By Bill Zinn
Special to The Star
March 2, 2003
Alabama needs a new state constitution. If you have
lived in this state for any length of time, you probably know that.
I have lived in Alabama all my life, and I’ve been a witness
to the way other Southern states have pulled ahead of us in various
areas relative to quality of life. It is not by accident that North
Carolina has adequate law enforcement patrolling its highways and
interstates (and Alabama does not), or that Florida spends hundreds
of dollars more per year on each student in that state than we do
in Alabama, or that Mississippi spends three times more per child
in its foster care program than Alabama lays out for its foster children,
or that corporations operating in Georgia and Tennessee pay a larger
share of their corporate profits into the tax coffers of those states
than corporations operating in Alabama pay to our state government.
It goes on and on. Whether you’re talking about
regulating nursing homes, managing the environment, repairing and
maintaining our highways, or almost any other function under the auspices
of the state government that has to do with our quality of life, Alabama
trails most, if not all, of her sister Southern states. It is frustrating
to constantly see your home state at or near the bottom of survey
after survey. It would be easy enough to take the old die-hard conservative
attitude of “Alabama-Love it or Leave It”. But I do love
Alabama, and I don’t plan to leave it anytime soon. I’m
just one of, I hope, a few million residents of this state who want
to see a better, more progressive Alabama.
It can be done, and this is perhaps the most opportune
time there will ever be to do it. Gov. Bob Riley stated during his
campaign that he would be open to the idea of constitutional reform.
He said that he would appoint a committee to study the feasibility
of creating a new state constitution. I’ll admit that I was
skeptical about the new governor’s “committee for everything
system,” but, based on the outstanding appointments he has made
already, it appears that Gov. Riley is sincere in his promises to
seek reform in areas where reform is needed.
I realize that there are many people in this state who
are opposed to constitutional reform. I am not an expert on our state
constitution, but I do know enough about it to know that it is a terrible
plan of government. It is a plan designed to keep political power
in the hands of the few at the expense of the many. The concept of
home rule is foreign to our constitution. And if you don’t think
we need home rule, just look at what those folks in Alexandria had
to endure in order to rid their community of the infamous “hog
slaughterhouse.” Incidents like that happen all over our state
because we the people lack the power of home rule. Our governors lack
a strong veto power that governors of other states wield. This allows
the “pork system” in our state government to hamstring efforts
to pass sound legislation based on statewide priorities. Our tax system
is one of the most, if not the most, regressive in the nation. It
is the principal reason that education in Alabama totters on the brink
from year to year, and why our state agencies are almost always underfunded
and understaffed. Alabama will never move forward with her more progressive
sister states until we restructure our tax system.
Constitutional reform would provide the avenue for our
state leaders to follow in restructuring our state’s tax system
and solving our state’s funding problems. Our state constitution
is a document from a horse-and-buggy era. That in itself should not
disqualify it as a modern, effective plan of government. After all,
the U.S. Constitution is twice as old, but it is still a marvel for
the ages. The Alabama state constitution was a poor government plan
from its inception. It is time to replace it. The people of this state
need and deserve better.
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