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Managing Editor Scott Wright has been with The Post
since 1998. He is For better? Or worse? By Scott Wright As of today, I am several chapters into the book “The Governor of Goat Hill,” by former Mobile Press-Register investigative reporter Eddie Curran. So far, the book has laid out in undeniable detail that former Alabama Gov. Don Siegelman was a lying, underhanded, favor-granting piece of crap. (For the record, “lying, underhanded, favor-granting piece of crap” are my words, not Mr. Curran's.)Actually, we got a little bit of the blowback from the Siegelman saga here in Cherokee County, when the official investigation stumbled across some suspicious landfill deals. Lanny Young, who once said to Curran during a face-to-face interview, “If you're looking for an angel in me, you are not going to find it,” was the front man for Waste Management, which operates the Three Corners landfill here in Cherokee County. It was Young who bribed former Cherokee County Probate Judge Phillip Jordan to the tune of $65,000 in exchange for Jordan's agreement to coerce the County Commission to slash its rate agreement contract with Waste Management. Long story short: By the time the last of the excrement hit the fan, Siegelman, Young, and Jordan became wards the federal prison system for various lengths of time and another page was added to Alabama's pathetic history of political graft and corruption. As a person who leans liberally on most political issues, it is still painful for me to admit that Siegelman, a Democrat, was a lousy no-account. But the court system has spoken. As Curran points out in his book, Siegelman ultimately dashed the hopes of many Alabamians who imagined that they had finally elected the state's first “New South” governor. Instead, Siegelman's greed lengthened a ledger of national embarrassments that already included the unbridled debauchery of the Persons administration of the 1950s, the shameful segregation of the Wallace administrations of the 1960s, and the outright idiocy of the James administration of the 1990s (I submit James's pardoning of convicted murdered Judith Ann Neelley and publicly traipsing about like an ape to protest the teaching of evolution as evidence of his idiocy. You may insert your own favorites, as there are plenty to choose from.) All this reminiscing about shady dealings and the governor's office got me to wondering about Gov. Bob Riley's anti-gambling task force. Foes claim that Riley is interested in maintaining the status quo, which basically gives a gambling monopoly to Native American tribes. They provide as evidence the words of former Riley cabinet member Bill Johnson, who in 2009 declared that Riley was promised up to $3 million in contributions from Indian casino owners as early as 2002. In December, Republican Robert Bentley told the Decatur TimesDaily there “is no doubt in my mind” that Riley accepted money from Mississippi Indian casinos. Further tarnishing the governor is the fact that the first man he hand-picked to lead his “anti-gambling” task force was forced to resign last month after he was witnessed gambling at a casino in Philadelphia, Miss. Riley has repeatedly denied any and all charges linking his administration to Mississippi casinos or their money – his former task force commander notwithstanding – and maintains that his only interest is upholding state law, which currently offers a very narrow definition of what constitutes legal bingo games in Alabama. Riley recently declared that a pair of House and Senate bills currently working their way through the Alabama Legislature “allows for casinos to be built in every county and provides casino operators with criminal immunity.” I suppose only time will tell if, at long last, the state of Alabama finally has a governor who is more interested in enforcing the laws than in overlooking them whenever it suits him. If Riley is telling the truth about his intentions, then I admire his efforts… despite the fact that I think he's fool for nurturing an environment that allows Alabama to lose hundreds of millions of dollars in gambling revenue a year to surrounding states. Is Riley honestly doing what he considers to be the right thing? Or will Eddie Curran's next book expose yet another greedy Alabama politician's downfall. Regardless of your opinion on legalized gambling, I maintain that for our own sake we should all hope for the former. Unfortunately, knowing what I already know about the history of politics in Alabama, I'm sorry to say that I wouldn't bet on it. |