Ethics reform was considered the first order of business when Republicans finally had a a majority of the votes in the Alabama State Legislature in 2010. There was talk of overhauling the state’s ethics laws and making ethics laws tougher. Newly elected Governor Robert Bentley said that his top priority was to call a Special Session to to take up ethics laws.
In 2010 Robert Bentley said, “I campaigned across the state telling people Montgomery needs a bath, that corruption in our government, in the Legislature, would be cleaned up. I meant that.
“I know of no more effective way to clean up the corruption we have seen than to pass the toughest set of ethics laws in the country. And I’m confident, with Republican majorities in the Senate and House, we are going to get it done.”
In 2017 the New York Times reported: “Mr. Bentley’s resignation is the third major transfer of power in Alabama government since June, when the House speaker, Michael G. Hubbard, was convicted of ethics charges and forced from office. Later in the year, Chief Justice Roy S. Moore was suspended for the balance of his term for violating judicial ethics standards.”
The land that the state capitol was built on in 1846 is called Goat Hill, because it had previously been used as pasturage for goats. It is more likely that goats will return to the hill than for the state of Alabama to ever see ethics reform.