The case for a new Alabama constitution

Yahoo

27-01-2025

Snow falls on the Alabama State Capitol in Montgomery amid rare winter weather on Jan. 21, 2025. Alabama state government operates under the state's 1901 constitution, which centralizes most political power in Montgomery and limits the ability of local governments to make decisions without legislative approval. (Alander Rocha/Alabama Reflector)
There's a strange limbo in the weeks before the Alabama Legislature returns to work.
You know what legislators should focus on. Living in Alabama makes that obvious. You can guess where their focus will be based on what they say in the weeks leading up to the gavel drop.
But honestly? No one knows anything until the first day of the session. In fact, the drift of the session may not be clear for weeks afterward.
So we wait.
And not just fools like me who willingly enter that mold-filled building on South Union Street. Local governments sometimes have to wait up to nine months for legislators to make major decisions about their operations. School district officials cross their fingers as the state education budget goes through the legislative process, hoping nothing gets cut.
Every decision must go through Montgomery. And many of those go through unelected lobbyists and special interest groups first, who get an unofficial veto over the public business.
It's a real irony. A state government that howls at the slightest federal intervention keeps a tight lock on Alabama's local governments and school districts.
County and city governments only have the power Goat Hill allows them to have. Property tax caps make state funding critical to most public schools, especially those in rural districts. That gives legislators lots of control over areas that either lack the power to levy local taxes or lack the business development that would make that practical.
That's all thanks to the 1901 state constitution, an authoritarian document that violated the U.S. Constitution; stole the vote from Black Alabamians and snatched it from poor white Alabamians a few years after it went into effect.
The overt racism is no longer there, perhaps. But the 1901 constitution's vision of a small clique of elites running the state free from public approval is largely how Alabama government still works.
So even though a statewide lottery would be popular (not with me, but I'm only one of 5.1 million), you don't get to vote on it.
Most Alabamians seem OK with Medicaid expansion. But not our leaders, who knit their brows and sigh at the cost as they shovel billions of dollars into an ever-more expensive prison.
If polls are correct, a majority of people living here don't like Alabama's effective abortion ban. But the Legislature, which only listens to hardcore Republican voters, will keep it in place.
You know what would address these problems?
A new state constitution.
Yes, yes, I know. The powerful interests that dominate Alabama government aren't going to surrender their privileges without a fight. Electing people to a constitutional convention could be messy. There's no guarantee that what would emerge from a convention would be better than what we have. And even a decent new governing document would face a blitz of attacks before voters got a chance to weigh in on it.
The challenges are many.
But think about what we could gain.
The pieties about property tax caps in Montgomery belie the fact that they serve wealthy landowners, particularly those who make their money cutting down trees. Low property taxes are good for them. They're terrible for rural communities with small tax bases and limited commercial development. Their schools struggle to operate with low or nonexistent local revenue.
So give those local governments and the people who elect them the power to run things. The ability to decide what education should look like in their neighborhoods.
Maybe those governments will raise taxes. Maybe voters will punish them for that.
Or maybe they'll be happy to see their children's teachers get the resources they need to educate their students. In both cases, it will be living, breathing Alabamians making those choices. Not dead planters from the Edwardian era.
But let's think bigger.
A 1956 constitutional amendment passed amid white hysteria over Brown v. Board of Education said there is no right to a public education in our state. That language needs to go, if only to force our government to fund schools.
Our Legislature has spent the last few years doing everything to make voting hard. Outlawing drop boxes. Banning private money to support election operations (without allocating funding to make up for that). Criminalizing forms of absentee ballot assistance.
A new constitution should include an affirmative right to vote, similar to what scholar Rick Hasen has suggested, one that prevents legislators from making the exercise of your constitutional rights an intimidating ordeal.
There's more. Make it harder for the Legislature to override a gubernatorial veto. Abolish the anti-democratic budget isolation amendment, which effectively requires bills to get 60% of the vote (not a simple majority) to pass. Turn the state judiciary from elections to appointments.
Will this make Alabama a utopia? Of course not. Systemic racism and poverty can only be addressed by political will, whatever framework of government you have.
But empowering people to address those problems will help us develop solutions.
And best of all, it won't make us wait on the whims of a part-time Legislature that all too often takes its cues from a small group of elites.
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