The County Line
- Spring Issue 2006
Six counties vote on self-governance powers in June
Not to disagree with the statements of our Association president printed elsewhere in this magazine - certainly a staff member should be smart enough not to do that - but the 2006 elections may be remembered for something in addition to new voting machines and a six-week runoff.
At least that could be the case in about six counties.
During the June primary election, rural voters in six Alabama counties will be the first to go to the polls to vote on whether to grant their county commissions the authority to address local health and safety problems such as unsanitary sewage, litter, pollution, junkyards and noise. The votes are the result of county commissions taking the initiative to place this question on the ballot at the earliest possible time.
Should the voters in those counties say "yes" to the question, then the commissioners in those counties will be the first to tackle the implementation of the 2005 act that was passed after years and years of hard work by county officials. The 2005 act allows for a local referendum on the issue of these self-governance powers and prescribes the procedures that counties must follow before the powers can be utilized.
Some might say that it is unfortunate that the powers outlined in the act cannot be exercised without this referendum. But it can also be argued that exercising the powers without a referendum would violate the central principle that led to the passage of the legislation last year - specifically, that local voters should be able to decide what goes on in their local communities.
Now that the act has been passed, the decision rests in the hands of those local voters. And so we find ourselves just a few weeks before the rural residents of Autauga, Dallas, Jackson, Macon, Marshall and Mobile use their collective voice to determine whether or not to empower their local county government to address local health problems.
Most everyone agrees that these kinds of decisions (such as whether or not to regulate junkyards, noise, sewage, pollution and litter) are better made at the courthouse level.
Certainly it is easier for local residents to come to the county courthouse to voice their opinions than to make a trip to Montgomery to attempt to influence the activities of the Alabama Legislature. But the idea of shifting the decisions to the local level and the utilization of a local referendum are "new" ideas in Alabama.
At this point, we really don't know how the voters will react to this new idea. There are, after all, a number of things about the local referendums that make it difficult to "handicap."
First of all, the vote will take place only in the unincorporated areas of each of the counties. The powers can only be exercised in the rural area, so it made perfect sense to only have the rural voters going to the polls.
This approach will, nonetheless, make it very difficult to predict the outcome of the election. One can assume that municipal voters - whose local city government can already exercise these powers - would be very likely to cast a "yes" vote on this question. But in the rural areas; we'll just have to wait and see how the voters will react to granting these powers.
Second, the vote is not on the exercise of any specific power, but on whether or not the act should apply in the county. Once the voters have said "yes" to the application of the new law, then the county commission must conduct public hearings and develop ordinances for the utilization of any of the powers in the act.
The commission is not - even after a "yes" vote - required to exercise any of the powers. The establishment of a program to regulate junkyards, for example, will be purely at the discretion of the county commission. It is assumed that most of the counties will pick one of the powers outlined in the act and establish a program on that matter before moving on to other issues.
Third, the powers outlined in the act are easily misunderstood. As we worked on the passage of this legislation, the hardest obstacle to overcome was a misunderstanding of what the powers represent and how they will be enacted.
The act provides specific exemptions for farm operations, businesses regulated by the Alabama Department of Environmental Management and the Public Service Commission, among others. The act includes a detailed listing of things that counties cannot do - including raise taxes and impose planning and zoning. But one could assume that some misunderstanding on the local level stills exists.
The Association staff has worked hard to provide as much information as possible to those officials on the local level. Detailed information on the issues can be found on the internet at a site established specifically to answer these questions (www.selfgov.net).
Visitors to the "selfgov" web site are greeted by the following words, "For more than 100 years in Alabama, local voters have been blocked because the power to make decisions has largely rested in the halls of the state Legislature in Montgomery. But a new law enacted in 2005 has given Alabama voters the ability to return control of the local communities back to the local level."
We know that many local voters have visited the site to learn more about the issue. Again, we won't know whether or not that educational effort has been successful until election night.
Fourth, and perhaps most troubling, Alabama voters do not have a long history of embracing change. Unfortunately, that statement is at the heart of many failed efforts at reform over the years. Certainly, we hope that the existence of local problems - such as unhealthy sewage, litter and junkyards - will cause voters to look beyond the historical reaction to change in this state.
But no matter what the outcome in Autauga, Dallas, Jackson, Macon, Marshall and Mobile counties, we know that a number of other counties have placed the issue on their ballot for November. So even if the June primary isn't the one that is remembered for the passage of "self-governance" powers in Alabama - there's always November.
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