By Craig Ford
The Selma Times-Journal

The day the Accountability Act was signed into law, legislative leaders said it would need to be revised. Three months later, Republican leaders offered their first “fix” bill, which expanded the tax credits for corporate donors.

Now, Republican legislators are pushing another “fix” bill that, once again, raises the cap. But this time, they are raising the cap to bailout former governor Bob Riley’s scholarship granting organization (SGO) because they can’t raise the money to pay for the scholarships they gave out. And most of those scholarships went to kids who were already in private schools.

We are more than half way through the legislative session, and our legislative leaders can’t offer a single solution to solve the $700 million hole in the budget. But they have no problem coming up with a solution to bailout Bob Riley.

My district in Etowah County is a prime example of how the Accountability Act has failed. Gadsden has a failing school, and only one student has transferred out of that school and into a different, non-failing school. Most of the scholarships that these SGOs are granting, like the one run by Bob Riley, are for students already in private schools. Now it looks like they can’t even manage those.

The Alabama Opportunity Scholarship Fund, which is run by Bob Riley, recently told AL.com that only about half of the available tax credits were reserved in 2014 because donors wanted to wait until the Alabama Supreme Court ruled on the constitutionality of the Accountability Act before they gave. Now, Sonya DiCarlo, a spokeswoman for the SGO, says that their organization has 2,800 scholarships to renew, which means they need more than $15 million.

That means Bob Riley’s SGO doesn’t have the money to grant the scholarships they already promised. And according to the provisions of the Accountability Act, Riley’s SGO would possibly default on the renewals if the money isn’t raised by May 1st.

Rather than admitting that they got greedy and gave out more scholarships than they could afford, Bob Riley’s SGO is asking the legislature to bail them out. And unfortunately, our state leaders have made this bailout a priority.

The new “fix” bill will raise the tax credit cap from $25 million to $30 million.

Riley’s SGO is on life support, and he needs a government bailout to keep him from going under. Unfortunately, legislative leaders have chosen to make bailing out Riley their priority.

Members of the Legislature need to focus on what’s important this session: fixing the budget crisis and making Alabama a better place. We don’t need to be worrying about SGOs that don’t serve the majority of Alabama’s students who actually need help.