What do you want out of your public servants?
I think that’s an important question right now in America, and especially in Alabama. Because we all know what we don’t want—we don’t want whatever it is the other side is offering. We’re definitely all voting against that.
But somewhere in our post-Obama America—in a time where we stopped caring about hope and decency and telling people that, “yes, we can”—we stopped liking anything or anyone. We just picked something or someone who wasn’t … that.
Whoever wasn’t Trump. Whoever wasn’t Biden. Whoever wasn’t Harris. Whoever wasn’t Doug Jones. Whoever wasn’t Tommy Tuberville. Whoever wasn’t Jeff Sessions. Whoever wasn’t Mo Brooks.
We stopped for voting for people and for ideas.
We just vote against things.
And rarely does anyone force you to say out loud anymore what it is that you do want. It’s so bad that judging by recent polls that have asked voters to rank their most important issues, voters don’t seem to know. They bounce around from one generic topic to another, never offering specifics or demanding competency.
That’s what I want.
Competency.
I want people who are serving in serious roles to be serious people. I want them to be knowledgeable. I want them to seek to understand complicated issues and people. I want them to take an educated point of view and I want them to govern by utilizing that information.
That’s not too much to ask.
And I recently caught a glimpse of it. It happened during an interview on our podcast, “Alabama Politics This Week,” when interviewing Alabama gubernatorial candidate Doug Jones.
Now, look, I get it. Jones is a Democrat and I am biased in his favor because we believe similarly. That is absolutely true. Generically speaking, I am certainly more inclined to agree with Jones than, say, Tommy Tuberville. No doubt about it.
But this isn’t just politics that I’m talking about. This is not generic ideals or broad beliefs. It’s bigger than that.
In this specific case, Jones was asked by co-host David Person about data centers, and specifically about the efforts to shoehorn a data center into Lowndes County, despite protests from residents. What followed was not a canned response filled with generalities and politician-speak.
It was the sort of lengthy, nuanced, educated discussion that we should require—not just expect—out of our politicians and government officials.
“It’s not just in minority communities, David—that’s a little bit of a of a misnomer in the sense that folks assume that,” Jones said. “These data centers are going up here in Birmingham. The things I what I worry about is Alabama, given our history of allowing these projects to come in under cover of darkness, without any kind of notice and without any kind of public hearing or even public information, just come in and do these things … that we’re going to be a dumping ground for data centers.
“I think that’s going to be an issue for people up and down the state, not just in Lowndes County. It is going to be there. But I think it’s going to be an issue for everybody because I’m telling you, these big tech companies and all their billions of dollars, they’re gonna be looking for wherever they can to put these things. And my view on this is that we gotta start putting in some guardrails now.”
Jones went on to describe, in depth, the sort of guardrails that he would propose. Things like protecting power rates, overseeing tax abatements, requiring public hearings at the initial stages of development and implementing a community advisory group to vet such projects.
Because the truth is data centers do have a crucial role to play in the future for America, and Alabama can be an important cog in that future. But the costs and benefits must be balanced properly. The public should be protected from higher electric rates and water shortages, just to name the most pressing issues right now.
In discussing his ideas, Jones talked about the ways in which the Department of Justice required Monsanto to clean up some of its chemical dumps from the 1980s and 90s, particularly in the Anniston area. Jones was a special master in a major case there and he believes that the way it was handled by the courts and DOJ could be applied in some manner to the data center issues today.
“We have to give the public adequate time to see exactly what’s being proposed and to challenge that,” Jones said. “If you had a (company), if they would fund a community advisory group after everything had gone through the appropriate disclosures, permitting, notices, public hearings, for the CAG to meet regularly with the company, with enough money that they can hire some of their own experts to monitor the environment, to monitor the noise pollution, to monitor the water intake, to make sure that they are paying for or generating their own power, I think those things would go a long way. Because data centers are going to be built. They’re going to be needed. We just don’t need Alabama to be the dumping ground for them. We need to make sure that we do it the right way.”
Would you look at that? A politician who didn’t boil things down to the dumbest possible level. Who didn’t say “data center bad” or “data center the future.”
Because that’s real life—it’s lived in the gray center between the two extremes. Where nuance and specifics reside. Where the solution doesn’t fit on a bumper sticker or inside a catchy campaign slogan.
Now, look, maybe Tommy Tuberville can give an equally candid, equally well thought out response to the data center issue. He did the other day ask that we start focusing more on issues, so I’m going to give him a chance.
But this is what I want. On every important topic. In my opinion, it is the only way to solve the current hopeless divide in this country.
Find the people who have real, educated solutions to the problems you care about most, and vote for those people. Regardless of party. Regardless of labels.
It is time to start valuing competency above all else.
