RSS Feed
|
|
|
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
Publisher's Comments Alabama citizens can breathe easier sometime today (Thursday) or perhaps early Friday morning. That's because Alabama legislative clocks sometimes don't keep the same time as the rest of the world. Thursday, June 7 is the last day of the 2007 regular session of the Alabama Legislature. A total of 1,476 bills were introduced this session, 963 in the House and 513 in the Senate. As of last week, 212 bills had been passed and sent to Gov. Riley for his signature. About 200 bills could conceivably pass on the final day. If all 200 are approved- and they probably won't be and shouldn't be- that is about a 27 percent success rate for all of the bills introduced. Of course, it isn't a bad thing that a lot of these bills never made it too far through the process. There are a lot of laws on the books now and just passing new laws for the sake of new laws makes no sense. Frankly, we'd probably be better off if fewer laws were passed each legislative session. Still, there were a few good ones this session that should have been approved. One was an attempt to adjust the state's unjust tax system to make it fairer to lower income citizens. It didn't get anywhere. That's a shame. Another would have banned the confusing and hard to trace transfers (money laundering is what it really is) between political action committees. Many lawmakers have long touted that, yes, PAC reforms are needed and they vowed that they would pass them. They vowed and vowed but nothing has ever happened because they benefit from the crazy setup that hides political contributions. The legislation died again this session. (To be fair, the House did pass the measure but it bogged down in the Senate where many other bills died due to the infighting of the nearly evenly split chamber.) Constitutional reform bit the dust again, too. Legislators weren't called on to change the Constitution, only to give Alabama citizens a right to decide at the polls if they favored a constitutional convention so that delegates could be elected to draft a new document to replace the outdated 1901 edition. But even after any new constitution was written, voters would have to give final approval for its adoption. Legislator said a convention of elected citizens couldn't be trusted to write a constitution, that they could do a better job. They didn't elaborate that they, too, are elected by the same voters that would elect convention delegates. Legislators were egged on and intimidated by special interests that want to maintain the status quo in this state. Have you noticed that almost everything tied to the word "reform" has a hard time making it in Alabama? We do love to maintain the status quo. Legislation that would have prevented legislators from working (or at least receiving paychecks) from two-year colleges and K-12 schools didn't make it out the gate either. On the other hand, legislators did approve 62 percent raises for themselves as well as more modest raises for teachers and state employees- but good enough to keep these powerful voting groups pacified for another year. A hefty education budget was approved also to keep the AEA and its powerful leader Paul Hubbert happy as well as a general fund budget. A lot of pork was passed around, too. State Sen. Lowell Barron, D-Fyffe, may have had to step down as president pro tem of the Senate but he still pulled in $209,000 in bacon for his district, including sizeable allocations for Fyffe's UFO Days festival and the Henagar Potato Festival in Fort Payne.
All in all, it was a typical Alabama legislative session. We should all say a prayer of thanksgiving that it is just about over.
|
for larger version       |
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
