Mud slinging collateral damage
Sen. Roger Bedford, possible gubernatorial candidate and all around loyal Democrat, lashed out at Kay Ivey and Bradley Byrne, both PACT board members, over PACT legislation that is poised to perish this session.
Ivey, who chairs the PACT Trust Fund, said she’s hopeful that a Senate committee today will approve a House-passed bill and that the Senate will give it final passage Friday.
But state Sen. Roger Bedford, D-Russellville, chairman of that committee, said that won’t happen because the bill is a proposed constitutional amendment that wouldn’t go before voters until November 2010.
“Kay is trying to blur all of this by saying the governor didn’t do this and the Legislature didn’t do that, and saying the Legislature needs to do something with two days left,” he said.
Bedford said Marc Reynolds, deputy director of the Retirement Systems of Alabama pension funds, said the approach taken in the bill by state Rep. Craig Ford, D-Gadsden, is unworkable. Reynolds said the bill would take economic development money from the General Fund budget that couldn’t be repaid, Bedford said.
But Ivey said at a news conference that Lt. Gov. Jim Folsom told her and two-year college Chancellor Bradley Byrne in a conference call Tuesday that “there is still time for the Senate to act and for the House to concur” on Ford’s bill. Folsom and Byrne are also members of the PACT board.
“It’s embarrassing that Kay Ivey and Bradley Byrne wrecked the prepaid program without asking for help two years ago,” Bedford said.
“It’s not the Legislature’s fault, it’s not the governor’s fault, but now they (Byrne and Ivey) are asking the Legislature for a lifeline.”
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“Obviously, Kay Ivey and Bradley Byrne are not competent and need to be fired,” Bedford said, adding that RSA chief Dr. David Bronner needs to run PACT.
Is it any coincidence that the only two board members Bedford attacked are both Republicans and likely gubernatorial candidates as well? I don’t think so. Ivey is the chairperson of the PACT board, so one could plausibly argue she had more to do with controlling it than others. But Byrne is a regular board member as is Folsom. It is unlikely that Byrne would have any more control over the program than Folsom so Bedford’s allegations of incompetence towards Ivey and Byrne also cover Folsom (as well as the other PACT board members Bedford ignored because they are not part of the loyal opposition running for governor). Oops.
Personally, though, I agree with Bedford about letting the legislation die. The PACT program has never been viable and I don’t want the state to recklessly rush through legislation to try to resuscitate a terminally ill patient.
Brian, this is just an indication of the mortal damage done by the PACT collapse to Kay Ivey’s gubernatorial aspirations. Every time it is possible every opponent will bash her with it.
Roger Bedford is a scumbag.
That said, it should have been obvious for a long time that PACT was poorly managed. I figured that much out when I looked into getting it for my kids and noticed the lump-sum investment costs. For 2008, the lump-sum cost to enroll a newborn was $23,938. But to enroll a 9th grader only cost $25,650 — a $1700 difference.
Given the high cost of tuition, it was hard to see how a $25k investment would grow enough in 3-4 years to cover four years of college tuition. Furthermore, a person investing when their kid was a newborn was basically only going to realize a $1700 return on investment over the next fourteen years — pretty lousy.
Based on the way the program was set up, the only rational thing to do was to invest money in a mutual fund until the kid was in the 9th grade and then buy into PACT at the last possible minute. That is not a model for a sound program.