes, will have to go through the house.

    Follow more on this page:
    http://www.freethehops.org/featuredcontent/thesteps.php

    The article above implies the bill going before the senate tomorrow is the same bill that has passed the house. I don’t believe that is the case.

    • http://dresramblings.com Andre Natta

      I’ve updated the post to read “a similar” instead of “the” in the sentence in question.

      The good news is that the worst case scenario is that if the bill passes tomorrow, there will be two competing pieces of legislation doing the same thing.