The past is never dead, it isn’t even past.

Life moves at a little slower pace down here at the end of the dirt road and as temperatures climb, there’s no better place to be than sitting on the front porch with a cold glass of tea. Long, slow afternoons watching the heat radiate off the hay field allow a great deal of time to reflect upon where we find ourselves in Alabama today. The death of over sixty local bills in the most recent legislative session shows that Alabama is still mired in the problems of the past. The essential functions of our municipal and county governments are inextricably linked to the will of the Legislature. Among the bills that died in the Senate this session were bills requesting additional expense allowances by the Lowndes, Perry, Lee and Marshall County Commissions so that these governmental bodies could better serve their local constituencies. Other bills that withered in the waning days of the session sought to set restrictions on the proximity of commercial dirt pits in Mobile County to residences, or to increase court costs in Macon County, or to allow the Russell County Commission to increase sales and use taxes. Why must our local governments seek permission from the Legislature before undertaking even the most mundane tasks? The answer to that question lies in the antiquated 1901 Constitution, but the root causes reach back much further.

The delegates who assembled in Montgomery in the summer of 1901 were faced with numerous problems. Among the most pressing in many delegates’ minds was the proliferation of local laws in the state legislature. In a speech to main body of the convention, Emmett O’Neal, chairman of the committee of local legislation, denounced the evils of local legislation stating, “There is no reform in the constitution we are now framing more important than a check upon the evils of local and special legislation.” The Committee on Local Legislation suggested adopting a measure employed by a number of other states to quell the rise in local legislation. The committee proposed drafting a section that enumerated a list of subjects upon which the legislature was prohibited from passing local, special or private laws. The result was the incorporation of Article IV, §104 into the 1901 Constitution. By adopting the enumerated list, the convention precluded the most effective means of the relieving the burdens of local legislation as the Committee specifically excluded counties and municipalities from the list. An observer of Alabama government noted, “The failure of the Convention to provide for some measure of home rule and to include counties and municipalities in the list of subjects on which local legislation was forbidden opened a wide field for such legislation. Practically all the local legislation passed by the legislature since that time has been made possible by these omissions.” The Convention further curtailed the authority of local government by incorporating into Article XI, Sections 215 and 216 placing limitations on the ability of county and municipal governments to levy taxes.

Why then did the delegates to the Convention lament the ”evils of local legislation” while vesting virtually all power over county and local government in the hands of the legislature. The answer then, as now, was to ensure that a privileged few could subvert the will of the people by centralizing power in Montgomery. The Populist movement that spread throughout Alabama in the late 1880s and early 1890s represented a threat to Bourbon Democrat hegemony. Populism sprang from the agrarian movements that swept into Alabama. Groups such as the Grange and Agricultural Wheel organized both black and white farmers and ultimately began to wield political force, electing members to county offices throughout Alabama and eventually to the legislature. Initially the groups operated within the Democratic Party, but after fraudulent gubernatorial elections in 1892 the Jeffersonian elements of the Democratic Party split and joined with the newly formed Populist Party. They once again nominated Rueben Kolb and in 1894, as in 1892, the election was stolen by fraudulent returns from the Black Belt. Kolb travelled to Montgomery on inauguration day accompanied by several hundred supporters. They marched up Dexter Avenue to the front steps of the Capitol. Amid the tension of police details and the Montgomery Mounted Rifles, Kolb strode up the steps and joined Governor Jones, who refused to allow Kolb to address the crowd. Undaunted, Kolb crossed Bainbridge street and mounted a wagon. One of his supporters shouted, “Go ahead Captain, they may kill you, but you will go down in history as a martyr to the Populistic cause.” Kolb then asserted that he was the rightfully elected governor and urged the legislature to pass an election contest law to prevent such a travesty in the future. He called upon his supporters to avoid violence, but urged that they not pay taxes to the duplicitous state government.

The Populist party eventually dissolved in the late 1890s, but the threat of a local grassroots political movement was still fresh on the minds of the delegates to the Constitutional Convention in the summer of 1901. The influence of that threat is manifest throughout the Constitution of 1901, but it is most evident in the provisions restricting the authority of local government. By removing the ability to make decisions on the local level, Bourbon Democrats sought to prevent threats to their political dominance from the small towns and county governments that had played such a vital role in the development of agrarian solidarity. In a democracy, all power is derived from the consent of the governed, but through the Constitution of 1901, the political oligarchy of the day maligned the democratic process by placing the authority over the masses in the hands of the few.

The question that comes to mind is why do we continue to allow our state government to operate in such a fashion? Why do we as Alabamians, who hold the democratic process so dear, continue to allow the inherent powers of local government to be usurped by the legislature? Maybe it’s just the heat or the steady hum of mosquitoes, but out here on the front porch the answer seems mighty clear.