Mike Hubbard: Taxpayers deserve state free of corruption, double-dippers

Mike Hubbard
Republican Party Chairman
Published: May 5, 2008

The massive waste, fraud and abuse recently uncovered in the two-year college system is, in my opinion, the direct result of a decades-old practice in Alabama.
Almost since its inception, employees within the two-year college system have served in the Alabama Legislature and created a culture that breeds corruption and begs for reform.

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.

An old saying, coined in the mid-19th century by English historian Lord Acton, reads, “Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely,” and that is the situation we find ourselves in today. The temptation to abuse power among legislators employed within the two-year system is proving too difficult for many to resist.

Former State Rep. Bryant Melton, for example, was employed by Shelton State Community College in Tuscaloosa at the same time he served in the legislature, and recently pled guilty to federal charges of using his office to funnel thousands of taxpayer dollars through the system for his personal use. Among other things, Melton used the taxpayer money to pay off gambling debts and fund his daughter’s college education.

Other Democrat members of the Alabama Legislature, also employed by the two-year system, are under indicted today and awaiting trial on other charges of fiscal abuse. The former chancellor of the two-year college system and the centerpiece of the investigation, once served as the second-most powerful Democrat in the House. He recently pled guilty to his role in an $18 million bribery scheme.

Newspaper stories from the 2006 election cycle detailed instances of Democrat Party officials offering no-show “jobs” in the two-year system to potential candidates if they agreed to oppose Republican incumbents on the ballot.

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.

And, as long as double-dippers continue to inhabit the corridors of the capitol and the halls of the Alabama State House, taxpayers will never truly be given the government they deserve – one free of corruption and fully accountable to the taxpayers it serves.

Rep. Mike Hubbard is the District 79 House Representative, is House Minority Leader and is Chairman of the Alabama Republican Party.