Keeping Up With the Joneses Means Collective Punishment for all Lee County Residents

Attached to the agenda packet for the Lee County Commission meeting scheduled on Monday, November 27th of 2023 was a piece of "Proposed Local Legislation" that would increase the fee by four dollars on all motor vehicle and trailer tag transactions processed for new registrations, transfers and renewals of all license tags in Lee County. Introduced with a memorandum from Lee County Sheriff Jay Jones bearing his official letterhead, according to the legalese included therein, Sheriff Jones believes that the entirety of Lee County residents should foot the bill for a dubiously perceived loss of revenue caused by the state legislature passing a bill in 2022 that waived the longstanding requirement for citizens to pay a fee for carrying a handgun concealed on their person or in their vehicle. Do you know what else Sheriff Jones believes?

Jones made that statement on who and what he believes during a PR stunt he was recorded in for a 2014 promotional video doing damage control for disgraced former Speaker of the House Mike Hubbard shortly before he was indicted by a grand jury on 23 counts of corruption. If you want a real laugh, watch the video by clicking on it below that is still hosted on Mike Hubbard's official youtube channel;

More on that another time, for now let's focus on recent county business proper.

Aside from a lot of fuzzy math and the unceasingly tiresome campaign by Lee County officials to grow the size of local government, the average citizen might read this document and get lost in the sauce over the purportedly nominal nature of an increase of "only" four dollars to what some may consider to be a mundane transaction. All of that is merely a set up for the real fireworks to come, a shambolically amateur presentation by Sheriff Jones himself before the Lee County Commission hawking this fee hike which would end predictably in a white hot dumpster fire. Raising the stakes even higher was the serendipitous attendance at the meeting by the Lee County legislative delegation which included Representatives Ed Oliver, Debbie Wood, Jeremy Gray and Joe Lovvorn as well as State Senators Randy Price and Jay Hovey.

Before this disastrous debacle could even begin to unfold, much to the chagrin of Sheriff Jones and his fellow travelers, Waverly resident Vikki Reed addressed the latest county cash grab during the evening's citizen comments portion which of course is excluded from the meeting's minutes and livestream. Lucky for thee, dear reader, the Examiner not only possesses video footage of Ms. Reed's salient comments that cut Jones off at the pass but has also transcribed them for your sublime reading pleasure as follows;

"We have paperwork that our sheriff, he is asking that we do a tax increase for all of us local people here to pay four dollars more when we go get our tags or renew our licenses or whatever it is in the course of when you are there. Which comes to about four bucks. Four dollars is not a lot at the end of the day, but here is the thing. It comes through on this paperwork, how many voters were notified of that? How many people were told that you guys are going to be placed where this is coming up for a vote with you all to go to them, to our legislators? We have a lot of those people here tonight too that are going to be aware that we in fact are going to be taxed for money."

"Twelve million dollar budget is a big budget, I would say live within your budget kind of like the rest of us have to do every day. Figure it out somewhere else, it's not like constantly keep coming to us taxpayers and just keep jabbing us for more money and not telling anybody. It's a cowardly way of doing business. If you want to know what people think, you come to the people that vote for you and let them vote on that tax increase if that is what is going to be need to be done."

Later on after the official meeting had been called to order and the usual formalities were shuffled through, Sheriff Jones took to the podium and stood before the commission. Below are excerpts from his own words, transcribed from Sheriff Jones monologue as follows;

"With the passage of Act 2022-133 in 2022, that was the law that went into effect to eliminate the requirement for the purchase of a concealed carry permit to carry a handgun concealed or about your vehicle in the State of Alabama. Otherwise referred to as permitless carry or constitutional carry, whichever side you choose to label. In that regard, the fees that we had been receiving prior to that for many years were generated and assisted us with augmenting our budget that was allocated to us by you gentlemen here. As a result, we are not seeing the revenue that we had to augment. Those funds, of course, were being used for equipment purchase. They have to be used for law enforcement purpose by law. Primarily for equipment, training, education and anything that would work to advance the professionalism of our office"

"This was of course not just us, but around the state, the sheriffs offices. To give you a few numbers, in 2021 the sale of the fees generated from the pistol permits generated approximately $454,000. 330,000 of those dollars remained with the Sheriff's office to use for the previously mentioned equipment, training, education and whatever would help us to accomplish our mission of public safety. $119,000 of that money went directly to the general fund of the county commission. We are one of the few counties that the Sheriff's office was splitting those fees with the county general fund."

"This year to date those numbers have dropped to $91,000 and to $28,000 to the commission. Which would obviously be a more than 70% reduction in those fees. What that has done of course is hampered our ability to acquire equipment and provide for training and education of our officers which we will make no apology for. Anything that I can do that is going to ensure that our deputy sheriffs are professional and have the equipment they need to protect the citizens of this county, I am going to do everything that I can in my power to do that."

"We looked at ways to recoup some of that lost revenue and to the legislature's credit, our delegation included, they did provide for a fund to recover some of those by form of a grant. But those funds are about $6.5 million for a five year period. Those funds are not going to last forever and the actual loss to sheriffs around the state was closer to $16 to $18 million a year. Even though the grant fund is established to make up for lost pistol permit revenue is about $6.5 million, obviously there was a little bit of a discrepancy in those two totals. So, that brings us to the point of the proposed legislation."

"We were looking at ways that would not be additional tax, if there was some type of a way to do a fee. We decided that there was no interest in doing anything in regard to court fees, they are too high already and we don't want to add to that at all. So we looked at possible increase of the cost of a vehicle tag or trailer tag at issuance. Currently the fee is $24 for the issuance of a license plate for your vehicle or trailer tag. We were looking at a possible amount of about four dollars. To also add another dimension, the district attorney as you know came and asked for a request for funding this year to assist with her issue in her office with hiring additional prosecutors and hopefully getting more of the cases to trial. Which certainly is of interest to us all."

"So we decided that we would pattern this legislation, or proposed legislation, possibly after what was passed last year in Cherokee County is a good example. They did a portion for the D.A.'s office, a portion for the Sheriff's office to be used in the same manner as it currently would be used as if it were the old fees from the pistol permit sales. That is what we have been looking at. This was a joint effort between the District Attorney's office and the Sheriff's office to kind of cover two different areas of need. What has happened here recently, we have been in discussion with our legislative delegation. They have asked if we could provide a little bit more information to help them to decide what the best way to address this issue is."

"What I would ask the commission to do is not actually take any action tonight or do a vote on the legislation, I just want to make you aware that is what we are looking at doing. After some further research and working and meeting with our legislative delegation, hopefully come up with a good solution that would be equitable for all concerned. It would accomplish the objective of helping us to get the funding that we need in addition to our budget for operations with our equipment, training and education at the Sheriff's office."

Interesting choice of the word "equitable". Perhaps a bit too much of that diversity, equity and inclusion training at the sheriff's department has seeped into Jones' brain? Nothing besides that little tidbit is particularly remarkable on its face in his comments without too much extraneous reading between the lines, however, from here on out in the meeting is where the discourse became a bit dicey as the commissioners inadvertently unraveled the yarn that Jones was telling. Commissioner Doug Cannon emerged from the peanut gallery to ask Jones;

"How much would that approximately be bringing in for the D.A. and Sheriff's Department?"

Jones responded;

"In speaking with the revenue commissioner, she mentioned the figure of somewhere around $208,000 total."

Beginning to smell the scent of blood in the water, Chairman English inquired gruffly "208???" to which Jones sheepishly answered "$208 thousand, yes sir". Cannon chimed back in "Is that for the total $2 or $4?"

Jones, regaining a bit of composure, replied;

"Four dollars, yes sir. Again, these are approximate figures, they are subject to adjustment. So there may be adjustment on some of those numbers. But those are pretty close in the ballpark, I think."

Seeming to sense the building disarray, Revenue Commissioner Oline Price declared;

"We sell roughly 184,000 tags a year!"

Chairman English, always seeming to enjoy the pursuit of Oline's fuzzy numbers, did not miss the opportunity to pounce as he inquired incredulously;

"184,000??? Well, why wouldn't that generate half a million dollars??? That four dollar fee? $208,000 would indicate to me 52,000 tags..."

Following that admonishment which was couched mercifully in the form of a question from Chairman English, there was a period of inaudible muttering and a tedious sequence of inane banter between commissioners Langley and Morris which then gave way to a hushed back and forth between Oline and Sheriff Jones. Speaking mostly in subdued tones up until this point, Oline's voice crackled inexplicably above the chatter;

"I was on my cell phone!!!"

Jones, taken aback by Oline's apparent protest, took on a quietly defensive posture when remarking to her;

"Maybe I misunderstood, but I heard 208. I'm sorry if I am incorrect. As I said, the numbers are subject to adjustment."

Following his conditional mea culpa, Jones let loose some nervous laughter only to be cut off by a now surly Chairman English who had already suffered more than enough foolishness for one night. Barely concealing his contempt, English prepared Jones for the beginning of the end by correcting him;

"Well, Sheriff, at four dollars that many tags raises $736,000 a year. Not $200,000 a year.."

Jones responded quietly "Yes sir, I agree". Chairman English compassionately brought the emerging fiasco to a precipitous close before any more damage could be done by administering a strong dose of brutal sarcasm under the guise of mock amazement when surmising;

"Wow. 184,00 tags. Ok... I think it is clear why we are not acting and you all do need to talk a little more."

Oline, not quite fully realizing yet how badly Jones had already gone down in flames, feebly attempted to ameliorate her sordid situation with the Sheriff by exclaiming;

"I am trying to remember when we talked the other day, Sheriff, it was the first time in several years that I took Thanksgiving week off. I was sitting at home on my computer and I had logged into the system. I can't remember whether that was trailer tags or just motor vehicle tags."

With not much more to be said intelligently on the matter, the meeting moved on to other less confounding topics after a brief interlude of head scratching and disbelief by the entirety of those present in the room at the events which had just transpired before them.

You may find yourself asking "What does this mean, what does any of it mean?" Let's take a hard look at what is being said and who is saying it. The reality is that for decades up until recently, counties in Alabama had soaked money from gun owners for merely exercising their 2nd Amendment rights. With the long overdue passing of constitutional carry by the state legislature in 2022, gun owners were no longer being forced by the county to pay a fee to simply exercise their right to bear arms which had been protected by the Second Amendment and the quote "shall not be infringed" is decisively explanatory. Nowhere in the constitution does it mention a permit being required for citizens to carry any type of firearm, concealed or otherwise. Alabama sheriffs must believe it is all about money. Is it ever not about the money in Lee County?

So what is Sherriff Jones' solution? To collectively punish every single resident in Lee County every single time they need to renew their vehicle's tag or put one on a new car because he is big mad at all the gun owners who he can no longer extort since the legislature finally put a stop to it. One segment of the citizenry is liberated from oppression and in turn the county gets payback on the flipside by extracting their revenge on the entire population, makes total sense to a megalomaniac.

Truth be told, there is an enormous amount of hardened prejudice in these disunited states against citizens who exercise their Second Amendment rights. If you don't believe that, try bearing arms in blue states like California or New York and you will find out right quick how much the local and state governments as well as the brainwashed sheeple in those liberal hell holes hate gun owners and the Second Amendment. Add on the mainstream media propaganda and federal overreach targeted at gun owners seeking to vilify them for every crime committed or tragic accident with a gun involved and the bleak picture of freedom lost it paints becomes crystal clear.

Living in the supposedly "red state" of Alabama, which any well versed adherent of true liberty knows to be a carefully constructed mirage, the sad fact of the matter is that government officials here are nowhere nearly as conservative in their actions as they claim to be. Gun owners for years have found themselves on the wrong side of a precarious position in the court of public opinion and counties in Alabama used that social leverage to extort money from them just to then hand it over to their sheriffs departments and Lord knows who else. After years of this shameful exploitation the state legislature finally stood up, did right by gun owners, and emancipated them from being charged money for exercising their constitutional rights.

Of course, that did not go over well with the county sheriffs or the commissions and district attorneys offices that pull their strings. They viewed those pistol permit fees as their money and have been chomping at the bit to "reclaim their revenue" ever since. We know that Lee County's current commissioners hate the First Amendment and the Second Amendment. Their twisted words, dirty deeds, sickening actions and rancid resolutions have proven as much in the past. We can revisit the November 8th, 2021 resolution that the LCC passed condemning constitutional carry and Sheriff Jones' crocodile tears during that meeting which he tainted with his histrionic arsenal of theatrics. Just remember the horse's mouth from which all this authoritarian bullcrap is coming from.

Since the enactment of constitutional carry, Sheriff Jones has engaged in a disinformation campaign to discourage Lee County residents from renewing their pistol permits. Second Amendment advocates in Alabama have encouraged gun owners to continue to renew their pistol permits in the wake of constitutional carry, citing the advantages of possessing one when traveling out of state and simplifying their interactions with law enforcement in their local area. Despite this, Jones has been personally quoted numerous times by local residents after disingenuously misinforming them that pistol permits were no longer available due to constitutional carry.

Renewal notices have ceased to be sent out by the Sheriff's office and citizens are being told by his employees that cash payments are no longer accepted with their only option being to pay online using a credit or debit card. This is a gross violation of prior precedents where walk-ins with cash payments for pistol permits were accepted at the Sheriff's office in the past and has now been replaced by misinformation from his department intentionally designed to discourage and cause hassle for gun owners out of Jones' own spite at his perception of being on the losing side of a legislative battle along with his bitter cohorts in the Alabama Sheriffs Association.

Astounded observers of this hot mess at the courthouse are left to wonder if Sheriff Jones is honestly just bad at math or if this is all some sort of con game. Is this merely Jones' clever gambit to sneak one past the commission and the legislative delegation by playing dumb in the hopes of hitting the fiscal jackpot with a closed eyes hail mary pass and no time left on the clock? With his dubious mathematical abilities in serious question, Jones exemplifies the mystery surrounding whether Lee County is both corrupt and stupid or just plain ol' corrupt. We may never know.