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Stand and Deliver Promises must be kept
On August 16 of last year, the Democrats held press conferences in four Alabama cities to announce their platform called a "Covenant for the Future." The Democrats were represented by the Speaker of the House, Seth Hammett, along with House Majority Leader Ken Guin and Senator Zeb Little of Cullman. Included in the Democrats' covenant were plans that were practically identical to commitments made by Republican legislative candidates and that were also key components of Gov. Bob Riley's "Plan 2010." In all three plans were some issues that are critical to establishing honest and accountable government such as banning PAC-to-PAC transfers, requiring registered lobbyists to report all expenditures related to appointed or elected officials, and eliminating pork barrel spending from the state's budget. The "Covenant for the Future" promised that in the first 10 days of the next regular session, Democrats will introduce legislation and ensure a vote to enact their plan. Given that these same promises were part of both the Republicans' campaign platform and that of Gov. Riley as well, it would appear that these measures to make Alabama's government more honest and accountable should pass with near-unanimous support. Even former Lt. Gov. Lucy Baxley included banning PAC-to-PAC transfers as part of her gubernatorial campaign platform. Political action committees (PACs) were originally intended to be a legitimate way for various groups to pool their campaign contributions in order to increase their influence with candidates. However, over the years PACs have become the means of choice of various special interests for disguising the source of political contributions to their favorite candidates and for getting around Alabama's limits on corporate campaign contributions. There are some special interest groups in Alabama, such as pro-gambling groups, the AEA, and pro-abortion groups, that are unpopular with many voters. Consequently, some political candidates are unwilling to risk angering blocks of voters by taking money from them. But far too many politicians are more than willing to take all the money they can from unpopular sources as long as they can keep the voters from finding out about it. Even though Alabama's campaign finance laws require full disclosure of all campaign contributions, transferring campaign money through multiple PACs is an easy way to keep the public from finding out to whom the politicians are really beholden. This loophole has led to the formation of literally hundreds of PACs that exist expressly for the purpose of laundering political money which gives the people running these PACs tremendous political clout and enormous influence on state government after the elections. Fortunately, largely due to the media's coverage of the problem, the need to ban PAC-to- PAC transfers is on the minds of many Alabama voters. As a result, both political parties and both candidates for governor listed banning PAC-to-PAC transfers as a top legislative priority. The same thing is true for another major issue related to improper influence of state officials, the ridiculous practice of allowing lobbyists to spend up to $250 per day on a state official without having to disclose the expenditure. Under current law, lobbyists are allowed to wine and dine and/or give gifts to an elected or appointed state official without reporting it to the State Ethics Commission as long as they don't spend more than $250 per day. Finally, Alabama's appropriations budgets are larded up each year with millions of dollars in wasteful pork money that is doled out to legislators through their discretionary accounts. In essence, pork money is the politicians' way of getting taxpayers to underwrite their political payoffs to their supporters. As a result, Alabama has wasted millions of dollars on pork barrel projects when the money was desperately needed to fund other legitimate programs. Here again, the Democrats, Republicans and the Governor all agreed that, if elected, one of their top legislative priorities would be banning pass-through pork. The bottom line is that during last year's election, Alabama's Democrats, Republicans and Governor Riley made promises that were almost identical, promises they should be honor-bound to keep, particularly the Democrats. With overwhelming majorities in both Houses of the Alabama State Legislature, they will determine whether any of these reforms are enacted, whether any of these promises are kept. Therefore, it is primarily their responsibility to honor those promises; it is up to them to stand and deliver.
Gary Palmer is president of the Alabama Policy Institute, a non-partisan, non-profit research and education organization dedicated to the preservation of free markets, limited government and strong families, which are indispensable to a prosperous society.
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