By MARY BAILEY The Reporter

The Marshall County Chambers of Commerce presented the 2024 Legislative update on Tuesday morning with guest speakers Senator Wes Kitchens, Representative Brock Colvin and Representative Jeana Ross.

To open the ceremony Dr. Joe Whitmore, President of Snead State Community College, gave his opening remarks.

“It’s an honor to serve here as the President at Snead State. On behalf of all of our faculty and all of our students welcome to our campus,” he said to a packed auditorium. “We are so happy to host this event and so happy that you get to see our campus. We love to show off our campus and we have some great things going on a Snead State.

“We are coming off of unprecedented growth in our history. We just had the biggest enrollment ever, over 4,000 students took classes with us this summer. It’s the biggest enrollment since spring. We continue to grow, and we appreciate our community and appreciate our students.”

The invocation was then given by Chris Bartlett, Pastor of Bridge Church Boaz.

Miss Becca Butler of Boaz then recited the Pledge of Allegiance followed by singing the National Anthem.

The first speaker to take the podium was Senator Wes Kitchens who serves District 9, which includes Marshall, Madison and Blount counties.

“Thank you, so much and good morning. It sure is great to be here at Snead,” Kitchens spoke. “I want to thank all of our chambers; this wouldn’t be possible without all of our chambers coming together. Really, Marshall County is in a great position, we have a great team to our chambers to our mayors to our schools, all of our superintendents. I think we are in a very unique position, if you look at other counties and other areas of our state, there’s a lot that don’t get along very well.

“But from our delegation, Representative Colvin, our new Representative Ross, all the way down everybody works together so well and that really makes Marshall County such a special place to get things done, have that vision and move forward.”

Kitchens briefly spoke on the gambling bill that came up in legislation recently.

“I’m sure nobody heard anything about it this past session or this past year,” Kitchens laughed. “There was a lot of confusion. You all probably got a text message from me and Brock both saying that we weren’t going to let you vote on the lottery. This bill was so much more than a lottery. This bill was a comprehensive gambling piece of legislature. It included casinos, it included sports betting, and the lottery.

“So, there was the lottery, but it was a very small piece of the bill that we ended up coming up with. There where multiple versions and I don’t want to say it changed from day to day, it changed minute to minute. The biggest things that we wanted to look at was the regulations. There are a lot of illegal actors all around our state and what are we going to do at the state level to put some teeth in the law and give Sheriff Sims and our other law enforcement officials the tools that they need to be able to shut down these illegal operations.

“That was a very important component of it but then when you started to look at everything else that went into it, it also rewarded some of those same bad actors. Some of those same bad actors that have been operating in a gray area or just out right illegal, it just paved a way forward for them to be able to have some licenses and open up full-fledged casinos. At the end of the day that deal did fail. Really, when we take this to the people, anytime we have a constitutional amendment like this it will have to be a vote of the people.”

Representative Brock Colvin, House District 26 then took the stage and briefly spoke on the education budget.

“Thank you Senator, it’s an honor to be here this morning and thank you to all the chambers again for hosting us and for Dr. Whitmore for having us here at Snead State,” said Colvin, who is a 2016 graduate of Snead State Community College.

“This session was different from last session. Last session we came in and not a lot of controversial items. This session just about every controversial issue you could image was before us. As Wes had mentioned, I am on the Education Budget committee in the house. This year we had another record education budget worth $9.35 billions dollars. We use that to fund our K-12 schools and our community colleges. In that budget this year was also a 2% pay raise for teachers and sports staff across our state.

“One more thing about the budget, in Marshall County we have a high Spanish population, non-English speaking population. One thing our budget allocates money for is our aides in the classrooms who teach literacy. The one thing we have fought for in our budget share was changing that definition to allow for bilingual aides in our classrooms. It’s a very big deal.

“With that large non-English speaking population, it does put more work on our teachers. Not only are they having to teach math, science and reading but you are having to teach a language itself. This is going to help out tremendously here in Marshall County.”

The last speaker for the breakfast was Representative Jeana Ross, House District 27 who gave an introduction of herself and her background.

“Good morning, it’s wonderful to be here this morning and have the opportunity to speak with a lot of you that I know and many of you I have crossed paths with as I have lived in Marshall County my whole life.

“For those of you who haven’t met me yet, just a short introduction. I was a mother and a wife for 48 years and my husband and I have two children who are grown and are here in Marshall County in business. I’m very connected to you and the community, and I hope to be able to work with each one of you. It is an honor to serve you and go to Montgomery and work,” Ross said to the crowd.

“I just learned that I will be on the Education Policy Committee and another committee that I’m very interested in that I will be on is the Advocacy for Children and Seniors. I look forward to seeing what that involves and how we can serve those groups of people. I have been a teacher and administrator as my career, and I also served on the cabinet of two governors as Secretary of the Department of Early Education. I went through eight sessions, but I went through eight sessions not as the policy maker but as the policy advocate. So, I understand what it’s like to go to the legislator and ask them for things that you know that you need.

“I have great understanding and I look forward in being able to share with you and work with you in those things that you care about and participating fully next year in creating good policies that actually make an impact, a positive impact on our lives and the lives of the people in our communities and the state of Alabama.”

A short question and answer session from the crowd ended the breakfast.