Don’t you hate it when reporters bury the lede? From my local daily:
But Roger Bedford, D-Russellville, Senate General Fund budget committee chairman, said he expects more problems even before the 2011 budget year begins in October.
Bedford said because unemployment is 11 percent and state tax revenue is down, he expects the governor to declare proration for General Fund agencies within 30 to 90 days. He adds he does not expect the Legislature to raise taxes in an election year, especially property taxes.
“Low property taxes are sacred in Alabama,” Bedford said.
And how. The state faces an enormous budget hole and there’s no fat left to trim — as voiced by David Bronner in the lede to the article — yet Alabama refuses to face up to the reality that its racist 1901 constitution enforces low property taxes for the benefit of an extinct southern aristocracy that just didn’t want to pay for their Negro field hands’ education.
How low are property taxes? We’re only #49 because of Louisiana. It would be all right if the state had some other stream of revenue (for example, a lottery or bingo), but we don’t. Aside from football, Alabama’s largest religion is Grover Norquist-style bathtub-drowning non-taxation; and this church is so powerful that our part-time (30 days/year) legislature is too scared to try and change things.
Ask the religion’s representatives why, and you’ll hear that Alabama is a poor state that can’t afford taxes. See how that works?
