Blogging with AFRW

September 16, 2007

A panel of state officials who have been given the responsibility of overseeing some of the Alabama Legislature’s use of pork funds voted last week to require legislators to provide more information on grant recipients and how the grants will be used. But the commission missed an opportunity to bring even greater accountability to that process.

The Executive Commission on Community Service Grants is made up of four members of the executive branch of government — State Treasurer Kay Ivey, Agriculture Commissioner Ron Sparks, State School Superintendent Joe Morton, and Lt. Gov. Jim Folsom Jr.

"Community service grants" is the technical name legislators give to the money they give to special pet projects back in their home districts. The common name for such pet-project funding is pork. The Legislature allocated $14.8 million from education funds for their pork for next year.

The Legislature’s old program was declared unconstitutional because it allowed members of the legislative branch of government to both allocate and spend public funds, a violation of constitutional separation of powers.

To get around the court ruling and to keep the pork-barrel full of taxpayer money, the Legislature last year created the executive commission. We suspect that most legislators expected the commission to simply rubber-stamp their pork allocations.

While the commission did vote Wednesday to require legislators who are sending pork money to education-related projects in their districts to provide more information than previously was required, the commission rejected several proposals by Treasurer Ivey to make the process less likely to be abused.

The chance for abuse is very real. Taxpayers should remember the case of former state Rep. Bryant Melton, D-Tuscaloosa. Melton pleaded guilty last year of funneling his share of the pork funds to a foundation associated with the Alabama Fire College. The money was then rerouted back to Melton in the form of a supposed scholarship for his daughter, but Bryant admitted in his plea deal with prosecutors that he spent much of the money to repay his personal gambling debts. Bryant was removed from his seat in the Legislature as part of his conviction.

With that background, it would be irresponsible of the commission members not to do even more to ensure that the interests of taxpayers are protected in the process.

For instance, the commission requires that nongovernmental organizations that receive these public funds have to be audited regularly. But there is no requirement that audits have to specifically report on whether the public funds were used as intended by the agency. Without such a requirement, the audits might not help the state’s taxpayers to know whether their money is being used for a public educational purpose, or whether its really being used to pay a legislator’s gambling debts .

The commission also supposedly now requires that nongovernmental agencies have to make these audits available to the public. But in fact, the language approved by the commission states: "All grant recipients shall agree to make all audits available upon request." Unless the commission adds the words "to any member of the public," we would bet a substantial number of nongovernmental organizations would routinely deny access to audits to everyday citizens by claiming that the language really means at the request of the commission, not the public.

Finally, Ivey pushed to require all nongovernmental recipients to have to file audits in Montgomery where they would be available in one place for inspection by the public and press. It’s a good idea, but it was rejected by the other commissioners. The Associated Press reported that Superintendent Morton said no office in Montgomery needed truckloads of paperwork "that no one will ever look at."

That’s silly. First, there won’t be "truckloads" of audits. Second, we guarantee that more people — and reporters — would be willing to check to see how this public money was being spent if they could check in one place instead of scores of locations scattered around the state.

Without language that requires that audits ensure public money was spent as intended by private groups and makes it clear that the public can inspect the audits, the audit requirement is toothless.

Ivey hit on the crux of the matter when she told the Montgomery Advertiser Friday, "If a private organization gets public dollars, it should be willing to open up wide to public scrutiny."

The other members of the Executive Commission on Community Service Grants should listen to Ivey. If they don’t, the commission members could find themselves being blamed by the public for future abuses of legislative pork funds that they have approved.