MONTGOMERY — Leadership in the Alabama Senate will consider changing some of its rules, according to State Sen. Pro-Tem Garlan Gudger (R-Cullman).
The Senate ended the 2025 session on Wednesday with an eleven-hour day that lasted until a few minutes before midnight.
The day was filled with cloture motions by Republicans to limit debate on local bills being filibustered by Senate Minority Leader Bobby Singleton (D-Greensboro). Despite the cloture motions, lots of local bills still died in the Senate on the last day of the 2025 session. Cloture limits debate on a bill but stalling tactics used on Wednesday like calling for roll call votes and having entire bills read at length can add to the delay in getting routine bills passed.
Local bills are bills that are specific to a certain town, city, or county and usually are passed with little debate due to legislators mostly declining to get involved with bills that affect areas outside their districts.
Singleton warned last week that some local bills would die on Wednesday after the House refused to consider his Greene County historical horse racing bill.
Singleton proceeded to filibuster House local bills that were up for a vote in the Senate on Wednesday after the House again didn’t put his bill up for a vote.
“We are going to use the tools that we have to make happen what we need to make happen. All I got is time on my side. Eleven hours is eleven hours,” Singleton said on the Senate floor. “All we asked for was an up-or-down vote. If you kill the bill, I’ve had legislation to die. That’s all we asked for was an up-or-down vote.”
Senate rules allow any senator to filibuster bills, local bills, and confirmations for large chunks of time. The tactic is used mostly, but not exclusively, by Democrats hoping to leverage delays to keep certain bills from coming up for a vote or get certain concessions, like amendments.
Gudger told reporters on Wednesday that rule changes for the Senate would be discussed.
“We’re going to start having leadership meetings immediately figuring out if there’s going to be any rule changes, seeing how we can make this particular body function better on both sides of the aisle so that when we do come back we’re able to make sure that everybody is being treated as fairly as possible,” Gudger said. “You heard some people tonight saying they didn’t treat them fairly tonight, but when you look back at how many minutes they had at the mic, I think they’ve had more minutes than anybody else on the floor. You’ve got to be able to balance that. You can’t look at just one night like tonight. You’ve got to look at the whole session. That’s what we’re going to be doing is looking at the data from the whole session.”
Gudger continued, “Obviously, we didn’t get all the local legislation passed, and that was a priority for me. I think if there’s anyway that we need to change rules it would be: how do we handle local legislation and be fair so that one person can’t hold up the whole legislature? In the Senate, you’re able to do that but I think there needs to be more of a group that needs to say, ‘This is something we don’t want as a delegation,’ before you hold up everyone’s local bills. I think local bills are a priority, and we need to make sure they stay that way for the state of Alabama.”
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