MONTGOMERY - AL -
Alabama's Republican governor says several early supporters of a school flexibility bill weren't consulted about adding tax credits for private school attendance because he knew they would oppose it.
Sections including the transfers were added by a conference committee before the bill went to final votes in the House and the Senate. The committee also removed a section protecting teacher tenure.
State school Superintendent Tommy Bice and the executive director of the Alabama Association of School Boards, Sally Howell, supported the original flexibility bill, but said they weren't included in the revisions. Howell said she was "bushwhacked." Bice said it will have a negative impact on public schools.
House minority leader Craig Ford lashed out at Republicans, who changed the bill in the conference committee.
In a statement today, Ford said: "This is a bait and switch. The bill that came out of the conference committee was more than three times longer than the bill we passed. There is no way that happened in the thirty minutes that the conference committee met today. This bill has been sitting in someone's desk drawer for months. It was their strategy all along to pass one version of the bill, and then come back and push this version through conference committee. The Republican leadership operated unethically, and in bad faith. But it is our children who are going to suffer because of this, and my heart breaks for them today."
Gov. Robert Bentley called the bill the most significant piece of legislation passed in years, and he will sign it into law.
