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Opinion October 22, 2001 Notice what’s been happening to the state’s education budget of late. One week the prediction is that schools will be short $120 million; the next week, it’s $170 million. That’s a sickening, scary trend in a state that needs at least $1.3 billion more simply to provide schoolchildren with an “adequate” education. Gov. Don Siegelman intends to call yet another special session to “fix” things, but he’s not likely to willingly break his no-new-taxes promise, and he doesn’t really have a plan he’s even comfortable sharing with the public or lawmakers. That’s only the education budget. Just about every service the state is obligated to provide from state troopers patrolling the highways to protecting children from abuse and neglect, from guarding prisons to making sure state parks buildings aren’t falling down is up against the wall where money is concerned. It’s an ongoing crisis that our public officials are afraid to face head on, even as we close in on an election year where they must be held accountable by voters who have a right to expect more. Even when determined, conscientious local leaders tire of waiting for the state to act and attempt to go it on their own say, raise local taxes for schools or services they’re shackled to Montgomery. The culprit is Alabama’s archaic constitution, passed by fraud at the turn of the 20th century, and continuing as a fraud after the turn of the 21st. Alabama desperately needs a new state charter; the racist, embarrassing constitution oppressing us now was designed to hold people back and to keep big-moneyed special interests in charge. In that, it has worked wonderfully. But the state is paying a devastating price, one that gets steeper each year we fail to jettison the hammerlocking, bloated document that keeps Alabama from even imagining its potential. Most of our state’s problems can be traced directly to a constitution that earmarks so many education dollars there’s no room to maneuver; that forces schools to depend on wobbly sales taxes which hit the poor and middle-class families hardest; that doesn’t allow local governments to rule themselves even on many strictly local issues. Fixing Alabama’s perpetual problems means fixing Alabama’s confounding constitution. Siegelman claims to understand that now, and many lawmakers pay lip service to rewriting the document. During September’s special legislative session, lawmakers took a small step by passing a proposed constitutional amendment that will allow voters to have the final say on whether the state gets a new constitution. It’s time to take more substantial steps. A conference on Tuesday, “Why Alabama Can’t Wait,” at 9 a.m. at the Richard Scrushy Center in Birmingham, will focus on the strategy for rewriting Alabama’s lousy constitution. Sponsored by several groups, including the Citizens for Constitutional Reform and the Birmingham Area Chamber of Commerce, the conference is an opportunity for state leaders, from the governor on down, to find out more about how to renew our state charter. There is value in knowing which public officials attend the conference, so we’ll be watching closely. The news gets worse each week and, the cold, hard truth is, Alabama can’t wait. Return to: Editorials 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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