When Are We Going to Get It Together?
Shear embarrassment is the way I feel. It's the way most of my colleagues and friends feel. In fact there is a faction of people who are considering leaving Jefferson County and the State of Alabama for good. We are embarrassed by the financial woes of Jefferson County, in Birmingham, Ala., my home town. The County has been battling for two years, the a mountain of debt ($4 billion) with a sewer crisis, which has placed the county in jeopardy of going bankrupt. The sewer debt crisis came about after the County Commission's president, Larry Langford, headed efforts in a risky interest rate bond swap deal to lower interest rates. Larry Langford is now the Mayor of Birmingham. This story has attracted national and international attention in the media circles. A friend of mine at an International news agency has written about the sewer debt problems many times over the last two years.
Now as of 5 o'clock Friday, July 31, 2009, the county has down and placing workers it can't pay on furlough for six weeks. This story too has hit national news, yesterday's The New York Timesand NPR last (a week ago) Thursday. The street story, and pretty much the truth is that the furloughs stem from Jefferson County not being able to use the Occupational Taxes that it has collected for 10 years, and up until January was using as part of the operations budget. In January, a judge ruled that the collection of an occupational tax from individual workers and businesses was illegal, but that the County could still collect the tax, but not spend any of the money. This ruling stripped the county of $78 million it was using to operate.
Now for the real story: I keep scratching my head in disbelief of how we the largest and most promising county in Alabama could be in this mess? The only reason is the complacency of voters. It seems with Jefferson County, the Mayor and City Council, there is never really a problem with the people we the voters have elected until there's a problem. AND boy we have a huge problem; one that we may not be able to overcome. As a thriving City and County, we are now in essence, dead in our tracks. It all boils down to the fact that we keep electing the same-ole-same-ole people to office who have developed egos the size of the universe, because we the electorate don't care or we won't take a risk on change- electing someone who is fresh and new. Most if not all of the candidates we have elected, have been given power by default in my opinion. By default meaning that there is no other candidate to choose from and we are faced with either not voting or voting by default. I also need to note that we do not have term limits in these elections. Because we keep electing these same people over and over, they have drank from the glass of Power and they love it.
I call it perceived power.
Perceived Power is very deadly from where I sit. Most people, when they drink from the fountain of power, would rather go down in burning flames than give up any power that they think that they have. AND we, the electorate lead them to believe that "they" have the power. Deadly, because now instead of doing the right thing for the citizens of the county, they do what's best for themselves, leaving people who desperately need services high and dry. True the county doesn't have home rule, and the Alabama Legislature has to help solve this problem, but instead of the two, county and legislative delegation coming together to work it out for the citizens, they have decided to point fingers at each other. This week the Legislative delegation came up with a compromise of sorts with a new occupational tax bill, but I don't think everyone's sold on it because it only serves as a temporary solution to a bigger problem.
A bigger problem that we the citizens are going to have to eventually solve. We can't keep brushing these problems under the carpet and expect them to go away. We are going to have to come together to solve this. The citizens and voters of Jefferson County are really the ones who have the POWER to make a change, and for the life of me I cannot understand why we the citizens don't use this power- Power at the Polls. We have to get our ACT together and put Jefferson County back on track. I only hope that for our sake we do it and do it soon, before it's too late.
Posted by Kara's Blog at 8/7/2009 6:41 PM 
Categories: Politics
Tags: Jefferson County Politics Alabama
Categories: Politics
Tags: Jefferson County Politics Alabama
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