Hubbard vs. Turnham

The quest for transparency, ethics, and good professional conduct should be the foremost priority of both parties and all public servants: not an attempt to remove certain persons from office.

Officials in either political party, who commit crime, steal or use their office for personal gain should have to give an accounting. Recent attempts to ‘partisanize’ ethics and corruption by Gov. Bob Riley and Republican Party Leadership; however, reek of hypocrisy.

Democrats who have stolen or violated the public trust get no safe harbor with me or the Alabama Democratic Party. All persons are entitled to justice, fairness; but must be held accountable.

The recent ‘double-dipping’ campaign by some Republican operatives serves not a noble goal of full ethics in government; but rather a hypocritical attempt to broad-brush many outstanding Democrats, all while deflecting attention away from incredibly serious questions of ethical malfeasance within their own party ranks ...

After Riley vetoed legislation last year that would have subjected lobbyists of the executive branch to register and disclose; he targets Democratic educator-legislators. Most educator-legislators are career public servants who were educators many years prior to their election.

Voters knew full well if a person was a principal or student counselor during a campaign. Yet Republicans have no problem allowing legislators receiving no-bid state contracts to serve. They have no problem with revolving door lobbyists like the governor’s former chief of staff to immediately begin representing clients before his former boss without having to register ...

If we summarily start prohibiting educators, attorneys, or small business owners with potential conflicts from elective office, we may deny ourselves the benefit of some of Alabama’s most talented servants.

Having two-year college employees, or anyone with a full-time taxpayer funded job, serving in the legislature is a direct conflict of interest and provides these individuals with far-reaching power that distorts their sense of right and wrong.

Consider for a moment that one-third of the members of the House Education Appropriations Committee, which writes the $6 billion budget Education Trust Fund, are current employees of the two-year college system or just recently stepped down from their jobs as a result of pressure against “double-dipping.”

Some of the individuals employed in the two-year system, it was recently revealed, actually have apparent “phantom” jobs that do not require them to show up for work or have any real duties, and at least one of these legislators is currently under indictment for that reason.

Employing legislators gives some two-year colleges an unfair advantage over other schools competing for money within the ETF budget, especially if the legislators they employ serve on the budget committee. But it is a double-edged sword.

How does a college administrator or a two-year chancellor discipline an employ who holds more political power than they do? How do you demand results and work product from an employee when they have the power to take away money from the institution you run? You don’t – and therein lies the rub ...

Predictably, Democrats* are now doing everything they can to undermine the state school boards’ recent decision to do away with double-dipping and keep this corrupt system in place. In fact, one of the bills introduced would remove oversight of the two-year system from the elected state school board and give that responsibility to the Legislature.

Legislators who serve while holding another taxpayer-funded job do harm to the political and governmental institutions they swore an oath to protect.