From AL.com:

Speaking from the Senate floor Thursday, state Sen. Lowell Barron, D-Fyffe, called for an investigation of an apparent effort by Auburn University Montgomery to circumvent state oversight in seeking a $10 million appropriation for a new school of government.

“I felt like the governor and his folks were trying to squirrel away $10 million as a pork palace,” said Barron, D-Fyffe, a former Auburn University trustee. “That’s all it could be. It just smells bad.”

Lowell Barron denigrating anyone for pork is like Jimmy Carter calling George Bush the worst president.  He may be right, but he is the last one in the world who should be leveling such accusations.

The $10 million “pork palace” in question was detailed in the HSV Times by Bob Lowery this past Sunday.  Here is the gist of the story.  AUM receives financial support from the Alabama government ($27M last year).  AUM hired - with our own money - lobbyists to persuade the governor’s office to send them more of our money.  An associate of the firm they hired, Massey Development Group, is a “close friend” of Alabama’s state finance director, Jim Main.  Jim Main personally - i.e. on his own - tucked a $10 million earmark into this year’s budget request for a new school of government at AUM that neither the AU board of trustees or the Alabama Commission on Higher Education had approved.

Main claims that he was only lobbied ”after the fact.”  So are we supposed to believe that Main came up with the idea for a school of government at AUM on his own and that it was a pure coincidence AUM was paying a lobbying firm, who happened to employ one of Main’s close friends, to convince Riley and Main to do the very same thing?!  Main clearly isn’t being honest in this case.

Jim Main is not somone that Alabamians can trust to give us the full story.  Despite lording over OUR tax dollars, he doesn’t think that we need to know how the ThyssenKrupp subsidy will be financed if Amendment 1 fails.  He says that the subsidy will be paid regardless of the outcome, but that he doesn’t want the vote to be a referendum on how to pay it.  If the decision is already made then why are we voting?  Does he think the compliance of Alabamians is a mere formality?

Just how did Main get this job in the first place?  He is a degreed pharmacist and lawyer.  His professional career has been as a private attorney.  He admits that he is “not good at math.”  Neither his professional skills nor his mathematical acumen gives him the proper credentials to direct the finances of an entire state.

• Enterprise denied funding
• Lowell Barron likes the other white meat
• He’ll be here all week, don’t forget to tip the bartender
• How to repair the Alabama Senate
• Double standard

This entry was posted by Brian on Friday, June 1st, 2007 at 5:43 am and is filed under Alabama, Ethics Scandals. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site. Please note the copyright policy.