Offices Up for Election in Madison County in 2014 by Thomas Scovill

    At this link you can see a list of the offices that will be on the 2014 ballots in Madison County. The probate judge's list does not include the new house district in Madison County and the change in State Senate District 1 which now includes part of Madison County, but they are included in the count below.

    There will be 39 offices on the ballot, although this could change if any incumbents resign or leave office. Thirty-one of these offices have Republican incumbents. The seven seats held by Democrats are indicated in blue.

2 - US Congress

1 - US House, CD5 (Mo Brooks)

1 - US Senate (Jeff Sessions)

13 - Alabama State-Wide Offices

7 - State-wide, non judicial (gov., lt. gov., atty gen., auditor, treasurer, secretary of state, commissioner of agriculture)*

2 - Public Service Commission (Jeremy Oden, Terry Dunn)

1 - Supreme Court associate justice (Greg Shaw)

3 - Courts of Appeal (William Thompson, Mary Windom, J. Elizabeth Kellum)

17 - Other Alabama State Offices

1 - State Board of Education, District 8

6 - Alabama Senate (1 D, Tammy Irons)

8 - Alabama House (1 D, Laura Hall; 1 new)

2 - 23d Judicial Circuit (William Bell, Schuyler Richardson)

5 - Madison County Offices

1 - Sheriff (Blake Dorning)

1 - Tax Assessor (Fran Hamilton)

1 - Tax Collector (Lynda Hall)

1 - License Director (Mark Craig)

1 - Coroner (Craig Whisenant)

2 - Madison County School District

1 - Superintendent (David Copeland)

1 - Board of Education, District 3 (Mary Louise Stowe)

* Governor Robert Bentley, Lieutenant Governor Kay, Attorney General Luther Strange, Auditor Smanatha Shaw,** Treasurer Young Boozer, Secretary of State Beth Chapman**, Commissioner of Agriculture and Industries John McMillan.

** Auditor Smanatha Shaw and Secretary of State Chapman are term limited and cannot run for reelection. Republicans  Adam Thompson and John Merrill have announced they are running for those offices respectively. 

Stacy Lee George has announced he will challenge Governor Bentley for the 2014 Republican nomination for governor.

The 800 Pound Gorilla Gets What it Wants by Thomas Scovill

    Arrogance of power in Huntsville is not limited to Councilman John Olshefski. His double dipping reminds me of the issue of TVA and Huntsville Utilities payments in lieu of taxes (PILOT) that was in the news one year ago. The Madsion County legislative delegation has let another session pass with out action to update the distribution formula. Here is what I wrote on the subject in August 2012.

TVA and Huntsville Utilities Are Overcharging Their Customers

  The  Tennessee Valley Authority and Huntsville Utilities are overcharging their customers. In Madison County this comes to almost $100 per person per year.

  The TVA is a not for profit corporation owned by the United States government. It produces electricity and distributes it to utilities in Alabama and eight other states. One of the utilities is Huntsville Utilities, a not for profit corporation owned by the city of Huntsville, Alabama. It gets all of its electricity from TVA and has a monopoly in Madison County. 

  In fiscal 2011, TVA paid $530 million to government entities in five states. Alabama got $116 million and about $20 million of that came to Madison County. Limestone County got about $9 million. And Huntsville Utilities paid about $12 million to the city of Huntsville. These payments are called payments in lieu of taxes. The money comes from the charges paid by the customers of these nontaxable, not for profit corporations. This is merely a scheme for one arm of government to take money from citizens and give it to another part of government - easily taken by one and eagerly accepted by the other.

  And in the case of Huntsville Utilities it is more than that. Huntsville Utilities is owned by the city of Huntsville.  Accordingly, the payments in lieu of taxes are really just a tax by the city of Huntsville on Huntsville Utilities customers. Many of these customers do not live in Huntsville and cannot vote in Huntsville, so this is taxation without representation. 

  On its webpage, Huntsville Utilities states “As a ‘Public Utility’ we answer only to the people we serve. Decisions are not influenced by the effects on our stock prices, but are based on what is best for our customers. We do not pay dividends to stockholders, instead we provide lower prices to our customers.” This is quite wrong because these payments in lieu of taxes are dividends to Huntsville Utilities sole shareholder, the city of Huntsville. And this is revenue that Mayor Battle of Huntsville is unwilling to give up.

  In recent months there has been a bit of a controversy over the formula for distributing the TVA and Huntsville Utilities among the various government recipients within Madison County. Huntsville gets more from the TVA than its share of population and it gets all of the Huntsville Utilities money even though only 68 percent of Huntsville Utilities’ revenue comes from Huntsville customers.

  Earlier this year, Senators Hotlzclaw, Orr, and McGill tried to update the state mandated TVA distribution formula based on the 2010 census. Huntsville, the 800 pound gorilla, used Senator Sanford to kill the proposed bill.  If we treated the TVA the way Huntsville’s Mayor Battle and Senator Sanford treat Huntsville Utilities, all of the TVA money would go to the US treasury.

  But this controversy obfuscates the real issue. When a government needs revenue, the people should be taxed directly by that government. The payments in lieu of taxes are overcharges. There should be no money to distribute. Let’s end the shell game. TVA and Huntsville Utilities should reduce rates and leave the money where it belongs - in the wallets of their customers.

Was Double-Dipping John Inspired by Pro Tem Del Marsh? by Thomas Scovill

    Senator Pro Tem Del Marsh (RINO, Anniston) is the leader of the Alabama Senate and at his request the Senate Education Committee approved a partial repeal of the Legislative Double Dipping Prohibition Act. Here is the synopsis of SB414,

Current law allows a member of the Legislature who was a public employee or teacher on December 1, 2010, to continue in that employment until November 5, 2014. This bill would extend the exemption for continued employment indefinitely.

    Even though the bill was killed by a lopsided vote of the whole senate, it is disconcerting to see a Republican leader trash a promise he made in the 2010 election campaign. The current ban on double dipping was an important part of his 2010 campaign and it was a key element of the much ballyhooed Handshake with Alabama that the GOP used to help them gain control of the legislature and make Del Marsh pro tem. It was so important the Legislative Double Dipping Prohibition Act was pushed into law by Pro Tem Marsh in a special session in December 2010 during the month following the GOP election sweep. Senator Marsh road ethics reform to power.

    And now, sadly, he has reconsidered. Now Senator Marsh says it’s not fair to force current double dippers out now because when they ran for office in 2010 double dipping was allowed. So it was fair in 2010, but in 2013 when the law will soon require the double dippers to chose between jobs it is suddenly fair no more.

    Reneging on his Handshake with Alabama is not the beginning of his slide to sleaze. Senator Marsh has been ignoring key provisions of campaign finance reform he also pushed through the 2010 special session by ignoring the $5,000 cap his campaign can contribute to party organizations, by making illegal contributions of $7,500 to the legal defense funds Alabama Senator Ross and Congressman Spencer Bachus, by making contributions to individuals, and by making an illegal loan of $40,000 to Citizens for Fair Representation.

    Senator Marsh has done some great things for Republicans. More importantly he has done some great things for Alabama such as this session’s Alabama Accountability Act. Sadly, this good is more than cancelled by his ethics lapses and breaking of promises. 

    Del Marsh has betrayed the voters and it is now time for the Alabama Senate to select a new Pro Tem. 

    Here is a list of current double dippers in the Alabama legislature.

Sen. Quinton Ross (D, Montgomery), director of the Adult Education Consortium at H. Trenholm State Technical College;

Rep. David Colston, (D, Hayneville), state trooper;

Rep. Dexter Grimsley (D, Newville), chief juvenile probation officer, Henry County;

Rep. John Knight (D, Montgomery), a top administrator at Alabama State University;

Rep. John Rogers (D, Birmingham), director of minority affairs, University of Alabama at Birmingham.

Sen. Rusty Glover (R, Semmes), school teacher;

Rep. Alan Boothe (R, Troy), director of governmental relations, Troy State University;

Rep. Donnie Chesteen (R, Geneva), head football coach and athletic director at Samson High School;

Rep. Todd Greeson (R, Ider), works at Northeast Alabama Community College;

    Read more at the Gadsden Times.

News and Opinion by Thomas Scovill

It's a mystery to me why local pols and elite work hard to increase the local military economy and then lobby for more state money which requires higher local taxes while they complain about the adverse effect this growth has on local schools. The Madison County Commission has decided to give the Madison County School System $5 million so it could qualify for some "new state money." Given the very lopsided way we fund education at the expense of other government responsibilities, I am much concerned about the county further increasing this inequity. I do not think the county commission should fence money for county schools if that money would have otherwise have been used for other purposes. I am also concerned about county revenue being diverted from the general benefit of all county taxpayers to a select group specially favored by the county commission. And why should county-wide revenue be used to fund just one of the county's three school systems? The City of Madison is already giving a mostly free ride to county residents who live in the booming Triana community. Do we need more of this?

Some of our legislators are working hard to give government education workers a pay raise to reward them for supporting The Great Raid on the Alabama Trust Fund and making sure the constitutional amendment was approved in September over the objections of the majority of the GOP base. The only issue seems to be whether they get a 1 or a 2 % bump. The general fund budget for 2014 did not include a pay raise for other state government workers.

The Alabama GOP education budget for 2014 includes funds for teacher liability insurance. This means government teachers will be covered as other state employees are now. It will also remove a large incentive for teachers to join the AEA. This a good idea. Let's do it.

Lowell Barron has been indicted by the Alabama attorney general for ethics and campaign finance violations. Among other things, the former senator pro tem is accused of giving a campaign staffer and former state employee a campaign car and over $50,000 in campaign funds for personal use. Methinks Lowell is not alone.

I asked Senator Cam Ward to request an opinion from the Alabama Attorney General on the permissibility of contributing campaign funds to the legal defense fund of an individual. As chairman of the Senate judiciary committee, Senator Ward can do that and I cannot. Absent his cooperation, I wrote to the AG myself. See my letters on Senator Ward and Senator Marsh. 

The Alabama AG is going after a former employee of the Alabama House for not paying his income taxes. The AG says William Clay Covington earned over $237 thousand from the state and took $277 thousand from dog racing interests and did not file tax returns from 2006 to 2009. Here is the AG's press release. There is a reason this may sound familar.

Pigford began as a class action discrimination suit against the US Department of Agriculture. Breitbart has been publicizing the massive fraud and corruption and the president Obama's involvement for over two years. Now the New York Times is giving it some front page attention. Read National Review Online for more.

Guns and bullets save lives.

Unimpressed by the paucity of results from all of the money the US Federal Reserve has printed in the last four years to fire up the US economy, the Bank of Japan has decided to follow suit and has started printing lots of yen. Is this going to be a race to the bottom? Former Reagan budget director, David Stockman is concerned about all of this soft money.

Voting fraud happens in Indiana. Is this the only place?

There is an alternative to ultra liberal AARP. It's called AMAC.

Israeli aircraft have attacked again arms and munitions in Syria headed for Hezbollah terrorists in Lebanon. 

The Coming Tax on Internet Sales - It's a Tax Increase by Thomas Scovill

     If you like the Common Core and love federal overreach … get ready for the internet sales tax.

   The Marketplace Fairness Act of 2013 (S743, H684) is sponsored by Senator Enzi of Wyoming and supported by Senators Session and Shelby of Alabama, all GOPers. Our governor and Alabama GOP Senate and House leaders also support it. Here is a Wikipedia summary of the bill,

The Marketplace Fairness Act of 2013 authorizes each member state under the Streamlined Sales and Use Tax Agreement (the multistate agreement for the administration and collection of sales and use taxes adopted on November 12, 2002) to require all sellers not qualifying for a small-seller exception (applicable to sellers with annual gross receipts in total U.S. remote sales not exceeding $1 million) to collect and remit sales and use taxes with respect to remote sales under provisions of the Agreement, but only if such Agreement includes minimum simplification requirements relating to the administration of the tax, audits, and streamlined filing. Defines “remote sale” as a sale of goods or services into a state in which the seller would not legally be required to pay, collect, or remit state or local sales and use taxes unless provided by this Act. 

    One can only wonder why the party of low taxes and limited government is getting ready to ram such an egregious law through the US Congress. Of course, part of the reason is lust for higher revenue. And part of it is cronyism. 

   You could also call the bill The Walmart and Amazon Protection Act. The former will get protection from online competition and the latter will get to sell its tax compliance software to the online retailers that do not go out of business because of the law. There are 9,600 sales tax jurisdictions in the US and only giant corporations will be able develop the necessary compliance software on their own. 

    The law will also create multijurisdictional compacts to “homogenize tax rates” to limit the tax rate competition between the 9,600 sales tax jurisdictions. And the only way to “homogenize” rates will be to increase them where the compacts find them to be too low. Maybe we can have 10 percent rates all across Alabama so we can homogenize with the city of Montgomery. 

    And as National Review points out the bill means taxation without representation because the tax is imposed by local government on companies that have no voice in the tax law. 

    GOP leaders in Alabama are all for taxing internet sales. They say it’s not a new tax because consumers are already supposed to paying the tax. I wonder how many of these leaders are paying sales tax on internet purchases and use tax on out of state purchases. Are those not paying the tax scofflaws?

    Some say internet retailers use local services for which they are not taxed. But this is not true. Delivery services like the USPS and UPS use local roads and other services such as police protection, but internet retailers do not and there is no good or fair reason for them to pay local taxes. 

    Let’s not kill the digital economy. Let’s not expand federal control of local tax rates. Let's not drive online retailers to Canada.

    Read more at National Review, American Thinker, and The Boston Globe.

Fixing Medicaid in Alabama by Thomas Scovill

The Alabama legislature is on the verge of reforming the state Medicaid program by creating HMO-like managed care districts. In Alabama, Medicaid is a $6 billion program and serves over 900,000 persons. It's broken and he state can barely afford its share of the costs. This is bleeding the general fund dry. The proposed reform will help, but the ultimate solution has to include block grants of the federal funding. Paul Ryan has repeatedly proposed this in the US House GOP budgets. Congress needs to match the boldness of our legislature.

Huntsville Should Recall Double-Dipping John Oshefski by Thomas Scovill

Huntsville city councilman John Olshefski was hired by Huntsville Utilities to be one of their vice presidents. Because Huntsville Utilities is owned by the city of Huntsville, this is inappropriate double dipping. Having abused the public trust, Double Dipping John is now unworthy of either position. A recall petition might take only about 1800 signatures based on the October 2010 runoff vote total. That's 180 signatures from each of ten volunteers. Read more at these links: Al.com, SHCA, Attack Machine.

Universal Background Checks, the First Step by Ralph Weber

    As I pen this article, the US Senate is debating “mandatory, universal background checks” for each and every gun purchase or each time the title changes on a gun. The theory, evidently, is that criminals and the mentally unstable will be identified and not be able to complete the transaction. A nice theory in Liberalville, where everyone plays by the rules and the mentally unstable are not able to pretend to be normal for the time it takes to sign some paperwork.

    If you sell  a gun to your neighbor, you will have to file a form to request a background check. I suspect the form will ask for the make, model and serial number of the gun. Just for identification purposes, you understand. But then that information is in the fed's databases somewhere. So, if someday they want to mandate registration, they can find out who owns which guns and where they are. It will make it really easy to confiscate them when the time comes.

    Background checks sound innocent enough. But what liberals are proposing could make it illegal for a father to give his son a gun. In many parts of the country, this is a rite of passage. In many families, hunting rifles and other firearms are treasured heirlooms, passed down from one generation to the next. If Senate liberals get their way, children would have to go to a gun store and apply for clearance before they receive a hunting rifle as a gift.

    Moreover, it's unlikely to accomplish anything beyond creating yet another burden for law-abiding citizens. According to FBI statistics, you are more likely to be strangled or kicked to death than be murdered with a rifle or a shotgun. And thugs don't bother with background checks!

    So what's the point? As we see many governments around the world trampling on individual rights, and nervously watch our own government mandating insurance and restricting religious liberty, it is perfectly understandable why people would be concerned that universal background checks could easily serve as the first step toward registration and confiscation.