The shackles of tax policy

The Alabama Tax & Budget Handbook, a publication of the Arise Citizens' Policy Project and Voices for Alabama's Children, is a must-read for its crystal clear picture of how tax policies can cripple a Southern state. You can read what others are saying about it here here and here.
Some of the report's lowlights (using fiscal year 2004) from the report:

Two of every five dollars in the Alabama budget comes from the feds. In most states, the figure is one out of every five dollars.

Because Alabama contributes so little in federal matching-funds programs, the state leaves "more than $100 million on the table in Washington every year."

For the state's income tax, the top rate (5 percent) kicks in at $3,000 for married couples. That annual salary was a tidy sum in 1935 when the income tax was set. Unfortunately, it's remained untouched since.

Alabama is one of seven states that fully taxes groceries. The others are Arkansas, Hawaii, Mississippi, South Carolina, Utah and West Virginia. (We think we sense a regional pattern.)

Alabama taxes farm and timber property at $1.25 per acre, far below the Southeast average of $5.50 per acre.

The state's timberland accounts for "more than 70 percent of Alabama's land area but brings in less than 2 percent of state property tax revenues."

Read the whole report online here. And while you do, remember that Alabama's current Constitution, written in 1901, operates just as its writers intended. Those wealthy landowners and industrialists wanted a government where little or nothing got done. They funneled decision-making away from communities and into the statehouse. They realized that a government starved of funds accomplished two things. 1. It kept them from paying their fair share. 2. It kept the masses powerless to do anything about it.
The handbook's authors sum up, "[R]eal reform requires more than new policies and regulations or even a new constitution. It requires leaders willing to raise public expectations for state government." Well said.