How Gov. Bentley stopped being a conservative on taxes
First came his signing of the Taxpayer Protection Pledge in 2010, which reads: “I, Robert Bentley, pledge to the taxpayers of the state of Alabama, that I will oppose and veto any and all efforts to increase taxes.”
That sounds pretty clear to most Alabama voters, and signing it made plenty of political sense for Bentley’s gubernatorial aspirations. The last time voters directly faced a sizable tax increase, one supported by the Business Council of Alabama and a powerful Alabama Education Association, 68 percent of them soundly defeated it.
Not surprisingly, as a popular governor highlighting his “right-sizing” of government and honoring his pledge not to raise taxes, Gov. Bentley cruised to re-election in 2014. Never did Gov. Bentley suggest during his re-election bid that he would push tax hikes if he found his streamlining efforts to be insufficient to keep state budgets in the black.
The governor did not find out about the General Fund budget issues after the 2014 election. He knew the budget challenges facing the state’s General Fund as early as 2011. In 2012, Alabama approved a constitutional amendment moving $437 million to the state’s General Fund from the Alabama Trust Fund over three years. If the General Fund was fine, why did it need the infusion of cash?
Then came the waffle.
Bentley explained his evolving stance by saying, “I did sign a no-tax pledge my first four years. I did not sign it the last four years.”
“What we did the first four years, we streamlined, we cut, we consolidated, we did everything that was necessary to make our state more efficient and we’ve done that,” he said. “Now, it’s halftime, little bit past halftime in fact, but we don’t have enough money to fund the general fund.”
Apparently nobody mentioned to Bentley that a conservative governor is not supposed to increase taxes after halftime.
The governor initially couched his tax plan as an ugly necessity but seemed resigned to letting the Legislature develop its own response. After all, he encountered so much resistance seeking Republican sponsors for his tax measures that Democrats introduced bills for him.
Alabama’s governor is no longer reluctantly resigned to simply proposing tax increase; he is leveraging state highway funds against legislators and touring the state to garner support for his tax hikes. He even has a tax-exempt organization promoting the tax increases on his behalf.
“Please give your legislators some cover,” he said to a meeting of the Birmingham Business Alliance. “It’s hard to vote for a tax, especially if you ran on a no-tax pledge.”
In fact, it is hard to be credible at all if you make a pledge to your constituents, earn their vote and then violate that critical promise. The Bentley many Alabamians voted for is a straight-shooting doctor who loves Alabama and told them he would not raise their taxes.
If that were not enough, one of the governor’s chief jobs is to convince businesses that Alabama is a better place to invest than neighboring states. While those states are exploring ideas like reducing their income tax or eliminating it entirely, Alabama’s governor is pounding pavement asking for a net tax increase. Which sounds like a better economic sales pitch to you?
Now things are just getting plain strange. Gov. Bentley is trying to persuade Alabamians that his tax increases are conservative. “There is nothing more conservative than paying your debts and getting your financial house in order,” he says.
Paying off debts and financial stewardship are conservative ideals, but a several hundred million dollar tax increase is not. Period.
Unfortunately for Gov. Bentley, most state legislators know that the political costs of reducing state government and eliminating services is far less than voting to increase taxes and grow government. If the people of Alabama want a tax increase, they will elect politicians to do just that.
They have not, and I am willing to bet that reality does not change the next time Alabama’s legislators are on the ballot and Gov. Bentley is not.
