The County Line - Convention Issue 2003
"Disconnect" Separates
State Government and Voters
Alabama has certainly seen
better days.
The just-completed special
legislative session produced an operating budget that
will keep government open for the next 12 months. And
that's the good news. The bad news is that many services
that some consider "essential" were cut or eliminated.
Some of those cuts will be restored one day, one can assume.
Others are gone forever.
In the aftermath of the defeat
of the Riley Tax Package and the passage of a sliced and
diced state budget, one must wonder what -- if anything
-- we can learn from the last few months.
This is the time of year when
we all like to play "Monday Morning Quaterback."
Whether we are just outside the sidelines of a junior
high school football game, in the stands of a major college
showdown, or in our easy chair watching Monday Night Football,
all of us love to second-guess the decisions of others.
It would be very easy to second-guess
many of the decisions that were made by those developing
the $1.2 billion tax package that was rejected by voters
on Sept. 9, 2003. Some of the issues that contributed
to the defeat of the tax package were obvious, others
are more difficult to unmask.
No one can argue that $1.2
billion is a lot of money. So the easiest criticism is
to say the package was too large. Others have hinged the
defeat on the type of taxes that were being proposed,
the people who would pay the increases, the complexity
of the entire package, the quality of the media campaign
organized by those supporting the tax, or the timing of
the vote so early in the Riley administration. The list
of "second guesses" could go on and on.
But do those observations really
get at the heart of the defeat of the proposal? Experience
says that the problems went much deeper than something
as simple as the timing of the vote or the size of the
tax proposal. Had the referendum been a close one, then
the simple things could have been blamed. But the resounding
"no" delivered by the voters should be reason
for a more detailed examination of where this state is
going and where it has been.
Looking for an explanation
turned my attention to a publication from 1994. Almost
a decade ago, the state's top survey researchers at that
time (Patrick R. Cotter, James Glen Stovall and Samuel
H. Fisher, III) published a book entitled Disconnected:
Public Opinion and Politics in Alabama. I have used
many of the survey results in the book for educational
sessions designed for newly-elected county officials.
For the book paints a very sobering picture of the public's
real view of elected officials.
The crux of the book - based
on a series of public opinion surveys - is Alabama's state
political structure was, at least at that time, out of
step with the wishes of the voters. The actions of the
state government, according to the survey results, are
"disconnected" from the wishes of the people.
For example, a 1988 survey
showed that 38 percent of Alabama citizens felt that state
government was doing an "excellent" or "good"
job. The number dropped to 23 percent by 1992 and then
to 21 percent by 1993. And, perhaps most disturbing, was
that during that time frame there was not a single demographic
group in which a majority of the respondents said they
were satisfied with the performance of state government.
"Normally," the writers
said, "a state government can be expected to please
at least some segment of the population. This is not the
case for the Alabama state government."
If the voters and the state
elected officials were aiming in different directions
back then, it seems that very little has happened to lower
that level of "disconnect" in the last decade.
Perhaps, as mentioned earlier,
the resounding vote of "no" does go far beyond
any of the television commercials aired by those opposed
to the tax increase and any of the perceived "mistakes"
in the design of the plan. It could be, one must suppose,
that the project was doomed from the start -- perhaps
doomed as way back as 1994 or even earlier.
Later in the book, there is
a detailed explanation of how the "disconnect"
between state government and the people of Alabama makes
it very difficult to solve many of the major problems
faced by the state. With all the credit to the authors'
insight, here is their explanation of why Alabama has
a hard time solving its major problems:
"Because of this high
level of distrust, Alabama may have positioned itself
in a deepening cycle in which it is increasingly difficult
to solve the state's problems.
"The typical pattern
of this cycle begins with the recognition that a problem,
such as poor public schools, exists within the state.
In most cases, the recognition of a problem eventually
results in some well-intentioned group or individual proposing
ways to solve or at least alleviate the issue. Most of
these proposals require some action on the part of the
state government.
"Alabama citizens,
however, are highly distrustful of the state government.
Even though they may recognize the existence of a problem
and in principle believe that the government has a responsibility
to solve it, they question the ability and willingness
of the state government to actually implement the proposed
solution. Faced with a proposal that has at best mixed
public support, the typical response of the state government
is to take no action regarding the problem.
"The problem continues.
This continuation, in conjunction with the inaction of
state government, makes citizens even more cynical and
distrustful. As a result, citizens become even less likely
to support future proposals which require state government
action. Thus as the cycle repeats itself, the likelihood
of the state ever addressing its problems becomes less
and less."
That analysis could easily
have been written on the morning after the September 9
vote.
So, again, what can be learned from the vote? Will the
cuts in state services break this cycle of distrust or
throw it into an even deeper plunge?
The measure of our state government
now in the early stages of the 21st century will not be
the defeat of the Riley Package in 2003 -- for the survey
results showed that its defeat should have been easy to
predict -- but rather what is done after the defeat of
the Riley Package.
The Alabama Legislature will
return to work in February and at that time will be asked
to craft a state operating budget which will be even tighter
than the one passed in September. The changes proposed
at that time will have a dramatic impact on county government,
state government and the citizens that depend on those
services.
If there was a lesson to be
learned from this fall, it is that the public's trust
must be restored. But how that restoration can occur,
is an even bigger question.
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