Editorials

Bradley Byrne, the chancellor of Alabama's two-year college system, was almost giddy recently when he described how he and his Republican allies in the Legislature had beaten back the efforts of the Alabama Education Association and its executive director, Paul Hubbert. The AEA and Hubbert had wanted to water down the "reforms" Byrne had imposed on the state's two-year colleges.

Byrne had reason to be happy.

A bad plan to set up a "Legislative Council" to review State Board of Education actions was sidetracked until time ran out.

A better, but still flawed, plan to set up a separate board for the two-year system met the same fate.

With the final day of this session approaching on Monday, Hubbert has announced that the AEA will not pursue two other bills it had supported. One would have stopped the chancellor from hiring a private firm to do background checks on junior-college employees; it also would have required the already overworked and understaffed state Department of Public Safety to do the work instead.

The other, and most controversial, proposal would have prevented Byrne from ending the practice of double dipping that has gotten a number of two-year college employees/public officials into trouble.

If you are keeping score, it looks like 4-0 in favor of Byrne. But not so fast.

If Hubbert knows anything, he knows how to pick his fights and use his leverage. Although the failure of these four bills can be ascribed to maneuvering by Byrne supporters, their demise also can be blamed on the general public outcry against what many rightly saw as a power play by the AEA.

But perhaps most important in the defeat of these measures — or, more accurately, the lack of action on them — is the state Senate logjam, which has prevented more bills than these from passing. Hubbert saw the handwriting on the wall and decided it wasn't worth the fight.

Besides, he has bigger fish to fry.

During this down week, when legislators make deals and swap votes, Hubbert will be in there fighting for what is most important to him — the AEA and its members' share of the education budget. Going into these final days, the bare-bones budget on the table is one with which he and his folks can live. There are no pay raises, but there are no major cuts, either.

However, Hubbert represents K-12 schools and the two-year colleges, not the four-year institutions; and in the proposed budget higher education is taking quite a hit.

In this final week, the AEA is more concerned with efforts by representatives from colleges and universities to get a bigger piece of the pie than the reforms proposed by Byrne.

Thus, the real measure of Hubbert's success will be how well his folks fair when the education budget is finally passed.

As for those other issues, don't believe for a moment that they are dead. Paul Hubbert knows how to pick his fights. He also knows how to regroup for another day.