The Montgomery advertiser., 1901-07-13

| latton to be enacted, that Alabama has
 grown and developed. We have tn-
 vited capital into our ields that has found safe and profitable investment | On yesterday we struck down the right of the Legislature to create local laws. and today find ourselves seeking a
 remedy and forum in which to seek
 and obtain local legislation. l submit. I gentlemen of tho Convention. that the l proposition as submitted by the gentle I man from Lauderdaie is not the safe 1 guard that they call it. Talk to me about holding out to this Convention l that local boards in each county can l create laws. It is not because of any reflection I would cast on the Board of ! County Commissioners CT Board of l Revenues. but I submit. sir. that 1t Is the history of the hill counties in Ala banya that the Boards of Revenues and l County Commissioners are not made up of the men that the people of the \ county look to create their laws. Sir, l 1t Is an experiment that is untried and | I believe would be nnwise. Whenever you delegate the authority of law making power to @ few men selected I in a county. I submit that 1t is un- wise. 1t is untried and the results can- l not bs foreseen. respectfully submit l that the proposition as presented by the l gentleman from Montgomery is fair and more preferable than the one pre- l sented by the Committee. One special objection that I have to the amend l naent as offered by the gentleman from I Lauderdale, is the fact that they pro- vide in there that the Legislature may absolutely suspend the Board of Coun- ey Commissioners, oust them and create officers of their own, the very thing ! that such . howl went up In Aiaoana l four years ago along the line that the authority and the right of the Legis-
 lature to take from office men elected
 to these places and place it in the
 hands of politicians to appoint them. | l submit that the provisions appended
 to that ordinance offered by the gen. 1 tleman from Lauderdale are unwise
 and unsafe to be adopted by this Con-
 yention. Unsafe because you provide
 in 1t that the General Assembly may
 suspend these boards and create any
 board of equal Jurisdiction, or a board with equal and other jurisdiction
 leaving it absolutely to the Legisla- ture to abolish these >boards and abol-
 ish this law-making bower that they
 have created and placing it into ths hands of their friends and fellow pol.
 iticians. submit when you So out
 Into these untried fields, having. as l
 said before. taken from the Legisla- ture the power to create local laws we now find ourselves wanderins
 around to tind a forum in which to
 make our local laws covering each
 county in the State. I am not here
 to critieise especially the action of this
 Convention on yesterday. because it Is
 spoken by the majority vote and I
 humbly yield to that majority. but ]
 do say to you that today in seeking
 remedy to establish these local laws
 that It is one of the most important l questions that this Convention has
 faced; and the proposition as reported by the Committee, and as advocated by the gentleman from Lauderdale. I sub. 1 init, gentlemen of the Convention. ts l unsafe and will not be for the best | interest of Alabama to adopt it and
 let us ind some remedy. Let us find
 some other way that would meet the
 universal approval of the State os Ala. bama, that we might enact our local l laws, or go back into the hands of the men that from the day Alabama went into Statehood has enacted her local I laws and had the pleasure of standing
 and seeing our State grow and pros- per. And if nothing better can be found so back to the old beaten paths and leave the question under the pro-
 lection of the Legislature as We have one and all enjoyed 1t and hope again ! to receive the fruits that will come to Alabama in her prosperity and in ner greatness.
 MT. Blackwell--Mr. President. and I gentlemen of the Convention: am In
 sympathy. hearty sympathy. with tho | section offered by the Committee on
 Local Legislation. The gentleman who hna fuRf nRAoQhAd A hMu0 1 overlooked the great trouble we have mad with local iegisiation and the ne- | cessity that exists for preventing the General Assembly from legisiating on many local matters. He seems furth- | CT. to have overlooked the fact that if you take away from the General AS- sernbiy this power, there must be some | body located somewhere that can at- tend to some local legislation for the | counties. Now, Mr. President, think it was in lSso or lsss that I examined 1 and counted the laws and there are 946
 local laws. and 4s general laws. In oth- CT words. nineteen-twentieths of those laws arc local In their nature.
 Now. a legislative assembly costs the State of Alabama, as 1 ass1 informed, about eb0,0o0 a session and the nine- teen-twsntieths taken by local legis- iation would cost $47.500. So the local
 laws cost the State of Alabama any, ] where from fifty to two hundred and | fifty dollars each. We have said by these thirty-five excepted things that the legislature shall not hereafter en-
 act laws on these subjects and who are we going to have to enact laws that the legislature cannot pass on? How would you provide general laws that would cover the necessities of each individual county of the sixty-six counties in Alabama? This seems 10 me to be a carefully guarded section. AL proNIdes that Lnr IocaI IegislaLLVe power shall be vested in Lhe court of county commissioners or in board of revenue or some other tribunal estab- lished by the legislature of Alabama. Then. as a matter of fact, these are
 the parties who would know better
 what are the local needs of the county
 than any others, and it would be less
 expensive to have them enacted there
 than anywhere else. Now let me H.
 lustrate. A number of the last acts were to declare who should be liners
 between counties. Now take such a
 bill. It is introduced. It Is Eead three times and you have made the people of Alabama pay out about $3e0 for de- claIenS that man a liner. Suppose you confer that on the Board of County Commissioners. that they shall say
 who Is a liner. Then the party who
 desires to be declared a liner goes be-
 fore the Board of County Commission
 CTS and they, having to pass on it only
 once. can act on 1t immediately and