GOP divided on [AL Gov.] Riley['s] tax plan

By BILL BARROW
Capital Bureau

BIRMINGHAM -- The Alabama Republican Party Steering Committee formally stated its opposition to Gov. Bob Riley's $1.2 billion tax and education plan Saturday, handing the GOP chief executive the strongest rebuke of his six-month tenure.

Yet another group of Republicans -- mostly elected and former elected officials calling themselves "REAL Republicans," Republicans for Education, Accountability and Leadership -- staged their own event here, endorsing the proposal and later blasting the plan's opponents.

Together, the two announcements Saturday highlighted the mounting intensity leading to a Sept. 9 referendum, when voters will decide the plan's fate. And the events brought clarity to a continuing rift within the GOP, as it continues its efforts to become the dominant political party in Alabama.

On one side are Republicans who say they are standing up for the party's stated principles of lower taxes and less government.

"This isn't about the man, it's about the plan," state GOP Chairman Marty Connors said as he lamented what he described as a lagging economy. "This is simply too much when the people of Alabama are hurting."

On the other side are Riley supporters who accuse the governor's critics of ignoring Alabama's fiscal crunch and abandoning a fundamental rule of party politics: loyalty to the leadership.

"A modicum of government is necessary at all times," said Jeremiah Denton of Mobile, a retired Navy admiral and former U.S. senator, arguing that the tax increase is necessary to adequately fund programs such as education.

"Republicans aren't against taxes -- we are against unreasonable taxes," he said.

Winton Blount, a Montgomery businessman and Connors' predecessor as party chairman, said, "The party's role is to get Republicans elected to office, not to oppose the men in office once they're there.

"Marty Connors has not been elected to public office. Bob Riley has," Blount continued. "I think Marty has gotten way ahead of what his job description should be."

"We said we wanted to be a party of principles, with a clear identity. If we had remained silent on something of this magnitude, we would have become a group of people who liked to hang around elected officials, but we would not have been a political party."

Riley introduced his proposal in response to an estimated $600 million-plus budget shortfall for the next fiscal year, which begins Oct. 1. The deficit amounts to more than 10 percent of the state's two primary budgets.

The governor casts his plan as a way to close the funding gap and bring accountability to education spending, while improving public schools and making a regressive tax system more fair to low income Alabamians.

Some opponents have argued that wasteful spending is responsible for the shortfall. Others have said the tax hike is too steep for a weak economy and called on Riley to focus on budget reforms and spending cuts before asking for a more modest tax increase. Many local Republican committees, including Mobile County, have already adopted resolutions opposing the plan.

Connors called the 21-member steering committee together to add its official position in advance of an Aug. 23 meeting of the GOP executive committee, which includes more than 300 Republicans from around the state.

Saturday's one-hour closed session, according to participants, included discussions of three possible positions: supporting the governor's plan, rejecting it or opposing the proposal while praising the governor's reform efforts.

The group took the third option, members said, adopting a six-paragraph, half-page resolution in a voice vote.

"Perhaps if this plan was smaller and more reasonable and still had accountability measures, we'd be all for it," Connors said afterward, though the final resolution did not include a statement to that effect.

The committee also debated language that would have expressed a lack of confidence in the "Democrat-dominated" Legislature's ability to spend new tax money wisely, members said. That language did not appear in the final draft, but committee members said that sentiment is prevalent in their opposition.

"Quite frankly, we think the Legislature will continue to be the spendthrifts and fools they've always been," said party Vice Chairman Jerry Lathan of Theodore.

Ralph Buffkin of Mobile said he cast one of two votes against the resolution. Buffkin assumed his seat on the committee with Riley's backing shortly after the governor took office.

"I was put on the committee because of the governor, and I'm certainly not going to abandon him now," Buffkin said after the meeting.

The committee session came two hours after the REAL Republicans launched their offensive at a news conference across town. Blount and Denton gathered with a gaggle of Republican legislators and other party officials at the Wynfrey Hotel at the Riverchase Galleria.

Former Lt. Gov. Steve Windom of Theodore said the group formed, in part, to "get out in front" of the steering committee. "We're talking about 21 people here, not the party," he said of the steering panel. "The headline should not be 'Republicans oppose governor's plan.' It should be 'Republicans split on governor's plan.'"

Further tensions among party leaders became evident Saturday in the different sides' telling of the events leading up to the steering committee meeting.

David Azbell, the governor's press secretary, said Riley asked to address the meeting but was denied. Windom said representatives of REAL Republicans were denied, as well.

Lathan said after the meeting that Riley apparently withdrew his request to speak once he realized what the outcome would be. "The worst thing he could do politically would be show up and watch this happen in person."

Connors confirmed that the committee denied Windom's request to speak but said he did so because he did not want "a circus" of supporters and opponents of the plan.

"You can only beat the same dead horse so many times," Connors said. "Windom and everyone else had all week to talk to committee members."

But Connors said Riley was always welcome, with the understanding that if he spoke, the steering committee also would hear from an elected official who opposed the plan. Rep. Jim Carns, a Mountain Brook Republican and House minority leader, arrived Saturday, prepared to speak. He never entered the meeting.

"How dumb would I be not to let the governor address a meeting of his own party?" Connors said.

Hugh McInnish, a member of the state executive committee from Huntsville, who sat outside to offer "encouragement" to the steering committee, said the infighting could leave the party stronger.

"The party can only be strong if it has a consistent ideology," McInnish said, explaining that he remains unconvinced any tax increase is necessary. But "if this tax plan passes, it will greatly obfuscate our ideology, and the party will be weaker."

For his part, Blount countered that those who think like McInnish are "more Libertarian" than Republican and weaken the party with their outspokenness.

"Someone who is a full-fledged Libertarian ought not to be involved in Republican Party politics," Blount said. "They ought to join the Libertarian Party."

Counting the "automatic" raises and budget increases, our deficit is set to be $575 million.

To close this "deficit", Riley has proposed a $1.2 Billion per year tax increase.

But now I see that Riley seems to actually **want** this plan to pass.

That's crazy. Cut spending by $300 million and raise taxes by $275 million per year, and he could probably get some considerable Republican support.

But double the new taxes just so that he can increase spending?!

No matter. This new tax plan will fail in a spectacular fashion after it is subjected to our statewide vote.

At first, I took it as obvious that Riley was simply proposing a plan that was too big to pass. By touting a big tax plan, Riley got ALL of Alabama's media to back him and laud him. By knowing that such a huge plan wouldn't pass, he gets credit for trying and then after it fails he gets to pare down the state budget.

Yeah, I read some of your posts on the AL threads advancing this theory a couple of months ago, and I was intrigued.

Do you know believe that Riley is a Don Sundquist clone and a complete RINO? Or has he just gone off the rocker on this one issue?

BTW, even though I'm a Mississippian, I follow AL politics by lurking on the AL forum on FR. I went to college in AL, and I have pretty strong connections to the state.

Riley was conservative while in Congress, which includes this year. That's pretty current.

Proposing to more than double the taxes needed to cover full funding for our government, however, is baffling.

Especially since no veteran politician in this state would think that such a huge tax increase would pass a statewide vote.

So many Alabamaians are against the tax increase that the local media here won't even show the polls on the subject.

Oh well, I'll vote against it and I'll reserve judgement on Riley, but that's a far cry from my earlier support of him.

AS a post 65 Alabama Republican, I will vote for the Riley tax plan. The best I can tell my taxes will actually decrease slightly. What I feared did not happen! My FICA income and pension remain untaxed, and they dropped the personal property tax plan which would have killed it. Foe 20 years I fought most of these 'conservative' republicans on the steering committee, most of whom were trying to stop Reagan in favor of a more moderate national candidate, and that includes Chairman Conners. Riley can position the Republican Party to dominate Alabama with a victory here. It will be extremely dumb politics to defeat Riley on this.

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