Dem gubernatorial candidates face off
By Jennifer J. Foster
Published: July 2, 2009
If you caught “Week in Review” on APT Friday, you might remember me mentioning the pending forum involving the Democratic candidates for governor, U.S. Rep. Artur Davis and Agriculture Commissioner Ron Sparks.
The Dothan Chamber of Commerce hosted the forum Monday. As expected, conversation revolved around economic development, transportation funding, what to do about PACT and how to handling gambling and the proliferation of electronic bingo in various areas of the state.
But then there was this, as reported by the Dothan Eagle:
On State Constitutional Reform ...
Davis: Supports a constitutional convention to reform the Alabama Constitution with delegates to the convention elected by 2012.
“We need a document for who we are today and not who we were in 1901,” Davis said.
Sparks: Urges caution. He says constitutional reform should be handled in smaller chunks.
“When you understand how Montgomery works, you have to be careful about opening up the whole constitution to Montgomery, Alabama,” Sparks said.
Arrrrgh!! I am so SICK of this condescending attitude that Alabamians don’t, or can’t, “understand how Montgomery works.“ Hey, Ron Sparks: We completely understand how Montgomery works. And that’s one of the myriad reasons why we want reform: We want to take some of these things off your hands, because we don’t trust you with them anymore.
I despise this argument espoused by most anti-reform politicians. Once again, I will ask: How is it that they can trust our judgment when it comes to electing them, but not when it comes to constitutional reform?
Get behind reform, or get out of the way.
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Posted by ( DonS ) on July 02, 2009 at 4:03 pm
I might add, that the majority of the members of the Alabama legislature rely on (“trust”, if you will) voters to keep them in office where we taxpayers pay their salaries, but they don’t trust us enough to give us a voice in the government that we own by passing Representative Mike Ball’s Initiative and Referendum (I&R) constitutional amendment to make Alabama the 25th state to have an I&R process for voters to use when it becomes necessary to pass REAL reform and accountability legislation. I think the necessity of doing that has existed for many years, and I invite your readers to visit my website to learn about I&R @ http://www.doctoriq.com.
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Posted by ( DonS ) on July 02, 2009 at 3:44 pm
You may completely understand how Montgomery works, and I may at least partially understand how Montgomery works, but I submit that the average Alabama voter has no clue at all about how Montgomery works. That would be fine and dandy if the average voters didn’t determine the results of elections.
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