Governor Riley passed the first major tax cut in decades here in 'Bama this year.
Oddly, a few people in our state missed the wall to wall news coverage of it here: On April 12, Gov. Riley signed an historic tax cut bill that provided Alabamians with the first significant tax relief since 1935.
Amazing turn of events. Early 2005, Riley was DOA. It like Roy Moore was going to oust him. Now Riley is flying high and Roy Moore's 15 minutes of fame expired.
I stand corrected.
His administration also instituted a program that effectively raised our property taxes in Alabama (Bi-annual assesment). Now, that's not all bad. I don't entirely fault Riley for being baited into the tax increase deal; he proposed in and tried to sell it, and it failed. He also tried to reform our archaic state-constitution (it's illegal to wear a fake mustache on church on Sunday). The tax raisin' scheme is hard to forget though. Alabama state government has very little accountability, so giving our legislature more money would have been silly. Nothing really gets done without the teachers union, insurance lobby (Alfa, State Farm) and the trial lawyers association's blessing. That said.....the Democratic party in this state still resembles the Wallace era political machine. Riley is a converted Democrat, and just that is better than the other candidate.