Claire Austin
Things took a turn for the worst in the aftermath of Wednesday’s House Economic Development and Tourism Committee meeting as a lobbyist for the Alabama Farm Wineries let her emotions get the best of her.
Claire Austin, a long-time Montgomery lobbyist and President of The Austin Group, was lobbying the committee to pass a bill that would allow the wineries to sell directly to retailers. This bill would create an exception for the wineries that would place them outside of Alabama’s current 3-tiered system in which they have to work through a distributor to get their products on shelves.
Discussions regarding the bill were fairly contentious. Debate ended with a 7-6 vote against the bill, thereby placing Austin and her client on the losing end with Rep. Joe Hubbard (D – Montgomery) casting the deciding vote.
At the conclusion of the meeting, Rep. Hubbard approached a representative from the Alabama Farm Wineries and began explaining his position. However, Ms. Austin cut him off and exclaimed “Joe, you are nothing but a [expletive] whore for the wholesale distributors.” Obviously taken aback by the outburst, Rep. Hubbard attempted to continue explaining his position but Austin interjected again by telling her client, “Don’t worry about him [Hubbard], he’s not going to be here in two years anyway. I’ll see to that.”
As a result of the run-in with Rep. Hubbard, Ms. Austin has been summoned to appear on Wednesday before the Joint Committee on Rules where she is expected to be publicly censured.
Rules of the legislature include provisions to censure lobbyists or even ban them from returning to the State House after instances of severe misconduct. A public censure of this kind is extremely rare. In fact, most insiders that I spoke with can’t recall the last time this happened. However, respect among colleagues on both sides of the aisle is strong enough that outbursts like Austin’s won’t be tolerated.
HAHAHA, walk away kyle, walk away!!! Poor Mr Shrley forgot that the media isn’t the grand jury!!!! Oh how uncomfortable that little boy is. Attorney Client privilege, attorney client privilege! HAHAHA, good stuff
Most everyone in Montgomery knows enough about Austin to understand that this isn’t the first time something of this nature has happened. Probably won’t be the last.
Speaking of Ms. Austin… Let’s take a moment to enjoy this little gem of a video. One of her employees had to drop off files at the Federal Courthouse back during the Bingo mess.
This certainly isn’t news worthy, BUT, this video contains what may be the most awkwardly hilarious interview of all time! ENJOY!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LgTBZetqqzk
Didn’t Claire’s father play on Auburn’s first undefeated football team?
This story is certainly blog-worthy, a situation that surely has happened before, but not necessarily in ear shot and visible to so many people at the committee meeting. So it is newsworthy, but the Montgomery Advertiser today treated it like a murder story with its front page dominance. I feel sorry for Ms Austin, however she has no one to blame but herself.
Witch hunt theorists should ask themselves if there was an action that violated rules of the House and Senate that caused the reaction, and is the reaction within the parameters of punishment prescribed within said rule? the answer is yes, so there is no witch hunt.
I am no witch hunt theorists but do like to straighten out points.
1. The summons delivered to the Joint Rules members read “…to conduct a hearing to determine if Claire Austin violated the joint rules of the House and Senate DURING a meeting…”
2. If you were in the meeting or heard the testimonies, both have said the conversation was a side conversation after it had been adjourned.
3. If she was not guilty of doing it during a meeting then why should she still be held accountable for doing it during the meeting.
It looks like they ignored their summons and dealt with the situation how they wanted to even though, legally, their summons was dispproved by the timing of the events.
Now isn’t there something weird about that?
George,
Since this a fairly esoteric issue, do you think you might tell us where such legislation has been found unconstitutional and provide us with links to the relevant reporting?
Also, would you be specific about the slight changes to the proposed legislation that would help it pass constitutional muster?
Thanks for all all your advice.
Look at Granholm v. Heald, 544 U.S. 460 (2005). Granholm was a wine shipping case involving laws that treated in-state and out-of-state wineries differently. The laws at issue in Granholm allowed in-state wineries to ship directly to consumers, while out-of-state wineries were forced into the distributorship system.
After 8 years of litigation, SCOTUS ruled the laws unconsitutional. You can read the case, but without a legal background, and a con law background in particular, it might seem like legal slight-of-hand.
However, the layman’s version of the decision is that a state cannot treat out-of-state wineries and in-state wineries differently.
In Austin’s Client’s bill, in-state wineries would have been exempt from the three-tier system, while out-of-state wineries would still be forced into them. Thus, in-state wineries would be able to ship directly from manufacturer to retailer, while out-of-state wineries would have to ship from manufacturer to distributor to retailer.
The out-of-state wineries would have a viable constitutional challenge to the law and the state would have to either abandon the law or pay a fortune defending it, only to lose after years of litigation.
George, you speak as if an attorney.
However, a state can create any law that creates all similarly situation all the same. That means that the states laws are constitutional when all wineries of the same size can obtain the privilages of that license.
That is why today, an Alabama winery can hold a Goergia Farm license to sell it’s wine in Georgia. Also, an Alabama winery can hold a Kentucky license, a Maine license, and on and on.
The “clients” bill was absolutely constitutional as any farm winery out-of-state meeting the requirements could obtain an Alabama Farm Winery license.
You might need to get some new talking points.
This sounds like a political withhunt. There’s not even a member that requested this.
some woman who likely needs to be on medication goes nuts on a legislator and rightfully gets in trouble for it = a political witch hunt? Not sure if you’re one of her friends…or if you ARE her…but hope you can come up with a better story than that.
If some people actually knew the events that led up to the Speaker of the House finding out about it there would be very different opinions. Yes, going off on a Representative is a bad thing but why do you say she needs to be on medication? Are you a doctor? Obviously you missed the last part of Molly’s comment on the person feeding information not being a member. That is the bigger issue
Alabama should not be in ANY retail business. It is in direct conflict with free enterprise, The state should get out of ALL retail sales to the public and let the system it work. Free enterprise can not compete with direct sales and pricing regulating by the state. Besides why do we need to pay state employee to sell alcohol and eat up or state budget with wages, insurance and retirement, not to mention employee theft, and just plain bad business practices. They can work in the private sector and compete with every other person who has to make a living. I have fond state employees to be some of the most rude and offensive people I have ever dealt with..
That story left out a fair number of details. Hubbard wasn’t the deciding vote any more than the other 6 no votes were the deciding vote.
But far more importantly, the legislation they sought has been declared unconstitutional in other jurisdictions. Thus, Hubbard’s and the other no votes were cast, at least in part, to save the state the costs of litigation that the state would ultimately lose.
Finally, what Hubbard was saying to Austin’s client, which was clear to all who were listening, was an explanation of viable alternatives the wine makers ought to pursue. He was explaining how to improve the legislation such that it would pass constitutional muster.
Austin was wrong, but everyone makes mistakes.
Sorry I was slow approving this comment…for some reason it didn’t come to my email as quick as they normally do. Thanks for filling in some gaps.
That story left out a fair number of details. Hubbard wasn’t the deciding vote any more than the other 6 no votes were the deciding vote.
But far more importantly, the legislation they sought has been declared unconstitutional in other jurisdictions. Thus, Hubbard’s and the other no votes were cast, at least in part, to save the state the costs of litigation that the state would ultimately lose.
Finally, what Hubbard was saying to Austin’s client, which was clear to all who were listening, was an explanation of viable alternatives the wine makers ought to pursue. He was explaining how to improve the legislation such that it would pass constitutional muster.
Austin was wrong, but everyone makes mistakes.
Well George which constitution are you using?
The federal government does not require a winery to hold a wholesalers license to sell it’s own wine to retailers.
Further, Alabama is acutally surrounded by so called “unconstitutional” laws in Georgia and Florida. And let’s add a few more that let small wineries sell their wine to retailers: California, Oregon, Washington, North Carolina, Maine, Arkansas, Missouri, Arizona, Pennsylvania, Vermont, Montana, Michigan, Maryland, Ohio, West Virginia, and Wyoming.
Actually in a Federal Court case, the Attorney General of Alabama signed on in support of Maine’s law.
Rep. Hubbard has his talking points from the beer wholesalers, and does a good job presenting those.
I agree with Ryan. But, my advice to Ms. Austin, “You get more flies with honey, Sweetie”. Lobbyists don’t run Montgomery anymore, the Legislature does so you better learn to control your temper. This bill should go through the Small Business and Comerce Committee anyway. Would probably have better luck.
While I am not in favor of her verbal assault on Mr. Hubbard, I completely agree with her. For being a so-called “red state”, Alabama sure has a lot of unnecessary government intervention into business relations.
Makers of wine want to sell directly to retailers. Our state government is prohibiting that, instead making them sell to distributors, creating a government enforced middleman. Wine consumers are paying unnecessary markup on all products as a result of this legislation.
She is entirely right. Everyone who voted against the new law is in the pocket of the distributors and is using the law to create a false economy.
If Barrack Obama was doing this, we’d call it socialism.