Representative Gidley carries significant pieces of legislation

Representative Mark Gidley (R-Hokes Bluff) recently joined the Heart of Dixie Podcast. The Alabama Gazette's Brandon Moseley hosts the Heart of Dixie Podcast with attorney Harry Still III. Gidley is carrying bills to put the Ten Commandments up on the wall in Alabama schools, to help military spouses to have their professional credentials recognized by the state of Alabama, protecting against elder abuse, and to allow schools to have chaplains.

"I'm privileged to serve the Eastern part of Etowah and northwest part of Calhoun County. So great to serve the people of the great district 29 up here in Etowah and Calhoun County."

Gidley said that he was, "Extremely excited about sharing some of the things that I've worked on and sponsored and uh possibly even some that I've co-sponsored."

"I serve on the military and veterans committee in the Alabama House," said Gidley. "Theres three committees that I serve on. That's the first one. I'll talk about it first. Each year through the last several years, we have done military packages where we have worked on bill that make it working on making Alabama the most military uh friendly state in the nation and we're right at the top about number two right now. We're on our way to number one......Last year I carried one of the bills that creates a compact where that if someone especially a family member of a military person has a license they can move into the state of Alabama if they're part of that compact without having to go through all that process again. I am carrying another one of those bills again this year - just making it simpler for military families to move from one place to the other to transplant from one state to the other to come into Alabama and to have that compact where they can transfer those licenses of different things whether it be a cosmetologist or a psychologist or whatever might the situation might be. School of psychology was the one I carried this year, so we worked on that and I'm very proud to be a part of that helping our military in any way we possibly can."

"Another one is our policy committee," Gidley continued. "I served on that last year. I presented a bill that we got passed to include additional assistant principles in our schools. Many of our schools, especially middle and elementary, did not qualify or have an assistant principal. We picked up several hundred more last year. I'm hoping this year when the budget comes out, we pick up a few more because what goes on in our public schools is extremely important and making sure we give them the support they need is extremely important."

"I also uh introduced a bill that hopefully will soon go through the Senate and went through the House with Flying Colors," said Gidley. "It's an elder abuse bill."

The bill prevents someone convicted of elder abuse from inheriting from that person's estate.

Gidley said that he hopes that this bill's purpose is "Making sure that we do all we can to protect our elders that they're not abused or exploited in any way and that people are held accountable if that happens."

That passed the House of Representatives 103 to zero.

"Now going on to our schools, I do serve on the Ed policy committee as well," said Gidley. "One of the things that we have the privilege to do Harry is to return back to our society some of the things that were have been removed over the years that were foundational principles of our nation uh one of those things was the removal of Christian symbols and Christian ideas from our public sphere," said Gidley. "That started back in the 60s. In 71 we had the Lemon versus Kurtzman law that caused Ten Commandments and things to be removed."

"These were foundational principles that really were the form that helped form the whole ideology of our country to remove those foundations will be to remove the very thing that propped us up," Gidley explained. "So I have passed and I hadn't got it passed yet have presented and working it through uh ten commandments bill uh that put ten commandments back in our schools in a couple of strategic old place uh strategic places not in every classroom but in a strategic location and then also in the classroom where history is taught because it does have a very significant historical aspect of our country because much of our founders ideas uh much of the foundation of who we are were derived from that a matter of fact we have the ten commandments all throughout the supreme court and of course on the front of the building with Moses followed the ten commandments. So that's another one of the bills."

"I also have proposed a school chaplain bill that would help our teachers and administrators, not students, but teachers and administrators to have a resource just like we provide for the military from many other organizations if they're struggling or have need of someone that would be an impartial person and a confidential person to talk to," said Gidley. "That is another one that I have sponsored as well. So those give you a little recap of some of the things I personally have done this year in our Alabama House, and I still haven't got all of those through, because we have to go through the House and Senate, but but hopefully they're on the way to passage uh this this session."

Gidley's school chaplain and ten commandments bills both passed in the House of Representatives on Thursday.