“Best and Worst Week in Montgomery” is a weekly feature on Yellowhammer Politics in which we recognize the people or organizations who had the BEST week or WORST week in town. You can view last week’s addition here. If you would like to nominate someone for this feature in the future, send us an email through our contact page.
Best Week in Montgomery: Henry Mabry and the AEA
Last week the AEA had The Worst Week in Montgomery…or so it seemed. After pulling out all the stops to prevent the passage of any form of charter schools legislation, the Senate squeaked out a watered down charters bill that would hopefully give the House something to build on. We summed it up by saying, “For laying down on the train track to stop charter schools, only to be run over by the school choice locomotive — the AEA had the Worst Week in Montgomery.”
Things changed this week as a House panel concluded that the Senate charters bill was too far gone to save. The House abandoned charters for this session and the AEA had a victory over one the the GOP’s biggest priorities.
The AEA also received some help from a couple of unlikely GOP allies in the Senate who joined the Democrats and usual AEA lackeys to prevent HB 160, one of the GOP’s top jobs bills, from gaining enough votes to pass a BIR.
It wasn’t long ago that many were trumpeting the impending death of the AEA. Henry Mabry’s job was constantly in question. Not anymore. For the unfortunate success of their all-out assault on education progress and job creation — the AEA had the best week in Montgomery.
Rep. Craig Ford (D – Gadsden)
Worst Week in Montgomery: Tax & Spend Liberals
The tax & spend contingent has been cranking out the talking points over the last couple of weeks as Alabama’s financial crisis reached a fevered pitch. A $200 million Medicaid shortfall put the state’s healthcare system in jeopardy and the fact that states must pass a balanced budget left many wondering how the Governor and legislative leaders would stick to their no-new-taxes-pledge.
In the end, the GOP leadership put their foot down and repeatedly said that taxpayers believe the state already takes enough of their hard-earned money. Rather than put a greater burden on the shoulders of the taxpayers, the GOP made the tough decisions and proved you can pass a balanced budget even in times of financial crisis.
For claiming it was impossible to approach this financial crisis without raising taxes, only to be proven wrong in the end — Tax & Spend Liberals had The Worst Week in Montgomery.
Very slick website, by the way.
Thanks man…’preciate you reading and commenting. I look forward to hearing more of your thoughts.
You mustn’t like many of the Repubs in Montgomery. Those guys are hardly conservative, by definition. They came in and tried to change a whole lot of things at once. I am a conservative. I believe in law and society’s changes being very slow. Seems to me that most of our state legislators have taken a fire, aim, ready approach to lawmaking. They are terribly uninformed, also. For instance, one if our locals representatives thought the state had a 40% dropout rate. ALSDE’S website reported that our rate was a little under 7% in 2010. I learned by talking to him that in politics, facts are very flexible.
Are you trying to be a real news man? When you use terms like “lackeys,” it makes you seem somewhat biased.
We have enough “news men” who pretend to play it down the middle. I’m a conservative. I want conservatives elected & I want them to act like conservatives once they are in there. I am definitely biased in that regard & don’t pretend to be otherwise.
The real killer this week was not getting the jobs bill, SB160, to the Senate floor for an up or down vote. We needed three more votes to pass the BIR. When it comes to job creation, SB160 was arguably the most important piece of legislation of the session.
There were four votes Alabamians should have been able to count on for the BIR: Unfortunately, Dial, Holley and Sanford voted “NO” with Roger Bedford, AEA and the dems . Tripp Pittman just flatly wimped out and abstained.
Paul Sanford’s vote was really a disappointment and I expected better of Pittman.
Amazing the difference in Republican attitudes from one year to the next. Memories are short for politicians. Not so for the voters.
Correction: SB 160 should have been written HB 160. My error. dan