Introduction
I’d like to begin by offering a few words to CEO Jeannine Birmingham, Chair Sarah Propper, our wonderful ASCPA Board and you, members of the most trusted profession in Alabama and around the world.

About 15 months ago and with great naivety, I agreed to serve as Board Chairman of a foundation formed to support the Alabama School of Healthcare Sciences. As it is with many naïve pursuits, I have arrived at an unexpected destination.

 

In a short time, my role with the ASHS Foundation grew from making sure our board meetings had agendas and action items to essentially leading an entire community in a grassroots effort to be deemed worthy of hosting Alabama’s fourth residential specialty school (joining Mobile, Birmingham and Huntsville). Governor Ivey’s vision for the school included locating it in my hometown of Demopolis. It became my job to make sure Demopolis didn’t let her down. I won’t bore you with details, but I’ll just say that the stakes were high for our healthcare high school, our community and for me.

 

I love to tell people that it’s much easier to be a rebel if you have a cause. Leading that cause taught me a few things over the last 15 months, but these are a few of the highlights: 

 

•  I’ve learned the power of community support
• I’ve learned the impact and importance of being present
• I’ve learned to respect and admire the legislative process
• I’ve learned that we have some incredible human beings leading our state, that we can be proud to call our elected officials and leaders
• I’ve learned that statement also applies to those we don’t always agree with
• I’ve learned they want to hear from us, they trust us and want to know if and how an issue impacts our Alabama CPAs and our state.

Thank you to Jeannine, Sarah and our ASCPA Board for trusting me with the responsibility of your Director of Government Affairs. It is indeed an honor to represent the 6,000+ CPAs in our state. Whether in public practice, business or industry, our CPA designation matters. Just like it was serving as the voice of such an enormous community effort to land the school, my charge is this: “don’t mess it up,” or something like that.
 
In case you don’t know, “Director of Government Affairs” is a fancy way of saying “lobbyist”. Not once in my nearly 30-year career in accounting had I ever considered becoming a lobbyist, but I sit here today honored to serve our profession in this way. My mission is to add value to your membership in the Alabama Society of CPAs by representing you and advocating for you to the best of my ability. At least weekly, I will keep you informed of bills (and maybe even rumors of bills) related to our work as CPAs. I’ll also be available to policymakers regarding these issues, sharing your feedback. Your feedback is vital to this process.

Now let’s get to what we’re here for...

 

THE DETAILS

 

There are 131 bills pre-filed as of the time of this writing. The button above includes only the bills we’re keeping an eye on for you. The bullet points are meant to give a summary of what is contained in the bills. As always, the details matter. The bills in their entirety can be found at https://alison.legislature.state.al.us . If you have any additional questions or comments, please do not hesitate to contact me via email at rpearson@alabama.cpa. I hope you do.