Revenge claimed in Iron Bowl Ticketgate

By Staff
Bob Martin, The Alabama Scene
Leave it to state Rep. Alvin Holmes to stir up a caldron of controversy.
Holmes, who hasn’t seen a single perceived discrimination he couldn’t exploit to its fullest advantage, now claims that because he has criticized Auburn University the school singled him out for revenge by not sending him his two freebie tickets and parking pass to the Iron Bowl. Holmes also claims he’s going to sue.
The state’s major colleges and universities have given out free tickets to legislators and other state, federal and local officials to attend their sporting events for decades, but Holmes’ outburst brought the practice front and center in both the news and editorial columns.
The editorial writers at the big daily papers, wringing their keyboards in agony, jumped first on legislators who get free tickets for Auburn and Alabama homecoming games and the Iron Bowl. Then they discovered to their utter amazement that the governor didn’t get two, he got 24 for each and every Alabama and Auburn game, the lieutenant governor gets six, the house speaker and the attorney general get four for each and every game the two school’s play, the governor’s cabinet officers and department heads get their own set of tickets from both schools, the state’s appellate judges get them if they want tickets and local officials in Tuscaloosa are also provided the freebies. Both schools also allow these officials and legislators to purchase season ticket packages. At Alabama a season parking pass is included.
What the news stories failed to reveal and the editorials failed to comment on is the fact that the media, including their own photographers and reporters, are also provided free passes, free food and parking to all games — up to six or eight passes for the larger news organizations.
The schools carry out this practice to curry favor with the public officials and the press for appropriations and favorable publicity. So, in taking these freebies, the broadcast and daily media that uses game reporting to sell newspapers or increase ratings, are really more culpable than the public officials in consummating a quid pro quo situation with the universities.
Weekly newspapers, such as ours, do not get passes to Auburn and Alabama games on a regular bases. The 100 or so weekly papers in the state, except for those in the home towns of the schools, compete for four press box and four sideline passes at Auburn games and the same number for Alabama games. But, at the same time we don’t rely on four or five-day-old Tide or Tiger reporting each week to sell newspapers or advertising.
Nothing illegal ethics chief says
Jim Sumner, director of the State Ethics Commission, says nothing is illegal about the ticket gifts and that neither the universities nor the public officials have to report it to the commission — unless, of course the value of the tickets and parking passes rise above $250-per-game or the gift becomes a season pass rather than an individual ticket.
But Sumner did warn officials they could get into trouble by selling their tickets or parking passes. That would open up an entirely different issue, which could fall under the ethics prohibition of using one’s public office for personal gain.
Living in glass houses
So my advice to the media outlets which chastise the public officials for accepting the freebie tickets from the universities which are attempting to influence them, to look around and observe if they are living in a glass house while casting those stones.
You might want to dial up your publisher and advise him that he should be paying for those press box seats or sideline passes your publication is using in an attempt to increase circulation; or, if not, perhaps add some brick around the glass. Or you might want to suggest in an editorial that the media pay its own way at sports events.
Nah, that’s not likely to happen.
I realize that after this column is published I may catch some hostile stares at the next Press Association meeting but that’s OK because I’m right. One of the worst things to blemish the image of the media is duplicity.
As for Mr. Holmes, he’s immune from advice and I doubt if the folks at Auburn are stupid enough to snub the honorable representative from Montgomery.
Bob Martin, editor and publisher of The Montgomery Independent, has taken over The Alabama Scene from longtime political columnist and Cherokee County native Bob Ingram, who died earlier this fall.