Constitution Reform: Progress If Not Success
I think the Tuscaloosa News today has it right on constitutional reform:
Constitutional reform, to no one’s surprise, is dead in the 2006 Legislature.
[…snip…]
But constitutional reform may yet prove to be the long-distance champion of issues in the Alabama Legislature.
[Snip…] hope springs eternal. Sen. Ted Little, a proponent of the vote, says the reform movement’s momentum will carry it over into 2007.
I remember saying to an advocate for Landlord-Tenant legislation a few years back that she must be disappointed that the bill died in the Legislature. She told me that actually they were glad that it had made it to the House floor because that was something to build on. The year before it had passed Committee but not gotten to an actual floor vote, and the year before that it had not passed the Committee. (I hope you understand that if the precise facts of this story from my memory are a little in doubt, that the truth of the story is not.)
So it shall be for constitutional reform - if not success, then progress. Constitutional reform should happen eventually if people who care about it are relentless about educating people, recruiting allies, and knocking on the legislature’s door.
I agree with those who say that any progress on controversial legislation is meaningful. Sen. Little likely had more success than he had expected this session because he was quoted early on saying he didn’t think the constitutional reform bill would advance this year and that he introduced it just to keep the issue alive.
The sequence of small steps toward getting legislation approved which was presented in this post mirrors the slow and tedious progress on the issue I have spent many thousands of hours working on (visit my website devoted to that one issue @ http://www.doctoriq.com) over the last 2+ years – helping to make Alabama become the 25th state with an Initiative and Referendum [I&R] process for voters to have at their disposal to introduce needed reform and accountability legislation (which the legislature refuses to pass) that would bypass the legislature and the governor and be put on the ballot as a referendum for voters to vote up or down.
I&R legislation has been introduced numerous times over the years, and until the 2005 legislative session it had never even been voted on by a committee, but it was approved by the House of Representatives Constitution and Elections committee then. In the current session the same bill was introduced as HB325, again was unanimously passed by the same committee, and actually was put on the calendar and sent to the floor for open debate. After about an our of debate, Representative Mike Ball knew – from the strong opposition of legislators, who want to keep every ounce of power in their hands while their lobbyist, labor leader, and other “Big Mule” friends that control them shove re-election funds into their pockets — that his bill had no chance of being approved, so he withdrew it. But, before he did, he got a recorded vote on a Budget Isolation Resolution that would have to be approved before a vote on the bill itself could be requested. By doing so, the 22 legislators who voted “No” exposed themselves as being against I&R, which essentially means that they don’t trust their constituents to use I&R wisely and not at their expense. The names of those 22 are shown @ http://www.doctoriq.com/report.htm.
Anyway, it was another step down a long path toward a better state government, and something to build on in the next few years. Hopefully, by 2010, we will succeed.
I apologize for posting such a long comment, but I think I&R is an important issue that the public needs to learn about, and then demand from their legislators.
Comment by Don — April 1, 2006 @ 11:45 am