By Scott Wright

The first time I heard about Sen. Gerald Dial's "big boat bill," as it has come to be known, it didn't sound like a very good idea to me.

But I couldn't catch fish with a stick of dynamite, and the last time I tried to back a boat trailer into Weiss Lake the only thing that didn't get wet was the bottom of the boat, so I figured I needed to ask someone with a little more water-related wisdom what they thought of Sen. Dial's plan to ban any boat longer than 30 feet, six inches from Weiss and a bunch of other Alabama lakes.

So I talked with Weiss Lake Improvement Association President Carolyn Landrem, who told me she and her organization were supporting the boat bill, provided a few changes were made to grandfather in any oversized boats already wet along the water line.

She invited me to attend a meeting on March 23 and hear what Alabama Power Company representative Willard Bowers had to say about the bill. Bowers said Alabama Power was for the bill, as long as the changes Landrem had already mentioned to me were included in a second version. The changes have since been made and the bill is now on its way to passage by the Alabama Legislature.

But the number of lakes affected by the new legislation -- which started out at nine and at one time grew to 11 -- has now been whittled down to three and as far as I know there aren't many people out there who have actually spoken with Dial about the bill he authored.

In fact, during his remarks to the WLIA, Bowers at one time responded to a question from an exasperated boat owner by replying, "Despite what people say, Sen. Dial has been listening."

Dial really couldn't help but hear, what with the public outcry he has created. I've called him three times since I first heard about the bill on March 17 to try and get a few questions answered, but he never returned a single one of them. He wasn't at the WLIA meeting on the 23rd, either. Landrem said he missed the meeting because he had a previous engagement.

Bob Ingram, who writes a syndicated weekly column which appears on our Alabama News page (page 6), has spoken with Dial about the legislation. In our March 20 edition, Ingram reported that Dial told him he wrote the bill "after meeting with Georgia developers who requested the ban" because "lakes near Atlanta are overrun with large boats and people wanting to build there are looking for one free of these sorts of crafts." But a lake in Georgia isn't the same as a lake in Alabama, senator, and it seems you failed to consider that when you photo-copied a bill from across the state line and tried to tack it up on the wall in Montgomery.

Judging by the watered-down version of the bill Dial is now trying to pass, plenty of people must have called to tell him so, too.

Landrem clearly insinuated there was a lack of communication that could have resulted in wider support for the initial legislation. "When the bill came out, everyone just thought it was very poorly written," she told me. Still, she rightly stated that Cherokee County and Weiss Lake have been "discovered," and growth needs to be controlled before it gets out of hand. No one is disputing that a bill like this will probably benefit Cherokee County.

But Sen. Dial, please, the next time you want to pass a bill that affects so many thousands of your constituents, how about letting us know before hand? Maybe we can help you write a bill that is better tailored to the people of your district and won't result in you getting so many phone calls that you can't return them all.

Scott Wright is a member of the National Society of Newspaper Columnists and an award-winning member of the Society of Professional Journalists. He is a native of Cherokee County.