Alabama vote roils alliances and stirs moral quandaries

It is a proposed tax hike that's thundered with biblical language, captured Oprah Winfrey's attention, and encapsulated the moral quandaries of a nation and Alabama's slippery foothold in the New South. It's pitted a Republican governor against his own party, seated him alongside Democrats, and sent normally conservative evangelicals flocking to a more liberal plan.

On Tuesday, Alabama residents vote on a plan to overhaul their tax system by changing their state constitution. Gov. Bob Riley (R) says the move will be more fair to poor Alabamians and help avert a looming crisis in schools and healthcare.

The price of failure, with a $675 million deficit, is dire, Gov. Bob Riley insists: 5,000 prison inmates turned loose, classrooms packed with 50 percent more kids, hundreds of Medicaid patients turned out of nursing homes, a drop to 50 in nearly every national ranking. He's not shy about biblical overtones, touting Tuesday's vote on a tax increase eight times the largest in state history as a call to "take care of the least among us."

But to Alabamians weaned on wariness of government, such moral appeals mean little, and tax-leeriness runs deep: After the Civil War, tax hikes left many farmers here landless when they couldn't pay. Now, the prospect of tax increases for middle- and upper-income earners stirs up bitter memories - enough to roil old political alliances.

"Most people don't trust the government," says Wilbert Richardson, a Montgomery mechanic.

The archaic tax code Alabama uses today is enshrined in the constitution, dating back to 1901, which makes the referendum necessary. Timber companies, which own over 70 percent of Alabama land, still pay less than 2 percent of state property taxes. Here, timberland is taxed at 95 cents an acre; in neighboring Georgia, it's $5 an acre. Alabama compensates by placing an unusual share of the tax burden on the poor, with income taxes starting at $4,600 and a grocery tax that tops 10 percent in some parts of the state.

In terms of parties and tax hikes, times have changed - and not just in Alabama. Facing vast deficits, a few Republican governors across the country have turned cautiously to tax increases - from South Carolina Gov. Rick Sanford's proposal of a levy hike on cigarettes to Nevada Gov. Kenny Guinn's proposal of $1 billion in tax increases. All this leaves antitax groups still more determined to hold the line on Alabama's far more sweeping move.

But in the buckle of the Bible Belt, Riley is making the overhaul of an antiquated tax system more than a temporary fiscal fix: To him, it's moral referendum and a rebirth. In a speech blitz and TV ad campaign punctuated by "What would Jesus tax?" he insists the government has a duty to take care of the poor and to lift Alabama out of the cellar on almost every economic and educational barometer.

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