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Opinion January 6, 2002 Former Mississippi Gov. Ray Mabus talked to a Leadership Alabama class years ago about the "tyranny of low expectations," the choke chain around the neck of his state and ours that suffocates them. How can citizens aspire to and expect greatness when they've enjoyed so little of it? Especially when our so-called leaders, by and large, would rather suffocate than unleash any great expectations? How's this for low expectations? The 2002 regular session of the Alabama Legislature begins Tuesday, and House Speaker Seth Hammett frets that tight budgets may make it difficult for lawmakers to grant election-year pay raises to teachers and state employees. His priorities for the session don't exactly seek to overthrow the tyranny of low expectations. They include budgets, which have to be passed every year; congressional redistricting, which didn't get done last year in a special session called for that reason; some needed legislation, such as a graduated driver's license system for teens, voter identification, changing the form of execution from the electric chair to lethal injection, and regulating "pre-need" funeral arrangements (Alabama is the only state without such regulations). Even Hammett's big-ticket item, constitutional reform, is limited to letting the Legislature for the fourth straight year attempt to rewrite mostly noncontroversial articles in the 1901 Constitution. Where is the vision? The leadership? You won't find them on the legislative agenda. Instead, Hammett says, "I think everybody is going to want to get in here and get their business done and get out as early as they can." After all, they want to get re-elected. But exactly why should voters return these lawmakers to office for another four years? How have they made Alabama a measurably better place to live? What have they done to earn $30,000-plus a year in their part-time jobs? Voters need to ask these questions, because a lot of the Legislature will be hard-pressed to answer them. Just because it's an election year shouldn't mean the Legislature takes yet another pass on tackling this state's major problems. Why not pass a bill, as required in the grievously defective 1901 Constitution, that would give voters their say on a citizens convention to rewrite the constitution? The Legislature, controlled by special interests looking out for themselves, has no business even trying. Why not shore up education funding further, since schools are still down more than a quarter of a billion dollars lost because of forced cuts to the budget last year? They can start by getting rid of the $12 million in pork that regularly lards the budget, and by looking for innovative ways to save schools money, even if it angers teachers' union boss Paul Hubbert. And while they're looking for new revenue, why not overhaul the state tax system to make it fairer, more stable and predictable? After all, by passing tax increases in the special session in December, lawmakers already have set themselves up as targets for no-new-taxes opponents. Hammett says he expects tax reform to be on the agenda when newly elected lawmakers come to Montgomery in 2003. But that's what we always hear from legislative leaders: In the first year after elections, look for a bold agenda. They said it in 1999. In 1995. In 1991 ... Why keep believing them? Why wait through another year of low expectations? 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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