The verdict was nearly unanimous at Tuesday’s forum here to rally support for a new constitution: Alabama’s racist-tinged, restrictive and epic-length fundamental law must go.

   But left unanswered was the most important question that permeated the two-hour constitution-bashing session before an estimated crowd of 200 residents and civic leaders.

   Can a fledgling statewide citizens movement to rewrite Alabama’s 1901 constitution make any more progress than the past century’s half-dozen or so failed attempts - the first just 14 years after it was ratified?

   The five forum speakers for a new constitution insisted that this time, even if it takes several years, Alabama’s much-criticized constitution will join the ashbin of history.

   “We must amplify what’s already a growing chorus for reform,” declared Bailey Thomson, a journalism professor at the University of Alabama who’s leading the effort for constitution reform.

   Besides the sometimes flowery rhetoric about the alleged evils of the state’s constitution - Thomson called it an “infamously bad constitution” - the speakers offered specific examples of what they said is a fatally flawed framework for state government.

   Mike Gillespie, chairman of the Madison County Commission, said he tires of having to tell county residents upset about a nearby activity that the state’s constitution prohibits county governments from passing laws, including land-use regulations, without permission from the Legislature.

   “If the Legislature’s out of session ... we have to wait sometimes until eight months later until the issue can be settled,” Gillespie said.

   Woody Sanderson, Madison city attorney, said large agricultural and timber interests that dominated the state’s economy 99 years ago virtually stripped local governments of power and centralized it in Montgomery where they had more control over attempts to raise taxes and any other lawmaking effort that might affect their interests.

   Decatur lawyer Sid McAnnally gave this example of the restrictive nature of the state constitution: the Montgomery City Council, in an effort to land a minor league baseball team, had to petition the Legislature to allow the sale of draft beer in the city.

   But the effort failed when the bill got caught in a cross-fire between two Montgomery legislators feuding over another purely local issue: overtime pay for Montgomery County sheriff’s deputies.

   McAnnally emphasized one of the main reasons the state’s elite pushed for a new constitution in 1901: to keep blacks and poor whites from voting.

   Just two years after the new constitution went into effect, McAnnally said, about half of the white registered voters were dropped from the rolls.

   Black registered voters plummeted from about 130,000 in 1901 to 5,000 in 1903, he said.

   Jim Williams, executive director of the nonprofit Public Affairs Research Council of Alabama, dismissed arguments that letting county commissions pass laws would only lead to tax increases.

   So-called home rule “is not for the benefit of county commissions,” he said. “It’s for the citizens they serve.”

   Williams said one option for those wary of county governments’ handling of taxes would be to look to South Carolina, which recently adopted a new constitution.

   That document allows voters of each county to decide how restrictive, or how broad, taxing and other lawmaking authority of their county governments should be.

   Thomson predicted that interests wanting to preserve the status quo will vigorously fight any effort to rewrite the state constitution. “I think time is on our side. We have the right issue,” Thomson said. “But we must go into it realizing it’s going to be a tough battle.”

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Reprinted with Permission from TheHuntsville Times.