Ala. Democrats can’t possibly want to run on ethics reform ... can they?

By Jennifer J. Foster

Published: August 28, 2009

From the Associated Press:

Two weeks ago, a Democrat-controlled committee called the Legislative Council rejected a plan by the State Board of Education to put a code of ethics in the state administrative code. At the urging of the Alabama Education Association, the council called the code vague and recommended the school board rewrite it to remove several rules.

The board on Thursday said it would stand by its proposal and not change it.

Now, the full Legislature will have to decide when it returns in January whether to back up the Legislative Council’s decision or go along with the ethics code as it is written.

The code will be considered at the same time as Republican Gov. Bob Riley’s legislation tightening the ethics rules for public officials.

Well, if Paul Hubbert and the AEA—er, Democrats in the Alabama Legislature—wanted a showdown on ethics reform in an election year, they got it.

As the old saying goes, be careful what you wish for.

I can’t think of a more ruinous issue for the Democrats than ethics reform. Think about it: They will have barely two months under their belts between the sentencing of former two-year state college chancellor Roy Johnson on a bevy of corruption charges and this legislative showdown with Riley.

Meanwhile, Bradley Byrne, the guy who came in and cleaned up the royal mess that Johnson left behind, will be making the rounds, telling Alabamians just how badly that ethics reform is needed—because he saw it first hand.

So Democrats are going to try to run on ethics reform after fighting it off with a stick for four years?

Please.

But let’s take a look, shall we, at just what the SBOE wanted that the AEA and Democratic legislators didn’t:

State Superintendent of Education Joe Morton, the driving force behind the ethics code, said it was never intended as an election issue. “I don’t do politics,” said Morton, who is appointed rather than elected.

The proposed code outlines acceptable and unacceptable conduct for education employees.

The Legislative Council wanted to remove several sections, including one that defined unethical conduct as harassing colleagues, misusing tests, using inappropriate language at school, and failing to provide appropriate supervision of students.

Morton said he was most troubled by the suggestion to remove a section saying that educators “should refrain from the use of alcohol and/or tobacco during the course of professional practice and should never use illegal or unauthorized drugs.”

“The one on drugs and alcohol blew my mind,” Morton said after Thursday’s board meeting.

Read that again.

State Democratic Party Chairman Joe Turnham said some Republicans are trying to “politicize ethics” for their benefit in the 2010 election.

Really? Well, there’s one way to stop them from doing that.

PASS ETHICS REFORM.

They could have done it this past session ... or the session before that ... or the session before that.

No dice.

Oh, they’ll say they will. They’ll make all kinds of promises, like they always do. But they won’t pass it—at least not in any recognizable, useful form. As a voter in Alabama, you have to feel a bit like Charlie Brown: Don’t you get tired of the AEA and their Democratic puppets, like Lucy, jerking the ethics-reform football away at the last minute?

So since Democrats continue to refuse to take the simple steps to defuse the ethics issue, you have to wonder: Do they really see it has a winning issue for themselves?

And here’s something else to ponder: State politicos generally assume that the AEA is so cold to Artur Davis’ gubernatorial candidacy because they don’t believe he can win in November. But could it be that Davis understands that his party has no credibility on that issue, so he would move to eliminate it as a problem—by adopting the needed reforms—straight out of the gate?

If so, good for Artur Davis—and good for the people of Alabama.

The AEA is taking the people of Alabama for fools. It’s long past time that the leadership of that circus pulled up the stakes and headed out of town.