Since 2017, any county or municipality looking to rid itself of Confederate memorials on public property has had to pay a price—the Alabama Memorial Preservation Act levies a $25,000 fine on such removals.
But State Sen. Gerald Allen, R-Tuscaloosa, has for years been pitching a bill that would change the fine from a relatively small one-time hit to a city’s budget to a constant drain on taxpayer money.
Allen’s proposed amendment to the the act, pre-filed this year as Senate Bill 6, would change the financial penalty from a one-time fee of $25,000 to a daily fee of $5,000. So instead of a one-time line item of $25,000, a municipality looking to permanently remove a monument or memorial would be looking at an annual allocation of $1,825,000. It would cost a municipality $36.5 million to keep a monument removed for 20 years.
The bill does not explicitly reference Confederate monuments, as it would create the penalty for the removal of any statute or memorial that has been in place on public property for 40 years or more. Allen’s bill stems from a bill originally brought by State Rep. Mike Holmes, R-Wetumpka, who told APR in 2021 that the bill was drafted in part by two members of the Southern Cultural Center, a neo-confederate group labeled as a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center. Beyond just a Confederate history group, the Southern Cultural Center states publicly that its goal is the re-establishment of a southern Confederacy.
The law would also require a municipality or county to keep the name of certain memorial building or structures even if replaced. So if a public building is razed that is named for Robert E. Lee, whatever new structure replaces it must also be named for Lee. Int he alternative, a historic marker can be erected honoring the person whose name was memorialized there.
The bill would reverse a current clause in the act that says if an application for a waiver goes without response for 90 days, the waiver will be granted. Allen’s bill flips that so unattended applications result in automatic denial of a waiver.
