Editorials

It seems that in 2003, state Rep. Yvonne Kennedy, D-Mobile, took her $94,000 legislative discretionary money and put it all into the Bishop State scholarship account. Now that is a little odd, since representatives like to spread the pork around, but odd would have been all it was if Kennedy were not the president of Bishop State.

Still, there is no law against a representative using money to help students, even if upping student enrollment helps the representative keep her job. (Perhaps there should be a law, but that is another matter.) So nothing appeared to be improper until it was discovered that some employees of Bishop State were getting financial aid and not coming to class.

In one case, an employee arranged for her grandmother to be enrolled in varsity basketball, baseball and softball — difficult courses for an elderly woman who, three months later, passed away.

That, it seems, was the tip of the iceberg. Research by the Mobile Press-Register and Birmingham News turned up other irregularities, and Thomas Corts, interim chancellor of the two-year system, has sent a team to investigate.

Even if all the charges flying about prove true, there is nothing to indicate that the problems found at Bishop State are widespread in the system. However, there are some broader questions raised by it all.

First, should state employees serve in the Legislature? Some states prohibit this, on the grounds that there is an inherent conflict of interests when state-employed legislators vote on budgets and policies that pertain to their jobs.

On the other hand, would it be right to deny someone the opportunity to hold office because of the work they do? (Former Gov. Big Jim Folsom argued that lawyers should not be legislators because lawyers were part of the judicial system and for them to serve in the legislative branch violated the separation of powers. The argument got nowhere.)

More important, however, is this whole matter of unregulated discretionary money. According to legislative records, Kennedy told the committee that approves allocations that she wanted the money for a culinary laboratory at Bishop State. But the grant went into another fund, and there was no follow-up to catch it.

If the Legislature is going to continue to justify this handing out of pork on the grounds that the money goes only to approved projects, it needs to certify that is happening.

A better, cheaper way to clean up the mess would be to do away with the discretionary money altogether. But there is not much chance of that happening.