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Constitution redo overdue
The Huntsville
Times
Sunday, August 30, 2009
Could 2010 be the year Alabamians break the shackles of the state's repressive, backward, constitution?
It's a long shot given the fact that calls for a new constitution began almost 100 years ago and only a few years after the 1901 - and still current - state constitution was ratified in a shady election.
Then-Gov. Emmett O'Neal, in a passionate speech to the Alabama Legislature on Jan. 15, 1915, deadpanned that "no real or permanent progress is possible in Alabama until the present fundamental law is thoroughly revised and adapted to meet present standards." He made the pitch hoping to drum up support for a new constitution. It didn't work.
Similar demands for a rewrite have been pushed through the decades, again to no avail.
Some things take awhile for the Legislature to grasp the importance of.
Fast forward to Huntsville last Thursday where a citizen-drafted mock state constitution was unveiled. The document was signed at Alabama Constitution Village where Alabama officially became a state under the original 1819 constitution. The 1901 version reformers have been trying to replace is the sixth and most egregious one, written specifically to disenfranchise blacks and poor people and to funnel power in Montgomery at the expense of local governmental control.
It is phone-book thick and burdened with 800 or so amendments. Its centralized control provisions are so burdensome that counties and cities often need legislative permission to tackle even the simplest of issues. Fayette County, for instance, needed authorization from the Legislature to establish a beaver bounty to help control flooding on rural farmland. When the reward began to bust county coffers, another state law was needed to repeal the beaver bounty act.
Local bills often comprise half of the hundreds of bills the Alabama Legislature deals with in a given legislative session. That focus distracts lawmakers from tackling pressing statewide matters like education, prison or Medicare issues.
The mock constitution is unenforceable but its writers hope its existence will spur the Legislature to approve a referendum authorizing a rewrite.
If a diverse group of 105 citizen delegates from across Alabama can write a new state government blueprint over the course of a summer, isn't it reasonable to expect the task could be repeated in a real state constitutional convention?
The grassroots Alabama Citizens for Constitutional Reform celebrated the mock constitution Thursday at an awards luncheon following the ceremonial signing. ACCR activists hope to convince the Legislature in 2010 to approve a measure that would allow voters to cast ballots calling for a constitutional rewrite. If passed, delegates elected by the people can formulate a constitution for the people. The final draft would then be voted on in another statewide election.
Noted Alabama historian Wayne Flynt said after the ACCR luncheon that Alabamians could help the movement by voting against every constitutional amendment from now on. Voters in Louisiana, whose outdated Southern-style constitution included many of the same racist and regressive provisions as Alabama's, did that and it brought local government practically to a standstill, he said.
"The Alabama Constitution is its own worst enemy," Flynt said.
We wish the reform movement well. And we hope the Alabama Legislature is listening.
For more information on ACCR and the Alabama constitution, visit: www.constitutionALreform.org.
By John Peck for the editorial board. E-mail: john.peck@htimes.com.
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