Calls to ban 'double-dipping' grow louder across state
With the State Board of Education voting Thursday on the Chancellor Bradley Byrne’s proposals to end double-dipping in the two-year college system, calls for the board’s approval of these proposals are growing louder. Below are two editorials from Alabama newspapers published Tuesday.
Tuscaloosa News
Lawmakers should not hold other jobs on the state payroll
Aug 21, 2007
The state school board’s vote Thursday on postsecondary education Chancellor Bradley Byrne’s proposal to end double-dipping at two-year colleges should be a slam-dunk.
It has strong public support and would help clarify the murky waters that surround lawmakers employed in the two-year system.
The policy proposal is not the straight-up ban on lawmakers working for two-year schools that Gov. Bob Riley has sought. But if the school board enacts the proposal, it would accomplish the same goal.
Byrne’s proposal would force legislators who work at two-year colleges to use unpaid leave for outside work and to get the chancellor’s approval for taking unpaid leave. Byrne says he doesn’t expect to approve unpaid leave to allow educator-lawmakers to attend legislative sessions.
Riley and Byrne have said they don’t think educators can do their jobs effectively and serve in the Legislature at the same time. They also worry that the lawmaker-educators may get preferential treatment from the two-year college system.
The story of state Rep. Laura Hall, a Decatur lawmaker who earns a $75,000 annual salary as an employee of nearby Calhoun Community College, was outlined Sunday in The Birmingham News. It raises some of the ethical questions that concern Riley and Byrne.
The college administration requires Hall, who works with problem students, to document in monthly reports the time she works and when she makes up for missed work. The policy of the two-year system requires full-time employees like Hall to work an average of 40 hours a week and defines a “normal work week" as 40 hours.
But Hall, who was hired for the Calhoun job after she was elected to the Legislature, is allowed to work a flexible shift, on hours and days of her choosing. She is the only one of the college’s 925 employees who has that flexibility.
Her records show that in some years she didn’t work the required 40-hours-a-week average, suggesting that she never made up for work at the college she missed while in Montgomery for meetings of the Legislature.
Hall says she has always put her college job first and that some of the work-log discrepancies may be the result of faulty recordkeeping. She says she has been diligent about giving the college its due.
But Byrne, who served in the Legislature before Riley selected him as chancellor, says he knows from experience how difficult it is to keep up with full-time work as a part-time legislator. There were weeks when the Legislature was in session that Byrne was able to devote only 20 or 30 hours to his law practice, he said.
Another concern is that even though Hall works under a uniquely flexible arrangement, the president of her college says she hasn’t followed the lawmaker’s work reports closely. She says she trusts Hall’s accounting.
Maybe so, but the employment arrangement seems ripe for abuse in the wrong hands. It would be best if no lawmakers held another job on the state payroll.
Birmingham News
Playing catch-up with Laura Hall
Aug. 21, 2007
THE ISSUE: State Rep. Laura Hall's work records at a two-year college show why legislators should not hold these jobs.
Anyone who has gotten behind at work knows what it's like to play catch-up. Think Lucy and Ethel at the chocolate factory.
But what happens with even conscientious legislators who hold two-year college jobs is a perpetual game of catch-up that's not one bit funny. It's a game taxpayers lose every time.
Take state Rep. Laura Hall for example.
The Huntsville Democrat, who earns $75,000 a year as a special assistant to the president of Calhoun Community College, has been allowed to set her own hours and to make up work she misses while fulfilling her legislative duties - the only Calhoun employee afforded such leeway.
But her work logs at the campus show she sometimes failed to make up the work she missed because of the Legislature. In other cases, they show Hall implausibly working 45 to 50 hours even during those weeks when the Legislature was in session. In yet other cases, the logs show her working on days when other records reflect she had taken leave or vacation.
None of this should be a comfort to taxpayers who are paying Hall twice - once as a legislator and once as a college employee. At the very least, and as Hall acknowledges, she hasn't been as diligent as she should have been in tracking her work for the college. At worst, Hall is getting paid for work she hasn't done.
Hall's work records, reported Sunday by The News' Brett Blackledge, show why the state school board on Thursday needs to approve new policies regarding legislative employment in the two-year college system.
The policies being pushed by Chancellor Bradley Byrne and Gov. Bob Riley would crack down immediately on the leave time and flex time being used by the 13 two-year employees who serve in the Legislature. The school board is also being asked to ban all employment of legislators starting in 2010, when the current legislators' terms come to an end.
Hall is not the poster child for legislators who abuse the college system; state Rep. Ken Guin, he of the three taxpayer-funded paychecks, has that job sewn up. But Hall is an example of the problems that arise with having legislators on the two-year college payroll.
Between Sept. 1, 2003, and Aug. 31, 2004, Hall didn't make up 118 hours she spent away from the college. From Sept. 1, 2004, to Aug. 31, 2005, Hall reported working more than the standard number of hours expected each year from administrative employees in the two-year college system. But for 20 days during that time, work logs show her as being on the job when she also claimed leave or vacation.
Did Calhoun President Marilyn Beck find these discrepancies and get to the bottom of them? No. She said she never really reviewed the work logs because she trusted Hall. But more likely, she just preferred not to know. If she checked and found Hall's work wanting, how would she respond? Could she take real action against a legislator with influence over the school's budget?
"This is the very sort of thing we're talking about," Byrne said.
What's particularly disconcerting is that Hall is a career educator who is known to be a principled legislator. Imagine what the records would show for a legislator who was not so scrupulous.
This is one candy factory the state school board should waste no time shutting down.
