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An Editorial Series
April 7, 2002

   Witness then, Alabama, the cracked and buckling foundation of our government, the festering wound that goes untreated, crippling everything from social
services to local zoning, to our quality of life.

   See our state stretched out like a patient upon a deathbed, struggling with the burdens of an inadequate and unfair tax base, with an education system so starved for cash that leaking roofs are the least of the
worries. See the astounding challenges of county officials who strive to pave roads and deliver services to their districts with a pittance of a budget.

   Witness a government that is ineffective, weak and
unresponsive to the voters. Look hard and long upon Alabama and know that she is known across the land as being one that pays little homage to her people.

   A powerful antidote awaits us, though. We only need be brave enough to use it. That cure is to throw out the Alabama Constitution of 1901 and conceive a living document that will address the needs of this century, not the failures of the past.

   It would not be the first time a state constitution has been rewritten. Alabama has had six. Only 19 of the 50 states still have their original constitutions. Since Independence, state governments have rewritten their constitutions 136 times.

   But few, it is safe to say, have been as inadequate, and as cumbersome as our 1901 Constitution. Anniston’s powerful railroad lawyer John Knox and his contemporaries were creatures of a radically different environment when they convened the 1901 Constitutional Convention. At the dawn of the last century, Alabama was home to a broken people, broken by the legacy of war and Reconstruction.

   Gallantry, revenge and the return to power of a select few was the impetus behind tossing out an inclusive post-Reconstruction constitution in favor of one that disenfranchised blacks and poor whites and handed power to an alliance of landed interests and industrialists.

   All has changed in the last hundred years. Hardly a thing applies to the arena of 1901 anymore.

   The egregious language that marginalized blacks and poor whites has been struck down by the nation’s highest court. And the unholy alliance of landed interests and industry has collapsed.

   Yet power in the hands of a few in Alabama is constant. That power has simply changed hands.

   Today, the likes of Alfa, the Business Council of Alabama, the trial lawyers, the Alabama Teachers Association and so on are the ones that control power in this state. Power, the making of policy, the control of state government, is all about special interests.

   And the No. 1 ally of the special interests in Alabama is the 1901 Constitution.

   Special interest clout in this state is the reason why Judy Harrington must live across the street from a pig slaughterhouse. Her life and the lives of her four children have been severely impacted by the horrors she must put up with every day of her life. Her struggle illustrated in these pages is that of her family, but be on notice that in this Alabama under this constitution, a hog farm could set up shop next door to your home too if you happen to live in an unincorporated area.

   And that, good people, is simply not right.

   Neither is it right or good for cell phone towers to litter our pristine countryside, or junkyards to pepper the our rural highways or for commercial strip malls to go up next door to residential homes. But litter, pepper and go up they do, all thanks to the constitution.

   Try, though, to take your case to an elected official and see what will happen. In Harrington’s case, Calhoun County Commissioner Randy Wood and state Rep. Gerald Willis have told her and others there is simply nothing they can do.

   That, however, is dead wrong. What those men and other politicians can do is become ferociously dedicated to rewriting the 1901 Constitution, to demand that certain powers, including zoning and taxation be handed back to the counties.

   Our constitution also steps on Judy Harrington in an even more harmful way. It forces her and other working, sometimes struggling, families to pay a disproportionate amount of taxes. Is it right, is it just, is it fair for a single mother of four to pay a crippling proportion of her income each year in state income taxes?

   No it is not.

   If you don’t realize what a devastating effect the 1901 Constitution has on public education in this state, take a few minutes with Sarah McClure the principal of Alexandria Elementary School. She and her teachers are nothing less than heroes for the sacrifices they make for the school. Sacrifices, we might add, that they make because the state is not willing to help and is hampered by the constitution. A quality education in Alexandria is subsidized out of the goodness and pocketbooks of the teachers and administrators.

   The constitution and the manipulation of it by the special interests also are why county commissioners such as Eli Henderson do not have enough money to patch up their county roads.

   Try paving hundreds of miles of road a year on a budget that speaks to potholes not infrastructure improvement.

   That’s not right, Alabama.

   And we can no longer stand for it. The constitution is not only an embarrassment; it is killing our future.

   The Anniston Star has long advocated constitutional reform. In the last year, we have advocated a constitutional convention. It remains, we believe, the best method of ushering in a new document not only because it is hard to think of a more democratic method, but such a mechanism would do wonders for the creation of what one might call political connectedness at the grass-roots level. The active participation of the citizenry in such a convention could bring about an era of new dynamic leadership that aims to move the state into the future, not be content to let it languish in the shackles of a broken past.

   It is time, however, that we get constitutional reform, one way or another. If our lawmakers sincerely believe this can be accomplished in a reasonable amount of time through an article-by-article rewrite, then by all means let’s get started. But we need commitment and proof.

   Remember, the only success this body has had with that tactic is to rewrite the Judicial Article in the 1970s.

   Some in the Legislature have pushed the idea of appointing a committee to study the question for 90 days and then reporting back to the Legislature. The House and the Senate would then vote on the proposed package and send it to the people for a final endorsement.

   That has not worked in the past. There is no reason, however, why it could not succeed this time, especially considering the momentum constitutional reform has in the state now.

   Our point is — what Judy Harrington, Sarah McClure, Eli Henderson, thousands in Calhoun County and millions in Alabama are trying to say — that Alabama needs a new constitution, because it can lead to better schools, better planning, better government and a better life.

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