Steve Flowers: Inside the Statehouse: Legislative races to watch

  Our antiquated 1901 Constitution was designed to give inordinate power to the Alabama Legislature. During the Wallace years, the King of Alabama politics himself usurped this power and controlled the legislature from the state's executive branch. Over the last couple of decades, the legislature has wrestled this power back and pretty much excluded the governor from their bailiwick. Governors Bob Riley and Robert Bentley were ostracized and pretty much ignored. Their proposed budgets were instantaneously tossed into the nearest trashcan.

Steve Flowers: Inside the Statehouse: Legislative races are heating up

  The Alabama Legislature usually gets very little done during an election year aside from passing the budgets.

  However, the legislature may have to address issues pertaining to prison health care. A federal judge has ruled that our prison mental health care system is “horrendously inadequate.” This year the solution will probably be to simply add $30 to 50 million to the prison budget and kick the can down the road to the next quadrennium.