HUNTSVILLE – State Rep. Phillip Rigsby (R-Huntsville) said he will seek reelection to House District 25, emphasizing his work in Montgomery and plans to reintroduce legislation to ban human cloning.
“This will be my first time to run for reelection,” Rigsby said. “There was a lot of confusion about whether I would run for Senator Tom Butler’s position or not. But I think I’ve made great relationships in the House. We’ve done some good work in the House, and there is a few more things that I want to get done there. And so I will be running for reelection for House District 25 in this next election cycle.”
Looking ahead to the next legislative session, Rigsby said state budgets will dominate discussions.
“I think budgets are going to be a big issue,” he said. “I think that, you know, money is always the answer to everybody’s problems in Montgomery. There’s never enough of it. And so that’s always an issue. And now we’re being told that with decreasing potential, decreasing interest rates, and the supplemental fund may be becoming stagnant this year.”
Rigsby also plans to bring back a bill he sponsored last session that would prohibit human cloning.
“My cloning piece of legislation, I had a piece of legislation last session that didn’t make it to the finish line, got through the House, got through Senate committee, but we didn’t get it through the Senate floor, just like a lot of other bills,” he said. “But I’d like to bring that back. And that basically is just protecting, you know, the value of life and the worth of life. We don’t want to commodify life, and we don’t want the ability for us to clone humans.”
Rigsby added, “I don’t want to be able to take my own skin cell and genetically manipulate that and turn it into another Phillip. I don’t think the world wants that either.”
Rigsby, a Huntsville pharmacist, was first elected in 2022, taking over the seat from outgoing House Speaker and current Madison County Commission Chairman Mac McCutcheon.
During his first term, Rigsby played a leading role in creating new regulations on pharmacy benefit managers (PBMs), carrying key legislation in the House. After weeks of negotiation and compromise, lawmakers unanimously passed Senate Bill 252, which prohibits PBMs from reimbursing independent pharmacies at rates lower than the Alabama Medicaid rate.
Gov. Kay Ivey signed the Community Pharmacy Relief Act into law earlier this year.
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