ALABAMA ETHICS, A POLITICAL TOOL
In Fairhope, “come fly with me” Jack Burrell is facing ethics complaints as well as Fairhope Airport Authority board member Ray Hix, Fairhope Municipal Judge Snedeker’s partner. The airport authority authorized hiring an attorney to investigate those who filed the complaint. The city council has turned a blind eye to any facts or ethical violations refusing to conduct any internal investigation, despite compelling evidence of wrong doing. Instead the council members have issued false statements, “The ethics commission complaints against Airport board members have been ruled baseless.” Frequent flier Jack has been assured that if his bible buddy Pittman can get away with ethics violations, he should be able to as well.
Why would the citizens of a community totally rely on a commission that has NEVER held anyone accountable in Baldwin County? It should be the responsibility of the community to do it’s own investigations and house cleaning, not allowing elected officials to hide behind the ethics commission or other elected officials.
The Alabama Ethics Commission has been a failure, in fact in many situations politicians have manipulated what was suppose to be ethical guidelines into a passport to commit ethical violations. The citizens of Alabama have little or no faith in the commission. Politicians like State Senator Tripp Pittman used his elected office for personal gain then headed off any complaints by serving on the ethics committee. Pittman’s complaint was abandoned in Attorney General’s office of Luther Strange, ignoring a grand jury and FBI investigation.
Pittman went even further in his lust for self promotion by securing Fairhope municipal contracts, while violating ethics rules with impunity, assisted by former Mayor Tim Kant. This behavior encouraged other elected officials to push the envelope with the ethics commission often using ethics advisory opinions as a defense for their actions. Tim Kant is gone and Senator Pittman’s contracts have come to an end and he soon will disappear from political life, ending a rein of corruption.
“It has almost been a full year since Mike Hubbard was convicted on 12 counts of felony public corruption. Hubbard remains out of jail pending appeal, and there are those who are working in the shadows to make sure Hubbard is the only person ever convicted under the current Ethics laws.”
The ethics commission is now involved with yet another high profile complaint against Senator Luther “very” Strange, who State Senator Pittman is running against, not very seriously though. Pittman is draining the voting pool in Baldwin County for Strange.
This ethics complaint against “very” Strange is going to be addressed by the ethics commission the day AFTER the Senate primary election, talk about ethics!
Alabama Reporter has been pointing out obvious problems with the ethics commission and questions the effectiveness of the commission and its ability to keep politics out of their decisions.
The ethics commission will soon be run solely by attorneys and the commission will become moot.
It is up to the community to expose and expel corrupt elected officials. It is up to attorneys to provide those corrupt officials a defense.