by John Archibald, al.com
on July 29, 2013 at 12:02 PM, updated July 29, 2013 at 2:58 PM
It was a prosecutor who said it, watching with just a slice of satisfaction as Republicans swept clean an Alabama Statehouse that had grown lazy and corrupt, comfortable in its power and its ways of preserving it.
“It’s a good thing,” he sighed. “But give them a few years and you won’t be able to tell these Republicans from those Democrats.”
It has been a few years. Boy, has it been a few years.
Rep. Mike Hubbard, Alabama Speaker of the House, self-proclaimed architect of the GOP storming of the Statehouse, the most powerful political figure in Alabama and the state’s economic development go-getter in chief, is now justifying his own eyebrow-raising actions by saying …
The Democrats did it.
Hubbard, as the Birmingham News/AL.com reported this week, has built his company, The Auburn Network Inc., into a marketing and economic development venture that happens to dovetail sweetly into his official and public stance.
When he vows to make Alabama a business-friendly state, he can rightly claim he does the people’s work. When he flies to France for the Paris Air Show, his staff can argue that his trip is good for the state because his passage was paid by “an economic development group with whom he works, the Southeast Alabama Gas District.”
But when Hubbard’s company contracts for $12,000 a month to “deliver economic development prospects” to that same southeastern Alabama gas company, it is harder to separate what is in the public interest, and what is in Hubbard’s. It is harder to decide what is a real economic development group to Hubbard, and what is a client.
But … But…
It’s just business.
“It’s the same thing (Democratic former House Speaker) Seth Hammett did,” Hubbard told AL.com. “He did it when he was speaker.”
Feel better yet?
Hubbard wants us to because he met with the Alabama Ethics Commission to discuss his company contracts. And the Ethics Commission gave him the nod. It said, as it always does, that contracts such as Hubbard’s are OK as long as he doesn’t take “direct action” to benefit his clients.
But he doesn’t have to.
Hubbard had plausible deniability when the Alabama House tacked language into a budget that appeared to benefit only a pharmaceutical company that is a client of the Auburn Network.
Rep. Greg Wren — a Republican from Montgomery who Hubbard appointed to head the Local Legislation Committee — said he, for his own reasons, sought the change in the budget that would have aided Hubbard client American Pharmacy Cooperative, Inc.
Perhaps it was more than plausible. Perhaps Hubbard had no involvement at all.
But come on. Best case scenario it just looks bad. And we’ve been through too much in this state – and Mike Hubbard knows it – to accept plausible deniability as good enough.
If it looks like a duck, and quacks like a duck, the people of Alabama know exactly what to do:
DUUUCK!
Because this is the stuff our headaches are always made of.
The letter of Hubbard’s own ethics law is not good enough. The letter of the law is not nearly enough for the people of Alabama, who remember how Hubbard pilloried the Democrats before him, and expected much, much more.
“They’ve built a corrupt system,” he said in destroying that century-long hold on Montgomery. “And they like it.”
Mike Hubbard came into his own on that outrage. He came to power on that indignation. He came in all high and mighty. And he got high on the mighty.
Now he justifies his actions by saying…
Seth Hammett did it.
Boy, has it been a few years.
http://www.al.com/opinion/index.ssf/2013/07/alabama_house_speaker_mike_hub.html