What’s the purpose of having state senators and representatives?I don’t ask in a mean way. Or silly. Or civics lesson-ish.
They gathered this week in Montgomery to organize. This is an ideal time to ask the question nobody else does: What’s the Alabama Legislature for?
We take the answer for granted.
All the news about the Legislature is over issues of who’s in charge and how much does the job pay.
I want to learn what the power brokers are going to use their authority for and who the legislators want to benefit.
Reporters told us the state Senate was a battleground between the top dog Democrat and the top dog Republican governor. The lieutenant governor wanted her place too.
We’re supposed to care. Has anyone told you, though, how the outcome will make your life better?
The governor-elect ran on some broad reform ideas. Now he needs to convince us all about a specific set of bills so good, they will command passage.
Then it won’t matter who’s the boss lawmaker. It’s hard to vote against an idea when it has the people united behind it.
Why do politicians stop selling their agenda after the election and start quibbling over who’s in charge? I think they forget the People they represent.
A prominent representative proposed we pay legislators more. Then a study came out showing Alabama taxes its poor more than 40 other states.
The pay raise seems dead for now. Yet I’d be willing to pay our lawmakers more if they’d reform taxes. Make the revenue system both moral and efficient. That’s worth a raise. But the Alabama voter hasn’t hit upon performance-based pay for politicians.
A couple of senators told me personally they wanted to replace the top senator, partly because he rides in a state car and hires a $140,000-a-year assistant. When I asked one senator what he wanted to do instead for the good of the people, it seemed he wanted his own car and to hire his own overpaid assistant.
Politicians are locked into their habits. We the People are not. One way to break out of the rut is with a media development called Public Journalism.
Editors, broadcasters and reporters could form shadow legislative delegations of real citizens in every community and converse with them about a People’s Agenda that has to do with our lives instead of our politicians’ careers.
Publish and broadcast that conversation side-by-side with the report from Montgomery.
State associations for newspapers and broadcasters could even gather all these shadow delegations together into a big shadow Legislature with the help of universities. Let the governor sell his plan there.
This legislature-of-the-mind would be revolution without bloodshed. And the ideas straight from the people would let the traditional senators and representatives know what’s on the public mind.
Public Journalism would end up answering my question. I think it would tell us the Legislature isn’t much worth anything if it doesn’t work for the People’s Agenda instead of more power and pay for legislators.
