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By Bob Johnson
The Associated Press
August 16, 2001

MONTGOMERY, Ala. (AP) -- The group leading the push for a new Alabama constitution wants the document written in a statewide convention and not by the Legislature.

   "The people of Alabama, through a convention of their elected delegates, should be the ones to write a new constitution," Thomas Corts, president of Alabama Citizens for Constitutional Reform, said at a news conference Thursday.

   The organization has been pushing for a new document to replace the state's 1901 Constitution for more than a year, but had not previously endorsed a method for writing it.

   A "convention of citizens" would not be as likely to fall to the pressure of special interest groups as would members of the Legislature, Corts said. He said Alabama voters also might be more likely to ratify a Consititution written at a citizens' convention.

   "As citizens become more aware, that might lead them to be more positive when they vote," Corts said.

   State Rep. Mac Gipson, R-Prattville, has introduced a bill in the Legislature for the past several years calling for a statewide constitutional convention. He said Thursday he is glad to see Corts' organization getting behind the idea of a convention.

   "I think the convention is the only way this has a chance of getting done," Gipson said.

   "We have proven the last two years that we can't do it legislatively." He was referring to efforts in the Legislature to rewrite two of the least controversial sections of the constitution.

   "We couldn't even get that through both houses of the Legislature," Gipson said.

   An opponent of the effort to rewrite the Constitution, Joyce Perrin of Tuscaloosa, said she's worried about what kind of document delegates to a convention would write.

   "They can do anything they want to do at a convention. There's not a whole lot that's wrong with the Constitution that needs to be rewritten," said Perrin, a member of the Association for Judeo-Christian Values. She plans to debate Corts today during a meeting of the West Alabama Leadership Forum at Stillman College in Tuscaloosa.

   Opponents of a new constitution have said it might be used to legalize gambling and to raise taxes. Corts said he can't imagine elected delegates to a convention legalizing gambling.

   "I certainly would not be behind this if I thought that was true," said Corts, president of Southern Baptist-owned Samford University in Birmingham.

   Gipson said delegates to a convention would be more likely to keep taxes low and gambling illegal than would the Legislature.

   "A panel of citizens would be less likely to approve gambling. The citizens have already said they don't want that," Gipson said, referring to the defeat two years ago of a proposed statewide lottery. "And I don't forsee most folks I talk to putting new taxes in the constitution."

   At the news conference Thursday, Corts endorsed several basic principles his group would like to see in the new constitution. He said the new document should keep the preamble to the 1901 Constitution, which invokes "the favor and guidance of Almighty God."

   Corts said he also favors keeping the current Judicial Article to the Constitution, that was approved by state voters in 1973, and a statement of citizen rights similar to the Bill of Rights in the U.S. Constitution.

   Perrin said she's not sure those principles would survive a convention.

  "If you open the Constitution up to a convention, there's no guarantee any of that will be in it when they finish."

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