An Alabama state Senate committee voted Wednesday to put on hold a bill that both revises a 2017 law protecting monuments and outlines a plan to replace the deteriorating Saturn 1B rocket at an interstate welcome center.

The State Governmental Affairs Committee discussed the bill for about nine minutes before deciding to carry it over following an abundance of questions about why the bill – originally about the rocket – had controversial language about preserving monuments added to it.

“I just think the way (the bill) is written, it raises other issues,” said state Sen. Linda Coleman-Madison, D-Birmingham.

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Sen. Tom Butler, R-Madison, sponsored the bill and said his original version included only the rocket. He said the language about revising the 2017 monuments law to make it more punitive was added later and he did not know it happened. Butler then gave the floor to Sen. Gerald Allen, R-Tuscaloosa, the author of the 2017 monument preservation bill.

“The goal was just to make sure that the Saturn rocket was being taken care of,” Allen said.

The rocket has been in place for 44 years at the Interstate 65 welcome center just south of the Tennessee state line, which could make it protected under the 2017 law. That law mandates a $25,000 fine for the removal of protected monuments in place for more than 40 years.

The U.S. Space & Rocket Center in Huntsville – charged by NASA with the dismantling of the rocket – is awaiting an opinion from the state attorney general’s office on the legality of taking it down.

The bill, as it pertains to the rocket, called for the Alabama State Council on the Arts to “commission the design and construction and provide for the installation of a replica of the Saturn 1B rocket” at the welcome center. NASA, which owns the rocket, said it will be taken down and removed from the welcome center. A Huntsville group is seeking to preserve the original rocket.

The revisions to the 2017 monument preservation law increase the penalties from a one-time fine of $25,000 to a daily $5,000 fine “until the entity has taken full restorative action.” The bill also said the attorney general could stop the daily fines “pending complete restoration.”

Both Coleman-Madison and Sen. Merika Coleman, D-Birmingham, said they wanted to introduce amendments to the bill but it was tabled before those amendments were voted on.

The bill has 26 co-sponsors – both Republicans and Democrats – but Coleman, who is not a co-sponsor, said the bill that exists now is not the bill that was originally intended.

“Is it customary for someone else to co-op somebody else’s entire bill?” Coleman asked Butler. “Because what (the bill) is doing is it is changing the monuments bill. That’s what it’s doing. Instead of just focusing on the bill you want it to.”

“That’s a question I’ll have to ask the reference service (which composes the bills),” Butler said.

At that point, the committee voted to carry the bill over.