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Republican Divide Shows Itself in Legislative Session

Red Palladium — Tue, 21 May 2013 00:50:35 +0000

It has been a telling year in the Alabama legislature. The taxpayers have learned a lot about their representatives in Montgomery from what has taken place over the past few months.

Of course, the most notable event was the Republican supermajority’s decision to deceive the people of Alabama (and even their own education advisors) by ramming through the Accountability Act with bait-and-switch tactics, cutting of debate and public scrutiny.

And the Accountability Act has certainly received a lot of attention because of its impact on our schools – both public and private – and the recent flip-flopping from several Republicans who are now calling for repeal or delay of the new voucher program.

But the Accountability Act is also a symptom of a larger issue that has revealed itself during this legislative session: the internal divide among Republicans in Montgomery.

This divide first showed itself when the early versions of the gun bills began to be debated.

I have always been a supporter of the second amendment and was prepared to bring an amendment to the Republicans’ signature gun bill that would have protected an employees’ right to keep their firearm stored safely in their vehicle while parked at work.

But Republicans did not want to vote on this amendment. Doing so would have put them in between the Business Council of Alabama, which opposed the amendment, and the NRA, which supports the amendment.

In the end, the Republican Supermajority passed a heavily watered-down version of the amendment in a different gun bill. This legislation was a part of the Republicans’ legislative agenda for this year, and they almost couldn’t pass it because of the divide between the business interests that fund their campaigns and many of the grassroots voters that elected them in the first place.

The gun bill was just the first of the issues that divided Republicans this year.

Next came the Common Core Standards. The Common Core Standards are a national set of academic standards that states have the option of adopting. States that do adopt the Common Core could potentially get more federal funding for public education.

Again, Republicans were divided between the Business Council that supported the common core and some grassroots Republicans who strongly opposed the Common Core.

And, once again, the Republican Supermajority chose to wait until the very end of the session and then take sides with their supporters in the business community over their grassroots supporters.

Republicans would split again over whether or not to allow home-schooled students to participate in public school activities – also known as the “Tim Tebow Bill.” Grassroots Republicans believed this bill would be a shoe-in, but the bill was voted down in the state Senate with eleven Republicans voted against it and ten Republicans voting for it.

And that brings us back to the most controversial of all the bills that have come up this session: the Accountability Act.

When it was first brought up for a vote, the Accountability Act was supported almost unanimously by House and Senate Republicans – only seven Republicans in the House and not a single Republican in the Senate voted against it!

But after public outcry over what the Accountability Act will do to our schools and the deceitful way in which it was passed, some Republicans, including Senators Arthur Orr (R-Decatur) and Bill Holtzclaw (R-Madison), began to join with Democrats in calling for repeal of the Act.

Other Republicans began to look for “fixes” that could stop the political “bleeding” they had incurred from the Accountability Act. And last week, Governor Bentley proposed delaying the new voucher program for two years.

But many Republicans are still holding fast to the Accountability Act as it was passed on February 28. Senator Paul Sanford (R-Huntsville) even wrote a letter to Bentley saying, “I personally cannot accept waiting another two years to see if these children [in my district] might be offered a better education.”

Republicans also disagreed over whether kids already enrolled in private schools would be eligible for the tax credits and whether the definition of a failing school should be a school that tests in the bottom ten percent or the bottom six percent.

But whether it’s the Accountability Act, the Common Core, the Tim Tebow bill or the gun bill, it is clear that Republicans are dividing amongst themselves on some key issues. And most of this divide seems to be between the business interests that fund the Republicans campaigns and the grassroots groups that turn out the vote on Election Day.

Representative Craig Ford is a Democrat from Gadsden. He has served in the Alabama House of Representatives since 2000. In 2010, Representative Ford was elected House Minority Leader by the House Democratic Caucus. He was re-elected Minority Leader in 2012.

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House Minority Leader Craig Ford Responds to Governor’s Proposal to Delay Accountability Act Vouchers for Two Years

Red Palladium — Wed, 15 May 2013 23:51:22 +0000

For Immediate Release: May 15, 2013

“This is a band-aid approach to the Accountability Act. The Republican Supermajority is just trying to get through the next election and hope the voters – especially educators – will forget about this. But the people of Alabama will not forget about this. The only solution to the Accountability Act is to repeal it.”

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Republicans in Montgomery Take One Last Jab at Public Education

Red Palladium — Mon, 13 May 2013 20:16:08 +0000

For the past three years, the Alabama legislature under the leadership of the Republican Supermajority has waged a war on public education in Alabama.

It started with cutting educators’ take-home pay. Next, the Republicans “dropped the DROP program” (though they waited until they could get their payout from it first).

This year, it started with the Accountability Act. Plenty has been said and will continue to be said on that one.

But last week – on the next-to-last day of the legislative session – the Republican Supermajority rammed through one last piece of legislation to take a jab at educators.

This bill, Senate Bill 303 by Senators Gerald Allen (R-Tuscaloosa), Tom Whatley (R-Auburn), and Del Marsh (R-Anniston), would change the Board of Directors of the Teachers’ Retirement System by adding two members from higher education but removing the head of the Alabama Education Association.

Now I fully support higher education having a presence at the table. Their members participate in the system the same as other educators and should be represented on the Board that invests their money and manages their retirement accounts.

But it was not necessary to remove AEA from the Board. All that was needed was to create two new positions on the Board for higher education.

But this is not the first time the Republican Supermajority in Montgomery has targeted the Retirement System’s Board.

During the previous two years, the Republicans in Montgomery sponsored multiple bills that would have replaced the elected members of the Board with political appointees chosen by the governor, the speaker of the state House of Representatives, and the president pro tem of the state Senate.

Thankfully, these bills did not get passed. But these bills show what the true intention of last week’s bill is: to remove AEA’s presence from the Board.

AEA represents over 100,000 educators in Alabama. Why shouldn’t these educators have their strongest voice at the table?

And it especially makes no sense to remove Dr. Henry Mabry from the Board. He served as the state’s Director of Finance for four years and was a public finance consultant for nine. He is an expert in public finance. If anyone belongs on the Board, it is Dr. Mabry.

So it is obvious that this bill was not about being better stewards of the teachers’ and education support personnel’s money. This was about the Republican Supermajority taking one last jab at AEA and educators before they go home for the rest of the year.

In 2010, the Republicans campaigned on a platform to clean up Montgomery. But now that they have a supermajority, they have instead chosen to wage a war on public education and the educators and administrators charged with teaching our children and running our public schools.

How does the Accountability Act help a struggling school? It doesn’t. It abandons these schools.

How does “dropping the DROP program” help improve the quality of education in Alabama? It doesn’t. It kicks experienced educators out of the classroom.

How does removing Dr. Mabry and AEA from the TRS Board of Directors help our teachers or our schools? It doesn’t. It’s just one more stab at educators.

This war on public education is ridiculous! Our children deserve better. The teachers and education support personnel deserve better. The taxpayers deserve better.

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Another Lost Opportunity to Debate the Accountability Act

Red Palladium — Tue, 07 May 2013 01:02:50 +0000

I learned a lot of values from my dad. He served in the legislature 26 years, and one of the most important values he practiced as a legislator and that he passed on to me is that our government should operate honestly and out in the open so that the taxpayers can see what they are getting for their money.

So you can imagine the heartburn I feel when the Republicans in the Alabama legislature have – not once but twice – rammed through major educational reform legislation without public input or meaningful legislative debate.

We all know the story: On February 28th, the Republican Supermajority in Montgomery replaced the educational reform bill that had passed both houses of the legislature with a new bill that was three times longer than the original bill and included a new voucher system. Legislators had only one hour to read and debate this new bill, and we still do not know how much it will cost, but that cost will be paid from the state education budget.

Last week, we could have had the opportunity to have the debate on the Accountability Act that we were not allowed to have back in February.

We could have had that debate, but we didn’t.

Once again, the Republican Supermajority used their power to ram through a new change to the Accountability Act. This was the first of the Republicans’ “fix” bills meant to make the Accountability Act better.

Of course, this bill doesn’t actually fix anything. All this new bill does is allow “non-failing schools” to deny admission to students trying to transfer out of “failing schools.”

The Accountability Act was sold to the public as giving kids “trapped in ‘failing schools’ a way out.” But the very first “fix” bill the Republican Supermajority rammed through the legislature would make it more difficult for children in the so-called “failing schools” to transfer to “non-failing schools.”

I guess all that talk about “school choice” was just empty rhetoric meant to pull the wool over our eyes.

But aside from the fact that this “fix” bill doesn’t actually fix anything (in fact, it just makes this already terrible law even worse), once again the debate on the Accountability Act was shut off.

After only two Democrats got to speak on this bill, the Republicans shut off debate and rammed this bill through.

There are two reasons why the Republicans shut off debate. First, the Republicans knew that Democrats had an amendment to offer that would have prohibited legislators and constitutionally elected officers like the governor from receiving vouchers to send their kids to private schools.

As Democrats, we believe it is dishonest for elected officials to financially benefit at the expense of the children of Alabama. These vouchers will take $50 million out of our schools this year alone. Why should legislators make a profit while our children have to make do with out-of-date textbooks and old computers or deteriorating school buildings?

But we did not get to offer that amendment. The Republicans who wrote the Accountability Act want to get the voucher for their families, and they don’t want to go on the record voting against an amendment that would prohibit them from receiving it. So they chose two Democrats whom they knew did not have an amendment and only let them speak.

The second reason the Republicans shut off debate is because they do not want to shine the light of day on what the Accountability Act is or how it will impact public education.

The President Pro-Tem of the state senate, Sen. Del Marsh, R-Anniston, has said publicly that if they had tried to pass the Accountability Act through the normal legislative process it would not have passed.

And that brings me back to what my dad taught me about how our government needs to be open and honest in how it operates and especially in how we spend the taxpayers money.

The Accountability Act does not improve our schools; it abandons them. It does so by giving up on struggling schools and taking money away from successful schools. It is so bad that now even some Republican senators are joining with Democrats and calling on the legislature to repeal the Accountability Act.

All of our children deserve access to a quality education. The taxpayers deserve to know what their government is doing and how their tax dollars are being spent. Until we have an honest and open debate on the Accountability Act, we cannot provide either.

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House Minority Leader Craig Ford Responds to Republicans Ramming Through Accountability Act “Fix” Bill

Red Palladium — Wed, 01 May 2013 03:03:21 +0000

“Once again the Republicans in the Alabama legislature have shown they do not want to shine the light of day on the Accountability Act. The Republicans have subverted the process again and rammed through another Accountability Act bill – this time without even an hour of debate. This is just more dishonest and unethical behavior from the Republican Supermajority.”

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House Minority Leader Craig Ford Responds to Republican Gun Bill

Red Palladium — Tue, 30 Apr 2013 21:41:05 +0000

For Immediate Release: April 30, 2013

“Since February, Alabama Democrats have made it publicly known that we had an amendment for House Bill 8 that would protect an employee’s right to store their firearm in their vehicle while at work. But today, Republicans in the Alabama legislature showed their true values when they voted to cut off debate before our amendment could be offered.

When pushed to make a choice, the Republicans in the Alabama legislature chose Billy Canary over the people of Alabama’s Second Amendment rights. The Republicans chose to put their biggest campaign contributor’s desires ahead of the safety and best interests of the people of Alabama.

At the end of the day, we see that it is Alabama Democrats – not the Republicans in Montgomery- who will stand up for the Second Amendment.”

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Attempts to “Fix” Accountability Act Only Make Bad Law Worse

Red Palladium — Mon, 29 Apr 2013 23:07:58 +0000

This week, the Alabama House of Representatives once again has to vote on legislation that is meant to “fix” a bill that was rushed through the process and not thought-out before it became law.

If there has been a theme for the past three years since the Republican Supermajority took control of the state legislature, it has been unintended consequences.

Unintended consequences that have lead to long lines at the DMV and the possibility of innocent good Samaritans and churches facing criminal charges for giving a ride to an illegal immigrant.

Now the Republican leadership in Montgomery is asking the legislature to “fix” the Alabama Accountability Act.

Of course, there is no fixing the Accountability Act. There are too many problems with this law and the way it was passed. No amount of new laws or regulations will change the fact that the Accountability Act steers millions of dollars away from our public schools and puts them into a voucher program.

And the proposed “fixes” that Republicans in the Alabama legislature are offering don’t address any of the concerns that have been mentioned by the public. The Republicans’ “fixes” do not protect funding for public schools, or address the issue of the fairness of the vouchers. These “fixes” do not do anything to help the “failing schools” perform better or answer the question of whether it is even proper to divert millions of taxpayer dollars from public schools to private schools.

Instead, the first of the Republicans’ “fix” bills is a bill that would allow “non-failing schools” to deny admission to students from failing schools.

Correct me if I’m wrong, but wasn’t the whole point of the vouchers to give students a choice in what schools they attend?

Now we see what the true intent of the so-called Accountability Act really is. School boards, educators and administrators are put under extreme pressure for their students to perform well on standardized tests. There is no motivation for a “non-failing school” to accept a student from a “failing school”. So this fist “fix” bill actually makes it harder for students to transfer to better performing schools.

But this is not the only “fix” Republicans are offering for the Accountability Act. A second proposal would increase the tax credit for those who donate to the scholarship fund. The tax credit would double under this proposal and be paid for out of the statewide education budget.

A third “fix” bill would guarantee that the vouchers would be given to those who already send their children to private schools, even if their children never attended a “failing school.”

The chairman of the House Ways and Means – Education Committee has said that he expects at least 25 percent of the 61,0000 children currently enrolled in private schools to be eligible for the tax credit.

Now we have only budgeted $50 million for the vouchers. But if 25 percent of the 61,000 children currently enrolled in private schools receives a voucher, it would cost the state over $53 million next year alone. That is already more than we have budgeted, and not one penny of it going to help a child currently enrolled in a “failing school.”

Now how do any of these proposals from Republican Supermajority in the Alabama Legislature “fix” the Accountability Act or improve the quality of education in “failing schools”?

As Democrats have said all along, the Accountability Act cannot be “fixed” or repaired. And the so-called “fixes” that Republicans are offering only make a terrible law even worse!

This is not leadership, and it certainly is not responsible. There is only one solution for how to deal with the Accountability Act: repeal.

The right thing to do is to repeal the Alabama Accountability Act and go back to the original, responsible education reform proposal that was supported by educators, school boards, and the superintendents and passed unanimously by Republicans and Democrats in the Alabama Senate.

The Accountability Act is a terrible law that passed in an unethical and ugly way. The “fix” bills being offered by the Republican leadership only make this bad bill worse. It’s time to do the right thing; the responsible thing. It is time to repeal the Accountability Act. That is the only solution.

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House Minority Leader Craig Ford Responds to Senate Republicans Cutting Teacher Pay Raise to 1%

Red Palladium — Wed, 24 Apr 2013 19:33:31 +0000

“We’ve gone from a slap in the face to absolute insanity! The initial 2 percent pay raise was a slap in the face to educators. Now the Republican Supermajority has made 1 percent of that raise conditional on the number of students who participate in the Accountability Act voucher program.

Educators, retirees, and state employees deserve to be treated with respect and shown appreciation for the difficult jobs they do. It is absurd to lower their raise from 2 percent to 1 percent while at the same time creating a new $5 million expenditure for liability insurance that educators already receive through their local boards of education and the Alabama Education Association at no cost to the state.

If the Republican Supermajority did not have an axe to grind with public education and Alabama’s educators, we could find the money in our state budgets to give educators, state employees and retirees a 5 percent pay raise.”

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General Fund Budget is Insufficient to Meet State Needs

Red Palladium — Mon, 22 Apr 2013 15:03:57 +0000

It’s that time of year when the state legislature writes the budgets that will fund our schools and government services.

Last week, the Alabama House of Representatives passed the Education Trust Fund, which funds all things related to public education. This week, the House will turn its attention to the state’s General Fund budget, which funds all state departments, agencies, and programs not related to education.

As I have looked over the proposed budget that came out of the Senate and then the House’s Ways and Means – General Fund Committee, I can’t help but have some concerns.

One of my first concerns is the cuts to our state’s judicial system. This particular concern isn’t a partisan one. Chief Justice Roy Moore, who leads both our state’s Supreme Court and the state’s judicial system, has publicly expressed his concern that the if the budget proposed by the Senate becomes law without any additional funding for our courts the state could have to layoff as many as 300 court employees.

Losing that many employees will not only slow down the judicial process, it will also have a large negative impact on our state’s economy. These judicial system employees are also customers, and if they lose their jobs it has the same impact as if a plant or company shuts down.

And if our judicial system slows down, could that open up grounds for convicts to claim they were denied their constitutional right to a “speedy trial?”

The judicial system is not the only area of our government were we could lose jobs. The governor and legislative leaders have made it clear that they want to eliminate government jobs – a process they call “rightsizing government.”

Perhaps a greater injustice to our state employees is that they will not be getting a long-overdue cost-of-living pay increase this year.

Traditionally, when the state provides a pay increase to educators, the state also provides a pay increase to state employees. While the education budget that passed the House includes a 2 percent pay increase for some educators (retires and those who work in higher education were left out), there is no equal pay increase offered to state employees this year.

State employees have not had a cost-of-living pay increase since 2007. Retirees have not had one since 2006. And over the past two years, educators, state employees and retirees have had an additional 2.5 percent taken out of their paychecks. At the same time, the cost of living has increased by 7.5 percent. So educators, retirees, and state employees are making about 10 percent less than they were just six years ago.

But there are many other problems with this budget other than state employees jobs and pay.

We are dangerously close to underfunding Medicaid. Last year, voters had to approve a constitutional amendment to allow the government to borrow from the Alabama Trust Fund just to avoid the Medicaid program collapsing. This year, we are on the edge of being in the same position. Why?

Along the same lines, our funding for the Department of Mental Health is also much less than it should be. Recent violent attacks in New Haven, Boston, and even South Alabama have shown how important the Department of Mental Health is and how it can help avoid these kinds of attacks in the future.

Republicans in the Alabama legislature announced last week that they are bringing a resolution encouraging the Alabama Department of Mental Health to expand their services. But the Republicans have put no additional funding in the budget to allow the department to expand those services. Without additional funding, this resolution is nothing more than feel-good rhetoric without any action to address the need that exists.

Another area of concern is that this budget makes drastic cuts to the Department of Child Abuse and Neglect Prevention. This department is the only entity in Alabama that tries to prevent abuse and neglect before they happen, as opposed to taking care of these children after the abuse and/or neglect occurs. In 2012, the state spent $243,788 on the Department of Child Abuse and Neglect Prevention. This year, we have only budgeted $85,000, while the Senate only budgeted $50,000!

I am deeply concerned that these budgets are insufficient to meet Alabama’s needs. Yes, times are tough and we have to make some hard decisions. But are these the best decisions we could be making? Are these cuts really in the best interests of the taxpayers?

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House Democratic Leadership Responds to Kennedy Resignation

Red Palladium — Fri, 19 Apr 2013 14:03:41 +0000

House Minority Leader Craig Ford (D-Gadsden):

“Judge Kennedy has been an outstanding public servant and leader of our Party. I am sad to see him leave, but I know he will continue to do great things for Democrats in Alabama.”

House Democratic Caucus Chairman Thomas Jackson (D-Thomasville):

“Judge Kennedy was bringing credibility back to the Democratic Party and giving Democrats a voice again. It saddens me dearly that he is stepping down, but I appreciate the work he has done and I understand why he had to make this decision. I know he will continue to do great things for Democrats throughout Alabama, and I hope to continue working with him in a new capacity.”

Chairman of the Joint Legislative Black Caucus, Rep. Napoleon Bracy (D-Mobile):

“It has been a privilege to work alongside Judge Kennedy for the past two years, and I am thankful for his service to our state and Party. I am sorry to see him leave, but I know he will still be fighting for Democrats, and I hope and we can continue to our work together in a new capacity.”

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