If you have any doubt that state government in Alabama is operated for the benefit of the elected and the connected, look no further that the case of Rep. Sue Schmitz.
Schmitz, D-Toney, is accused by the feds of accepting a salary from Central Alabama Community College without doing the work to earn it.
Actually, it’s a second trial for Schmitz. Jurors in her first trial deadlocked. Perhaps they couldn’t decide whether taking a government check without doing much work is really a crime.
They might have reason to wonder. Prosecuting people for that kind of thing doesn’t seem to be at the top of state law enforcement’s priority list. It’s those picky old feds that insist on trying to change the way we do things in Alabama. In the Schmitz case, federal money was paying her salary, she’s charged with four counts of fraud and four counts of mail fraud.
(Students of history might recall that it wasn’t state law enforcement that toppled the corrupt Huey Long machine in Louisiana. It was the feds there, too. And it was mail fraud charges that began unraveling the regime).
Regardless of whether Schmitz actually showed up for work, it is how she got her job that offers an insight into how things work.
Did she send in her resume? Submit to interviews? Take a competitive exam?
Not if you believe the testimony of some people who have incentives to tell the truth; she just had powerful friends.
Consider Seth Hammett’s testimony.
Hammett, who wields considerable influence as House speaker, said Alabama Education Association executive secretary Paul Hubbert, who is generally regarded as the state’s most influential lobbyist, told him that Schmitz would be coming to see him with a request and that he’d take it as a favor if Hammett honored it.
Hammett said that at Schmitz’s request he asked the head of the committee over the education budget to include money for the job for her.
In response to a question from Schmitz’s attorney, Hammett said he had changed his testimony about whether he had asked for money to be added to the budget “upon reflection.” He didn’t say what encouraged that reflection.
Former two-year college system chancellor Roy Johnson, who is helping the feds while awaiting sentencing after pleading guilty to 15 felony counts (cooperating could net him less prison time), testified that both Hubbert and Hammett had asked him to find a job for Schmitz.
Perhaps I’m being cynical, but I wonder whether we would have heard about any of this if the Community Intensive Training for Youth program where Schmitz was employed were not run with federal money.
Although Schmitz doesn’t appear to have been a stickler about the procedures by which she got her job, she seems much more concerned about seeing that the rules on firing employees are followed to the letter. Schmitz, who was fired in October 2007, contested the firing on the grounds that the Fair Dismissal Act had not been followed.
An administrative law judge agreed, ruling that she could not be terminated at will. This week, a Montgomery County circuit judge upheld that ruling and ordered the college to reinstate her with back pay and benefits.
The college and the CITY program are appealing the order to grant Schmitz back pay.
Alabamians pride themselves on their conservatism. They hate paying taxes and are proud of it. Even if the two-year college scandal were the only looting of the public purse, there would be reason to think that too much of the taxpayers’ money goes to waste.
Unfortunately, it’s not the first scandal
It likely won’t be the last, because we Alabamians aren’t really conservatives.
We’re suckers.
Year after year we watch the elected take care of themselves and the connected. And then we elect them again, because they assure us they have “conservative Alabama values.”
Some conservatives. Some values.
Contact the writer at billatthelake@gmail.com
