|
By Sam Hodges
It’s the old plot line, familiar from failed tax reform
and education reform dramas. Special interests hold special influence
over Alabama politics, and special interests are hostile to rewriting
a state constitution that serves them.
"We don’t have a general constitution," said Gerald
W. Johnson, associate vice president for research at Auburn University
and an adviser to Fob James during James’ tenure as governor. "We
have a constitution which protects every vested interest in the state.
That’s why it’s so difficult to get it changed."
Virtually everyone who knows anything about Alabama government
and history agrees that the state needs a new constitution. Still, the
old one lives on and on, even growing like kudzu because of new local
and statewide amendments.
Alabama retains a constitution that is more than twice
as long as any other state’s, that chokes its rare brave reader
with obsolete, repetitious and contradictory language, that in fundamental
ways works against efficient and fair government, and that fails utterly
to reflect the state’s basic ideals and values.
But every dog does indeed have its day in the Alabama Constitution.
Large landholders have the "lid bill" and other provisions
that keep Alabama’s property taxes the nation’s lowest. For
the powerful Alabama Farmers Federation, whose political action committees
spent more than $1 million in the most recent election cycle, maintaining
those safeguards is an admitted first priority.
Educators have the Special Education Trust Fund, which
earmarks revenue for public education. Even though constitutionally
suppressed property taxes have placed Alabama near the bottom of states
in per capita funding for public schools, the Alabama Education Association
has not favored constitutional reform, because the old constitution
at least guarantees education some cash flow.
"Once you open up the can of worms, there’s no telling
what could get in or get out of the constitution," said Mike Martin,
director of public relations for the AEA.
The cattle industry has an amendment that allows for a
special tax on cattle sales to generate funds for promotions. The swine,
poultry and catfish industries have the same thing.
Many cities and counties have amendments in the constitution,
granting them special authority for everything from bingo to bonds.
Ever been to the Alabama Music Hall of Fame? Ever heard of it? It is
a tourist attraction in Tuscumbia, and worth visiting, but it is also
the subject of a six-page amendment in the constitution allowing its
governing authority to issue $2.5 million in bonds.
The constitution written in 1901 now has more than 550
amendments, and they have become its guardians. "Every one of those
amendments has a constituency," said Bill Stephens, general counsel
for the Retirement Systems of Alabama and longtime supporter of constitutional
reform. "It was passed for somebody to be able to do something. They’re
all paranoid about what might happen to them if you change the constitution."
History bears that out. In the 1940s and Œ50s, the Alabama
Farmers Federation (known then as the Farm Bureau; known now as Alfa)
joined with Alabama Power Co. and other industrial interests in pressuring
legislators to block Gov. Jim Folsom’s call for a constitutional
convention.
When constitutional reform fever next took hold, under
Gov. Albert Brewer in 1969, the special interests fought even the creation
of a commission to study the issue. The bill to create a commission
passed, with a fight, but the commission’s proposed new constitution
came to nothing in the Legislature.
In 1979, special interests successfully fought Fob James’
efforts to rewrite the constitution.
"You had Paul Hubbert and AEA who were extremely opposed
to the unearmarking of education funds," said Mike Waters, who was James’
staff person in the revision fight. "You had landed interests - timber
and large property owners - that were very skeptical of constitutional
reform because they had just gotten the lid bill passed, which places
constitutional limits on property taxes."
James’ proposed constitution passed the Senate but
collapsed in the House.
In 1983, Lt. Gov. Bill Baxley and Sen. Ryan deGraffenried
Jr. tried for a simple streamlining of the constitution that didn’t
challenge earmarking or the lid bill. Even that effort - which cleared
legislators but was thrown out by the state Supreme Court - drew heavy
special-interest opposition.
"They came from everywhere," deGraffenried recalled, citing
Alfa, AEA and the Alabama League of Municipalities, which he said lobbied
to prevent counties from getting home rule.
Opposition also included the Alabama Bar Association. It
might seem that lawyers, who are more aware than anybody of the constitution’s
length and complexity, would champion reform. But a Bar-appointed committee
found the 1983 revision "seriously deficient" without advancing its
own alternative.
Critics of the Bar’s action - including Stephens and
deGraffenried, both lawyers - say that the real opposition was from
bond lawyers who figured a new constitution might mean new judicial
interpretations about bonding authority, which would mean uncertainty
(and maybe fewer fees) for bond lawyers.
The Bar currently has no position on whether the constitution
should be reformed, and has no committee studying the subject.
"I suspect if you said to lawyers, ŒAre you for a new constitution?’
they would say, ŒWhat constitution? What’s in it?’ I know
I would," said Broox Holmes, a Mobile lawyer and president of the state
Bar.
Mike Rediker, a Birmingham lawyer who has done bond work,
analyzed the situation differently.
"If you have a new constitution, and you clear out all
that stuff, you’re clearing out a lot of little niches that have
been carved out, and out of those niches people have made a lot of money
in attorney fees, underwriting fees, etc.," he said.
Stephens agreed that the Bar doesn’t much want a new
constitution.
"Basically the legal community is for maintaining the status
quo," he said. "They created it, and they want to maintain it." But
the 1983 revision "shouldn’t have scared anybody."
Special-interest influence is hardly peculiar to Alabama,
but some observers think it’s stronger here than in most places.
They point to the lack of political party loyalty and the lack of strong
ethics and campaign finance laws.
Sam Webb, a professor of history at the University of Alabama
in Birmingham, argues that Alabama is really a "no party state," because
neither Democrats nor Republicans have an agenda or much organization
within the Legislature.
Special interests, he said, fill the ideological and leadership
void - with individual legislators becoming as much identified with
AEA or Alfa as with political parties. Special interests are able to
exert such influence in part because Alabama lacks strong campaign and
ethics laws. As campaigns become more expensive, candidates have become
more dependent on special-interest PAC money.
The proliferation of PAC money and the atmosphere in Montgomery
confirm the power of special interests.
"If you go out to eat in Montgomery while the Legislature
is in session, you can see lobbyists buying meals for legislators,"
said Betty Cork, executive director of Alabama’s chapter of Common
Cause, a citizens’ group that lobbies for more openness and ethics
in government. "You can see them together in bars. We all know there
are football weekends that get paid for, and vacation homes that get
borrowed. We’re one of the few states that don’t even require
the reporting of gifts to public officials, and that’s a bad situation."
The consensus of those who have witnessed failed revision
efforts is that revision will require a strong governor willing to use
the bully pulpit and a great deal of political capital to break through
the special-interest stranglehold.
"It’s obviously not important enough to the special-interest
people, so it has to become important enough to someone who has the
broader based public good at heart, and that leaves us with the governor,"
said Milo Dakin, a veteran Montgomery lobbyist now representing casino
interests. "Only the governor has that kind of clout, and he’d
have to be a serious believer in his mission to have a remote chance
of success."
What special interests, and many others, fear most is a
constitutional convention composed of delegates who aren’t legislators.
As Dakin explained, the greatest impediment to constitutional revision
is "fear of the unknown," and in a convention of nonpoliticians anything
could happen.
Should the Legislature itself try again to revise the constitution
- and such an effort would probably have to proceed article by article,
or with a constitutional amendment that would allow a wholesale legislative
rewrite - it’s likely that the special interests would be somewhat
more agreeable.
Alfa would not necessarily oppose a modest revision of
the constitution, provided that provisions against raising property
taxes were kept in.
"No doubt you could improve it, shorten it some, modernize
it some, but you’d need to do it in a kind of housecleaning way,"
said John Dorrill, executive director of Alfa.
Mike Martin of AEA said most of that organization’s
directors realize that the constitution is "antiquated" and would not
necessarily oppose a revision that would maintain earmarking of education
funds.
But as for major change - the kind that would greatly advance
home rule and prepare the way for tax reform and education reform -
the resistance would be, in Dakin’s view, "ugly."
Even a modest rewrite would be a struggle.
"If I had to guess," Dakin said, "the constitution will
get a lot longer before it gets any shorter."
Return to: The
Legacy of Misplaced Power - Contents
Next: When Alabama’s
Reformers have Failed
Reprinted with Permission from the Mobile Register.
|
