Being effective means more than just being busy.
Earlier this week, al(dot)com published a story that claimed to illustrate the effectiveness of north Alabama lawmakers. Using a simple scoring system to rank state reps and senators on the pieces of legislation they sponsored and ushered through to become laws, the story claimed to show how effective the north Alabama delegation was in the last session.
Except, that’s no way to judge effectiveness as a lawmaker. Especially in a state legislature that is controlled by a supermajority of one party that has the ability to shove through any piece of legislation it wishes.
Effectiveness goes far beyond passing legislation. It should, under any objective measure, include at least some passing judgment of the legislation’s effect on the populace and of the lawmaker’s total works.
Take the primary focus of this story, for example—Senator Arthur Orr and the many bills he sponsored. The one he said was most important to him was a bill—the RAISE Act—that added some $375 million over the next three years to pay for high poverty schools and support various other programs.
It’s a good bill. But here’s the problem: Orr also sponsored the CHOOSE Act, which will annually suck some $180 million out of those same public schools and divert those funds to pay for mostly wealthy students to attend private schools or be home schooled. In a couple of years, the cap on the program will expire, at which time the CHOOSE Act is projected to cost more than $500 million annually—all of it sucked out of your kids’ public schools and the overwhelming majority going to supplement the private school tuitions of families that don’t need the money.
So, how effective is that, exactly?
Another bill that Orr was proud of is one that mandates the teaching of the “success sequence.” If you’re unfamiliar with that, it’s essentially a group of life benchmarks which, if achieved, studies have shown greatly reduce the likelihood of poverty. The three main goals are graduating high school, getting a reliable job and getting married before having children.
No arguments on any of those things or on the data behind this bill.
But again, we’re a mile long and an inch deep if this—passing legislation that requires telling kids that these should be their goals—is the definition of effectiveness as a lawmaker. Because while it’s wonderful to tell kids to graduate and not have children out of wedlock, it would also be swell if, as a lawmaker, we also followed data and implemented programs and provided funding that ensured those things.
Orr’s supermajority party has time and again blocked the teaching of comprehensive sex education while simultaneously proclaiming to be befuddled by Alabama’s high teen pregnancy rates (top five worst in America for the last two decades). At the same time, we remain beholden to a tax system and school funding system that purposefully underfund some of our most poverty-stricken schools and communities.
Orr’s party has refused to expand Medicaid or offer any solution whatsoever to the mounting healthcare crisis in this state. A crisis that has left us as one of the most unhealthy states in the country, with pathetic childhood obesity rates (despite our children residing in a state filled with outdoor opportunities and a favorable climate) and equally terrible childhood illness rates.
Look, I don’t mean to dump all of these problems at Orr’s feet, because he is by no means the sole bearer of responsibility for these issues. But at the same time, watching him take a victory lap because he dumped a cup of water on the raging inferno he helped start is a bit much.
More importantly, it paints a picture of achievement for the average voter while obscuring the larger, more important picture that is painted by the totality of acts.
Like, for example, giving state Senator Wes Kitchens credit for passing SB53, which essentially made it a crime to knowingly aid an undocumented immigrant. That bill’s language almost exactly matched language from the “fugitive slave act” from 175 years earlier.
So, I suppose it was effective in laying bare the true intent.
Then there’s state Rep. Rex Reynolds who had one of the highest effectiveness scores among north Alabama House members. His crown jewel was a bill that expanded police immunity in Alabama.
In the past few years in Alabama, we’ve had two entire police forces shut down because they were essentially operating as criminal enterprises. There’s a sheriff’s department in Walker County with more indictments than a biker gang. We’ve had a cop convicted of murder in Reynold’s district. There’s another cop indicted for murder in Orr’s district. And from one end of the state to the other, there are consistent issues with police brutality, police corruption and a general lack of oversight of police departments.
And Reynolds expanded that problem.
Right behind Reynolds was Rep. Andy Whitt, who nearly singlehandedly shut down more Alabama businesses than COVID, with his out-of-the-blue ban on hemp products.
Again, effective for who?
Don’t get me wrong here, I’m not criticizing al(dot)com or the writer for the piece. I get what the intent was. And it’s true enough that north Alabama lawmakers made a big impact on the legislative session.
I suppose I’m stuck on the word “effective.” Because it suggests beneficial accomplishment for Alabama citizens. It suggests that these guys went to Montgomery and really delivered for their constituents.
When the truth is the opposite. They’ve used the power of a supermajority to keep the state humming along at the status quo, still stuck at the bottom in almost every meaningful measure of human success. All while propping up the well-to-do and big business at the expense of the average worker.
That’s the opposite of effective.
