EDITORIAL: Iron Bowl perks for lawmakers must end
Published: Sunday, October 03, 2010, 8:30 AM
John Peck, The Huntsville Times
HUNTSVILLE, Ala. _ Jim Metrock is not a household name in Alabama – unless it’s brought up in the Alabama Statehouse.
The Birmingham-area charity activist is on a crusade to stop the annual Iron Bowl ticket giveaway to state elected leaders and department heads.
It’s impossible not to cheer Metrock on. Public officials should buy those tickets like everyone else.
He’s challenging all candidates and officials eligible for such tickets to turn them down or direct the universities to relinquish them to charities to raffle off.
He emphasizes he would not accept any for his non-profit organization, Obligation Inc., so as not to have a conflict of interest.
Metrock talked about his mission during a stop at The Times last week. He’s written the Alabama Ethics Commission, the presidents of Auburn University and the University of Alabama, all 140 legislators, and other ticket recipients, including the governor, attorney general and others, demanding an end to the practice.
It’s a perk Metrock simply says shouldn’t be allowed. Yet year in, year out, hundreds of tickets are given away to officials who write budgets and pass bills that can affect those institutions.
Metrock told The Times that lawmakers have come to expect the tickets as a “sense of entitlement.”
Let’s be clear about one thing. It’s not illegal for public officials to get free tickets to athletic events like the Iron Bowl.
The state ethics law, written and passed by lawmakers who often get such tickets, excludes tickets to athletic events in the law’s definition of things of value. Instead, they are categorized as hospitality.
Metrock has a letter from the State Ethics Commission that says so. “Unless there is a quid pro quo, there is nothing illegal or improper in legislators accepting Iron Bowl tickets and parking passes,” wrote Hugh Evens, general counsel for the ethics commission, on Sept. 13.
That ought to make everyone feel better.
