From AL.com:

The Alabama Legislature sent to Gov. Bob Riley a $2.01 billion general fund budget Tuesday that depends, in part, on an appeals court’s restoring $63 million to the fund and an uptick in the state’s economy.

The House voted 78-26 to concur with the Senate version of the budget, which passed the upper chamber earlier in the day on a 29-4 vote.

Also of note from the article:

In an April ruling, a Montgomery judge agreed with Tuscaloosa businessman Stan Pate, who argued that Riley improperly transferred $63 million to the general fund.

Circuit Judge William Shashy issued a preliminary injunction against the transfer and ordered the money restored to a state savings account known as the Alabama Trust Fund.

The litigation is part of Alabama’s long-running lawsuit against Exxon Mobil Corp. over royalties due from natural gas wells the company drilled in gulf waters off the Alabama coast. The state won a $3.6 billion verdict in 2003, but the Supreme Court tossed out most of that in November 2007.

“We lost billions of dollars in ill-gotten gains that the jury had penalized Exxon for that could have really helped our children in this state,” said [Sen. Roger] Bedford.

I have discussed the Exxon Mobil royalty issue ad nauseam here, but I couldn’t let Bedford’s absurd quote go unnoticed.  After all the legal dust from the case settled the state would up losing absolutely no “ill-gotten gains.”  Exxon Mobil paid back every cent that they were found to be liable for plus interest.  What they didn’t pay was the egregiously high multi-billion dollar punitive award that was ultimately struck down.

The author, Bob Lowery, mentions the compensatory award, but sprinkles in what I construe as an editorial comment on the situation by stating that, “Coincidentally, Exxon Mobil just recorded the highest quarterly profits in the it’s history - $11.7 billion.”  That has absolutely nothing - not one thing - to do with the matter at hand.  Lowery chose to toss that little nugget of information in not because it adds value to the story, but because it may bias the reader against the big, rich, evil oil company.  So what if Exxon Mobil is a profitable company?  Should they have to pay beyond what they legally owe simply because they have the misfortune of being large and reasonably successful?  Lowery’s injection of Exxon Mobil’s profits into an unrelated story, which I might add is something of a pastime in the journalism circuit, sounds like a faint call for “each according to his ability.”  Is Lowery advocating for income or profit based fines like the Finns issue for speeding tickets?

Related content:

This entry was posted by Brian on Wednesday, May 7th, 2008 at 5:55 pm and is filed under Alabama. 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.