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Constitutional battle
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Stan Bailey News staff writer March 18, 2003 The battle for constitutional reform now moves to the Alabama Legislature, where advocates should brace for special interest opposition, former U.S. Rep. Jack Edwards said Monday. "The special interests, when they start working on the Legislature, it can all come tumbling down," Edwards told an audience of more than 300 people at a conference sponsored by Alabama Citizens for Constitutional Reform. "There are folks who don't want constitutional reform." A commission Gov. Bob Riley appointed to look at changes to the constitution completed its report Friday. Lenora Pate, vice chairwoman of that commission, said its major recommendations to Riley involved: giving limited home rule to counties; limiting the earmarking of any new revenues; allowing the governor to veto a single item in a state budget; requiring a three-fifths majority vote of the Legislature to pass new taxes; editing and recompiling the constitution; and erasing racist language from the century-old document. U.S. Rep. Artur Davis, who also addressed the conference at the Richard M. Scrushy Conference Center, said those who favor constitutional reform believe Alabama has the capacity to move forward, and those who oppose it "see the worst and don't think we can free ourselves from it. "I associate myself with the first group," said Davis. The state's constitution was founded, Davis said, on an old Alabama where all citizens are not equal, women don't count at all, and some citizens are more to be heard than others. "There is another Alabama that is fairer, that is more just, that is more decent than what we've had that is waiting to be born," Davis said to a standing ovation. He said Alabama's wealthiest school systems spend $5,450 per pupil per year, and its poorest systems spend $423. "Any constitution that freezes that inequality in place is fundamentally wrong and needs to be torn down and buried," Davis said. He also criticized the state's requiring people who make just $4,200 a year to pay income taxes, and he said local governments should be allowed to deal with inadequate funding of education and economic inequality without going through the Legislature. But Bill O'Connor, manager of Campaign for Alabama and former executive director of the Business Council of Alabama, told the conference that constitutional reform will occur only after the people regain their confidence in state government. The first step toward regaining that confidence, O'Connor said, is to adequately fund essential services and to change the tax structure to make it fair and based on a person's ability to pay. "Get some consensus on what needs to be done, then try to convince the governor and Legislature, and then take it to the people and ask them to approve it," said O'Connor. Donald Brown, a member of the ACCR's executive committee, said the 155 white male delegates to the convention that drew up the present state constitution listed white supremacy as its main objective "to be established by law and not by force or fraud." "That still is the language in our document," said Brown. Other language in the constitution mandates segregated schools, denies women the right to vote, levies a racist poll tax and outlaws interracial marriage, Brown said. "That's the kind of constitution that we are living with today, despite the fact that there have been amendments and court decrees that obviously have superseded some of this language, but it's still there. "It's a sore that we have to excise from ourselves in order to move forward as one people into the 21st Century," Brown said. Return to: Constitutional Reform ~ In the News Return to: Editorial Index |
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| Alabama Citizens for
Constitutional Reform Foundation, Inc. P.O. Box 34 Montgomery, Alabama 36101-0034 E-mail: accr@constitutionalreform.org |
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