— Legislative leaders are predicting Gov. Bob Riley will have to declare 12.5 percent proration of the General Fund Budget.
— In order to save money, the state might reduce the number of days students attend classes from 180 days to 175 days.
— The state’s prepaid tuition plan is on its last legs and might have to cease functioning unless the Legislature comes up with $200 million or so for a short-term fix.
— Unsafe bridges dot the state, but there is little or no money to repair them. In the Birmingham, area traffic has been rerouted around one such bridge, limiting access to an interstate highway.
— Potholes scar roads all around the state. From interstates to state highways to county roads it can be a bone-jarring experience to travel in Alabama.
— Prisons are overcrowded and understaffed.
— Several offices of the Alabama Legislature are damaged and in dire need of renovation.
Now, want to guess which of those problems is being solved? You got it, those offices in Montgomery are being redone and refurnished to the tune of about $500,000 of taxpayers’ money.
To be fair, $500,000 is but a blip on the list of monies we need in Alabama. But that expenditure is an example of how well the Legislature can work when its own best interests are at stake.
This is a political year in Alabama, with a crowded field running for the Republican nomination for governor and two major candidates seeking the Democratic nomination. This plethora of candidates should be offering real, workable solutions to those problems listed above, and the many others that have chronically afflicted Alabama.
They don’t. They offer nothing but the old tried and true buzzwords that keep getting candidates elected in Alabama. The names change, but little else has down through the years.
Their campaign slogans are basically meaningless. According to what we have read and seen on television, our candidates will cut waste, and stop spending. They will fight the teachers union. They will NOT increase taxes. They will develop new jobs and new industry so that everyone in Alabama who wants a job will have one. They will run this state as a business, and they will fight Washington at every turn.
None of that will solve the problems we face in Alabama.
What is needed in this state is for those who have power to look at themselves in the mirror and ask if they have used that power for the good of our citizens. The true answer in most cases is that they have done a good job for those people who provide them the money to buy TV time and run around the state offering nonsensical solutions to real problems.
It is out of fashion these days to maintain that government has a vital role to play in our lives. Good people can disagree about the extent of that role.
It seems to us, however, that most all would agree that funding education for our children should be a priority. Yet, parents get a letter from our schools each year listing the items our children should bring to school — items like toilet paper and paper towels. If we can’t stock bathroom supplies, how can we educate children?
Who would question that part of government’s role is to provide safe, passable roads for its citizenry? Funding for that is a mishmash of state, local and federal funds. Alabama, it seems, is always short of those funds, regardless of their source.
Public safety should also be an area we can all agree is a primary role of government. Yet we ask our underpaid public safety officers to perform dangerous, difficult jobs in environments that are not safe for them or those who are in jail. We have tried locking them up and throwing away the key, and that doesn’t work. And that approach costs money, money we don’t have in Alabama.
It’s hard to overcome the cynicism that is so very evident in the campaign slogans of our would-be governors. But it’s not too much to ask that at least one of them overcomes that jaded view of our state and offer real choices to the people of Alabama.
If we had real choices to make, it might surprise us all what we could accomplish.
Well, that's a given, but seemingly a rarity if found at all. I believe we read an earlier opinion with a statement of fact that Alabama holds a savings account, currently with 2.5 BILLION dollars. What power in Alabama governs it's spending? (Just askin')