Where are the governor’s priorities?

By By Bob Martin, The Alabama Scene
As Gov. Bob Riley and his Rose Bowl entourage tailgated before the University of Alabama dismantled the Texas Longhorns to become college football’s undisputed national champion last Thursday, a plane flew over and around the Pasadena arena pulling a huge banner which read…IMPEACH CORRUPT ALABAMA GOVERNOR BOB RILEY.
The banner flew for a full four hours before the game and perhaps the Californian who appreciated it most was embattled Golden State Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger who must have figured the banner suggested Alabama has worse budget problems than his state.
As it turns out, the banner flight was paid for by Tuscaloosa businessman Stan Pate, a constant thorn in Riley’s side over economic matters throughout his two terms as governor.
And while I believe Pate should have refrained from creating this embarrassment for the governor as the team carrying the state’s name was about to engage in college football’s biggest event, it does focus attention on how bad the economic situation is about to become in our state. Instead of engaging that problem the governor is attempting to shut down legal businesses in the state’s poorest counties which would adversely affect up to 20,000 jobs.
The legislature convened Tuesday. It is facing a serious financial crisis, with budget cuts predicted by some to be up to 30 percent and unemployment to remain at over ten percent and perhaps go higher. There will be serious layoffs of both teachers and state workers during the upcoming year.
Yet last week while he was partying in California, Riley’s surrogates marshaled over a hundred law enforcement officers to raid the Country Crossing establishment in Houston County which has legal electronic bingo machines. Shutting down this facility would have cost that county thousands of jobs and jeopardized the bond issue backed by the county to build the entertainment facility.
The Republican chairman of the Houston County Commission had to go to Ozark in the county next door to find a judge to issue an order halting the raid on Country Crossing.
Riley’s anti-bingo policy not only jeopardizes the Houston County facility, it would devastate three of the poorer counties in the state, Lowndes, Greene and Macon, which depend on bingo facilities for thousands of jobs.
Now mind you these are counties which have valid state constitutional amendments authorizing bingo games. The governor’s interest in shutting down legal bingo in Alabama has, according to testimony arising from the Committee on Indian Affairs chaired by Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., been based on campaign contributions made to Riley by the casinos in Mississippi. The campaign money in the 2002 election was funneled to Riley through Jack Abramoff and Riley’s former congressional aide, Michael Scanlon, both convicted in a scam that netted them in excess of $20 million from Mississippi Indian casino interests.
Some of the Mississippi-connected contributions to Riley were also funneled through a Montgomery lobbying firm.
Riley, his son Rob, and several of the governor’s former aides have close ties to the former lobbying and public relations firm of Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour, which has represented casinos in the Magnolia State.
All this has contributed to the belief by those promoting legal bingo in Alabama, including the Poarch Creek Indians at Atmore, that the governor wants to limit their ability to have legal gambling in order to protect his vested interests in the Mississippi Indian casinos.
Additional evidence of that fact is that he refuses to negotiate a compact with the Alabama Poarch tribe which would allow them table games and would bring in millions of dollars in revenue to the state. The Poarch casinos currently pay no state or local taxes or payments in lieu of taxes like Indian casinos do in other states. Riley continues to claim that he is also going to shut down the Poarch Creek casinos, but experts on Indian gaming laws refute the possibility of such action by Riley. Indian gaming is controlled by the U. S. Bureau of Indian Affairs.
From my point of view, if the governor really wants to go after illegal gambling in the state, he should send law enforcement agents into bars and pool halls where betting on sports events is rampant…and illegal.
If so, we could probably fund those school teachers we’re about to lose and the governor could have made a legal wager of Dreamland ribs with Texas Gov. Rick Perry on the national championship game.
Bob Martin is editor and publisher of The Montgomery Independent. Email him at: bob@montgomeryindependent.com