Activism Against "wasteful Government Spending"
In 1983, Zeigler filed a successful legal action against what he termed "illegal extra paychecks" to over 400 political officials. A year-long court battle ended in a victory at the Alabama Supreme Court and return of the money to state coffers.
In 1984, he challenged paying legislators full pay and expenses during a 13-day Christmas holiday break. He won a circuit court injunction blocking the "holiday pay" but was later reversed by the state supreme court.
In 1985, Zeigler and Montgomery businessman Malcolm Brassell formed The Taxpayers Defense Fund (later called Taxpayers Defense Force), a legal action group. It contested government spending decisions for 20 years.
In 1985, Zeigler filed suit to stop public officials from disguising state cars by purchasing private license plates called "cover tags." The suit was settled by executive order of the governor outlawing cover tags.
In 1985, Zeigler filed suit and successfully blocked political officials from entering the state retirement system. In 1988 and 1999, Zeigler chaired the vote no campaign on statewide referendums to allow political officials to get into the State Retirement System. The proposed constitutional amendments were defeated both times.
Read more about this topic: Jim Zeigler
Famous quotes containing the words wasteful, government and/or spending:
“The word which gives the key to the national vice is waste. And people who are wasteful are not wise, neither can they remain young and vigorous. In order to transmute energy to higher and more subtle levels one must first conserve it.”
—Henry Miller (1891–1980)
“I heartily accept the motto, “That government is best which governs least”; and I should like to see it acted up to more rapidly and systematically. Carried out, it finally amounts to this, which also I believe,—”That government is best which governs not at all”; and when men are prepared for it, that will be the kind of government which they will have.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“The city is always recruited from the country. The men in cities who are the centres of energy, the driving-wheels of trade, politics or practical arts, and the women of beauty and genius, are the children or grandchildren of farmers, and are spending the energies which their fathers’ hardy, silent life accumulated in frosty furrows in poverty, necessity and darkness.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)