Editorial: Lawmaker 'nonprofits' don't pass smell test

By Dothan Eagle editorial
Published: November 20, 2009

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Sometimes it seems as though Alabama’s whole system of state government is designed for waste and corruption. If it is, it may well be the most efficient of its kind.

Consider, for instance, the unchecked “distribution” of more than $800,000 in public funds by two “nonprofit” corporations set up by three west Alabama lawmakers.

Sen. Roger Bedford of Russellville and Reps. Mike Millican, Hamilton, and William Thigpen, Fayette, created two entities, the Marion County Community Development Association Inc. and West Alabama Development Association of Fayette County Inc., some five months after the state legislature approved a measure to direct $100,000 a year to each of the then-nonexistent groups.

The groups were incorporated as nonprofits, although neither has federal nonprofit designation. Their state missions are to enhance their communities with “economic and community development projects.”

That’s just mealymouthed doublespeak. And it gets worse.

Pressed by a Birmingham News reporter for specifics about expenditures, neither the lawmakers involved nor Fayette County Probate Judge William Oswalt, who helped create the group in his county, could give an answer.

Oswalt, who thought the group might have given money to schools or volunteer fire departments, told the reporter to ask “the other two,” Bedford and Thigpen.

Thigpen directed the reporter back to Oswalt, who he described as the organization’s treasurer.

Bedford attempted to defend the spending, saying the funding is being used for “important projects.”

An audit might have shed a bit on light on the increasingly suspicious spending. But there were no audits, although annual audits of the groups are required by the law that created the pork stream.

Might anyone be surprised that the state’s Examiners of Public Accounts had no knowledge of the organizations? Or that Ron Jones, the state examiner, said auditing additional agencies would be difficult because his department lacks the resources, which come directly from funding provided through the state legislature?

This situation simply doesn’t pass the smell test. If it did, why wouldn’t these officials be falling over themselves to crow about the “important projects” these public funds have paid for?

Audits are planned for the groups, now that they’ve come to light. The state Ethics Commission and Attorney General Troy King might be interested in the findings.