Alabama Breakup

While the national media gaze has fixed upon the battle to move a two-and-a-half-ton Ten Commandments monument out of view in the state's judiciary building, Alabama is about to have its most important election in living memory. The September 9 tax-reform vote has implications for every state drowning in deficits. It will be yes or no for the only item on Alabama's ballot: Amendment One, authorizing a $1.2 billion revenue-raising package of desperately needed money for education, healthcare and job training. Approval would mean a first step toward overhauling one of the most regressive state tax structures in the United States. Proportionally, Alabama taxes its poorest citizens three times as much as its wealthiest.

Republican Governor Bob Riley is the unexpected instigator of tax fairness. Everyone who voted for him last year, and everyone who didn't, pegged the former congressman and rural Clay County agribusinessman as an ultraconservative Reaganite. They weren't altogether wrong. Mention capital punishment, abortion, gay rights or gun control and that Bob Riley readily appears. But invoke Christian stewardship and Jesus's call to aid "the least of these," and you face Riley's startling transformation.

Somewhere on the campaign trail, Riley became "convicted" by the power of an essay titled "An Argument for Tax Reform Based on Judeo-Christian Ethics," by University of Alabama tax-law professor Susan Pace Hamill. Hamill, a Methodist given to evangelical urgency, documented how the state tax system "economically oppresses low-income Alabamians" while benefiting the wealthy, warning that "individuals claiming to be part of the People of God can no longer complacently tolerate Alabama's tax structure." In editorials and public meetings, she and a chorus of others have challenged the piety of politicians and the priorities of religious leaders in the Heart of Dixie, where nine out of ten adults say they practice Christianity. Govenor Riley, a Southern Baptist, began talking about the "immorality" of a system that starts taxing family income at $4,600, but can't generate enough money from corporations and upper-bracket taxpayers to minimally fund public schools, nursing homes, prisons and other state services.

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