Phil Williams Commentary: Not enough deliberation on billion-dollar spending bill
I am married to the sweetest woman on God’s green earth. Whatever rough edges I have, and there are quite a few, she more than compensates for. A sweet spirit who would never hurt a fly, always concerned about others first, and very few people in this world have ever seen her mad.
But I have found her Achilles heel. That thing that will move her to irritation at near warp speed. So much so that I can tell by the pace of her footsteps coming down the hall that her nemesis is present again. Pray tell, you may be asking, what could generate such proclivity to consternation? Geese!
A few years ago, we moved to a house on a quiet year-round slough just off the main channel of a river, and apparently Canadian geese love our area. I thought they were migratory, but no! Scores of them have taken up homesteads on the banks of the Coosa River and the small lakes that dot our area. We originally thought them to be quaint and endearing. That sentiment wore off quickly.
Geese are loud, obnoxious and just generally nasty creatures. Water buzzards in my estimation. They are incredibly loud, like that unruly family that takes up multiple tables in the restaurant and all shout and carry on like no one else is present.
More than that, they are territorial and don’t mind fighting with anything, or anyone for that matter. They’ll spread out those wings, raise that neck and make noise like the air horn on a Mack Truck!
I always know that if I come home at the end of the day and find pots and pans and big metal spoons by the back door that my sweet wife has been out in the yard banging those metal pots to get water buzzards out of the yard.
You may be wondering, “What’s the big deal ... so they squawk, so what?”
Well, that ain’t even the half of it. These are some nasty creatures!
Have you ever seen goose poo? I mean, wow! The average goose drops poo the size of a dog and upwards of 100 times a day! 100 times a day!
Studies that were undoubtedly funded with taxpayer dollars indicate that the average goose drops 2 pounds of goose poo daily, made worse because they travel in flocks, herds, gaggles! I once looked out my back door and counted no less than 60 geese in my backyard at one time ... 60! Imagine that as 6,000 goose poops ... in one day!
You see, Canadian geese graze nonstop, and whatever goes in one end comes out the other in record time. There’s an old saying that if something bad happened way too fast, it “moved like scoot through a goose.” Yep, scoot through a goose ain’t good, and it happens at warp speed.
Now that I’ve given you that amazingly awkward visual image let me just say that what recently happened in Alabama’s Legislature was disheartening. It was not deliberative. The House and Senate leadership took a billion-dollar spending bill and pushed that sucker through the legislative process like scoot through a goose!
A billion dollars should not be spent without clear and open deliberation. I’m sure they will say it went through the committee process. Did it? Did it really?
Multiple legislators have said they never saw the bill until the special session was called. No public hearings, and little effort at amendment on a billion-dollar spending bill?
The word is that “a deal with the governor was going to be honored and everyone had to get on board.” How about a deal with the people of this state?
In all, only three members of each body dissented. Only six members of the Legislature said, “Hold on,” but they were run over, and a billion dollars flew to the governor for her signature like scoot through a goose.
Some aspects of that spending bill were positive, but others were not. And the truth is that the money had to be appropriated. This was a required “spend,” if you will, but the manner in which it was done is as concerning as what the funds were appropriated for.
The governor’s staff wrote the bill, and from all accounts the Legislature gave her the checkbook. The Legislature is a co-equal branch of government imbued with the power of the purse. As the head of the executive branch, all that the governor can do is ask but not task. But not this time. With nary a flicker of dismay or recognition, the governor’s plan for a billion dollars flashed through the Alabama House and Senate like scoot through a goose.
If the House and Senate don’t take a stand on setting true conservative policy and deliberatively forwarding their own agendas, then it might be a very long four years as the executive branch could well take this special session spending bill as a signal that the Legislature is in the governor’s pocket.
Spending a billion dollars should not be a quick and non-debated matter. A billion extra dollars lying around should always prompt a serious and well-informed debate. But that is not what we saw. That billion dollars just blew out the backside of Alabama’s Statehouse like scoot through a goose.
Phil Williams is a former state senator from District 10 (which includes Etowah County), retired Army colonel and combat veteran, and a practicing attorney. He previously served with the leadership of the Alabama Policy Institute in Birmingham. He currently hosts the conservative news/talk show Rightside Radio on multiple channels throughout north Alabama. The views reflected are his own.
This article originally appeared on The Gadsden Times: Phil Williams looks at billion-dollar spending bill
