In my lifetime I’ve seen more than a few tricksters. There was Woody Woodpecker, Felix the Cat, Bugs Bunny and Bart Simpson to name a few. But the biggest trickster in Alabama is that Magilla that serves as our state constitution. Adopted in 1901 and amended over 800 times – 800! –  it might be more accurate to refer to the Alabama Constitution as a dinosaur rather than a gorilla.

Whatever, once again this trickster and longest constitution in the world – yes, the world! – is getting ready to say to the people of Baldwin County, “Here, pull my finger!”

I’m referring to the upcoming March 31 school expansion referendum. If passed, property owners in the county will approve 8-mills of property tax that will presumably fund $350 million in new construction to offset the county’s overcrowded schools. On one hand, the chamber of commerce, educators and people with children in county schools are in favor of the 8-mill increase. On the other side are people with no school age children, who feel like there is mismanagement in the Baldwin County Public School System, and who feel like they’re already taxed enough.

This is Alabama, so naturally both sides in the issue are asleep.

Seriously, I’m not trying to be a jerk here. Remember what that trickster Puck said at the end of Shakespeare’s “A Midsummer Night’s Dream”? “If we shadows have offended,/Think but this, and all is mended – /That you have slumb’red here/While these visions did appear.” That’s what tricksters do. They make us dream, see things that aren’t there, or make us look one way when we should be looking the other.

Issues like funding education and new schools won’t be solved until Alabamians address the need for and demand a new state constitution and get rid of the fossil we have. If not, we’ll just continue to perpetuate the business as usual mentality of putting up “Vote No” or “Vote Yes” signs in our yards ‘til the cows come home. Keep in mind, on March 31 voters will not only vote on the 8-mills issue, but we’ll be voting on renewing an already existing 7-mill tax. Who’s to say what waits in 10 or 15 years.

Me, I’m all for good schools, good teachers and quality education. But the root of the problem in achieving those goals is the 1901 Constitution that was crafted to benefit industrialists and big business. For over a hundred years the 1901 big, bloated gorilla has stifled economic development in the state and enforced a tax policy that just won’t float the boat in the 21st century. Them what’s got it – Big Timber and Large Lands – pay pitifully little in property taxes while the very ones the 1901 Constitution sought to disenfranchise – the poor and middle class – are asked to pony up more and more. Is this what they mean by feeling like you’ve been through the “mill”? That’s 20 mills and counting.

Again, snap out of it! Is the best we can hope for the governor and legislators bragging when they repay monies they borrowed from the Education Trust Fund’s Rainy Day Account; monies borrowed to keep state government afloat? Probably so, since Alabama schools will probably continue to be underfunded in the same way they have always been under the 1901 Constitution.

Granted, there has historically been scant interest in replacing the 1901 Constitution or revising it. Special interests always pop up and de-rail efforts to do so. Their complaint: It will result in tax increases.

Seems to me in 1901 the whole state took a wrong turn at “Albuquoike,” as Bugs Bunny was want to say, and we desperately need to revise our course. Otherwise, won’t we keep reliving this same issue down the road? That’s Looney Tunes, man!

Bob Morgan is a retired, award-winning journalist and author.