Birmingham's not the only city screwed over by the state
This is where all the power is. (Bob Gathany (bgathany@al.com))
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on February 26, 2016 at 3:35 PM, updated February 26, 2016 at 5:00 PM
They say all politics is local.
I wish the same could be said for political power. But it isn't in Alabama.
In Alabama, all political power is in Montgomery.
The people of Birmingham – apparently even the legislators of Birmingham – have no say in their city's future. The state of Alabama has made that crystal clear.
It was clear when ALDOT told us they didn't give a damn about whether we wanted a massive interstate plowing through the heart of downtown.
It was clear when Alabama signed off on a $5.4 billion Northern Beltline so drivers had more ways to avoid visiting the Magic City.
It was clear when the Legislature told the city it had no authority to determine the fates of its monuments, statues and relics.
And it was clear when Montgomery emphatically shut the door on Birmingham's decision to raise its minimum wage.
Last August, the Birmingham City Council voted to increase the city's minimum wage to $10.10 – an increase that they've sped up the timeline for twice. This week, the Alabama state legislature passed a law – championed by Rep. David Faulkner (R-Mountain Brook) and Sen. Jabo Waggoner (R-Vestavia) – stating that cities could not set minimum wages that differed from the state's minimum wage. When Gov. Bentley signed the bill into law the state removed Birmingham voters from the process.
Let's say for the sake of argument that you don't care about a higher minimum wage. Let's just focus on the process.
Birmingham's elected officials supported the increase every step of the way. The city council supported it, the mayor supported, the city's representatives and senators in Montgomery supported it. The change would only effect businesses in Birmingham.
But Montgomery told Birmingham to drop dead. What recourse do the people of Birmingham have left? They don't have the authority to vote Waggoner, Faulkner and the rest of the Alabama legislature out. They only have the authority to vote for their representatives.
The legislature got away with it by claiming the city's economy affected the entire state but it's hard to buy that argument. Even if the doomsday predictions are right and a higher minimum wage causes businesses to flee Birmingham, how does a restaurant moving from Birmingham to Irondale impact Lee County? The city's largest employer, UAB, has already pledged to increase its base wage to $10.10, for anyone worried that we were going to see the University of Alabama at Birmingham at Vestavia Hills, as a result of this bill.
Just to make it absolutely clear: officials that Birmingham residents have no power to elect voided a law that affected only Birmingham.
The system is broken.
It's not shocking, of course. The system is built on a flawed constitution, explicitly designed to decentralize powers of cities like Birmingham, Huntsville and Mobile; and place it in the hands of the planter class. Over time, the planter class has evolved to just mean "anyone with money."
And it's doesn't just hurt Birmingham.
By this same model, the state legislature could pass a law banning cities from offering tax incentives to install Google Fiber, and stunt Huntsville's growth in the process. Or, heck, they could pass a law banning cities from raising their property taxes above a state mandated level.
Montgomery has always been about putting as much power in the hands of the legislature as possible. Which is especially absurd when you consider that most city councils, the governor, mayors, all work year round, while the Alabama legislature does not.
Last year, when the legislature passed its charter school bill, it included a provision that gave the state the authority to grant charters if a city is unwilling to authorize them. This Tuesday, it'll take a frigging constitutional amendment to authorize Sunday alcohol sales in Shelby County.
Montgomery has always been about putting as much power in the hands of the legislature as possible.
What's the point of even having different cities if we aren't going to let them govern differently from each other? I'm sure we'd save a lot of money if we just went all in on this and surrendered all of our governance to the state.
Honestly, it is jaw dropping that Alabama's cities can flourish at all when they have to secure Montgomery's approval just to pee.
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