This is an opinion column.

SB237 was supposed to save an Alabama landmark but the bill might now be an icon itself to at least one lawmaker’s monumental duplicity.

Twenty-seven of the Alabama Senate’s 35 members, including three Democrats, signed onto the effort to save the rest stop rocket, a Saturn 1B near the Tennessee state line.

Only after the fact did some lawmakers realize they’d also signed on to amend the Alabama Memorial Preservation Act — more often called the Confederate monuments law — to make it meaner and more punitive against cities, counties and school boards.

Now the bill might explode on the launchpad.

Democrats say they were duped and not told about the changes the bill would make to the monuments law.

But they aren’t the only ones.

The lead sponsor, Sen. Tom Butler, R-Madison, says he was taken in, too.

He blames the switcheroo on Sen. Gerald Allen, R-Tuscaloosa.

As of now, SB237 would increase penalties for moving or modifying monuments from a one-time $25,000 fine (which several cities, including Birmingham and Montgomery, have agreed to pay) to a $5,000-per-day fine, potentially adding up in perpetuity.

Sen. Roger Smitherman, D-Birmingham, said that wasn’t the bill he agreed to cosponsor. He only wanted to save the rest stop rocket and had not been told about the other stuff.

“I do not agree with that change of that language in it,” Smitherman said. “Once I understood it to the level that I do now — it was after we had signed on to sponsor. Our primary thing was to make sure that we got the rocket up there.”

Smitherman said that he had not read the bill when he agreed to cosponsor it, and he said he would insist the monument stuff be struck from the bill if it moves forward.

Sen. Billy Beasley, D-Clayton, also said he signed on to the bill thinking it was to preserve the Saturn rocket and not to amend the state’s monuments law.

Another Senate Democrat, Rob Stewart, D-Selma, also cosponsored the bill. He could not be reached for comment.

It is an unwise but not uncommon thing in the Alabama Legislature for lawmakers to sign on as cosponsors for bills they haven’t read. But something different seems to have happened this time.

The lead sponsor, Butler, says the bill traveling under his name isn’t what he asked the Legislative Reference Service to write.

“I put a bill in just to save the rocket, the Saturn IB rocket,” Butler said.

But when he got it back, he said, the bill was mostly about the monuments law with the Saturn rocket language tagged to the end.

“That’s not something I put into that bill,” Butler said. “That amendment was added without my permission.”

Butler says he has asked the Legislative Reference Service to rewrite the bill without the monuments language.

“I did not authorize it or ask for it,” Butler said. “I think Senator Allen had that stuck in.”

Sen. Gerald Allen, R-Tuscaloosa, was the original sponsor of the Alabama Memorial Preservation Act in 2017, and last year he sponsored a bill to modify the law to make it more punitive.

In fact, the bill Allen sponsored last year to make the monuments law more punitive is identical to the new bill except for the Saturn rocket language at the end.

There’s one other difference, too — the cosponsors. Last year, Allen’s bill won no support from his fellow lawmakers. No one signed on as cosponsors and it died quickly in committee.

I called Allen and left a message. He hasn’t called me back yet.

LRS director Othni Lathram said he is prohibited by law from discussing lawmakers’ requests to his office.

This wouldn’t be the first time Allen found himself in the spotlight.

In 2021, Allen pushed through a resolution to name a road in Tuscaloosa for Crimson Tide Coach Nick Saban and won support from most of the Alabama Senate. Later, Allen had to ask House members to kill his own resolution after he learned the street in question was already named for a Tuscaloosa police officer killed in the line of duty.

This year, Allen has sponsored an amendment to the Alabama Constitution to require schools to play the Star-Spangled Banner at least once per week.

In addition to being the original sponsor of the monuments law, Allen once proposed a law to ban books with LGBTQ authors and characters from public libraries. When asked what should be done with the books, Allen said, “I guess we dig a big hole and dump them in and bury them.”

As for the Saturn rocket and the current bill, Butler said he will try to separate the two issues and would talk with Allen this week.

“I’m gonna tell him if he wants his version, he needs to put his amendment in a separate bill,” Butler said. “But I want this one to be a clean copy bill, so we can move forward.”

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