By Joey Kennedy
Alabama Political Reporter
All the thousands of vendors that have billed the state of Alabama for services want for Christmas is … to be paid. And, in fact, they should be. But they’re not.
As Alabama Political Reporter editor Bill Britt has been reporting, a nearly $50 million software solution to the state’s “Open Alabama Checkbook” payment program has been, well, glitchy. So glitchy, in fact, that the “state’s new payment software has left hundreds of thousands of dollars in arrears with thousands of vendors waiting months for payment.”
And this week, Britt reported the state Finance Department is spinning the debacle as not such a big deal.
Maybe the next time my wife and I get a tax bill, we’ll claim our glitchy checkbook is going to need more time. Well, OK, our checkbook is acoustic. Maybe we can blame it on a glitchy ink pen. But don’t worry, we’ll say; you’ll get your money. Eventually.
“Eventually” is bad news for a company that depends on steady cash flow for work performed to pay employees and its own vendors and other obligations. The rent isn’t going to wait.
We’re in the Christmas season, a time when folks especially need to know their paychecks are coming.
Yet, as Britt reports, the state Finance Department shrugs and claims the problems should be worked out in a couple weeks. While important, if true, two weeks is after Christmas. And we all know what two weeks really means when it comes from state officials: “Well, really, who knows.”
We are a poor state, yet we’re spending millions to fix a system that should be working already. We close down state parks and close driver license bureaus to save money, then write a $47 million check for a software solution that is a software nightmare.
State leaders, Republicans and Democrats, always complain about waste in government. Uh, hello.
Though the state taxman expects individuals and corporations to pay up or else, companies doing business with the state are having to get bridge loans to continue to operate. Then the Finance Department says that’s not our problem? Well, yes it is.
Alabama has been responsible for many embarrassing episodes of late:
The House Speaker, Mike Hubbard (R-Auburn) is facing 23 charges of corruption.
The Christian governor’s 50-year marriage has been destroyed. That same Christian, Dr. Robert Bentley, a physician, refuses to expand Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act (which would bring billions of dollars in economic benefit to the state) to save the lives and health of hundreds of thousands of his constituents who can’t get insurance and must get their health care in an emergency room – or not at all.
Then, Bentley jumps on the populist bandwagon to ban Syrian refugees after the Paris terror attacks of Nov. 13. Bentley doesn’t have the authority to keep Syrian refugees out of the United States or even Alabama, and he knows it. But, hey, even though such promises are the ultimate cynicism, they sound really good to those people who would rather live in fear than in freedom.
I say we should just return the Statue of Liberty to France. We’re not using it anymore.
The holiday season is a time for joy, yet state agency officials who want to pay the state’s obligations are in misery.
Britt wrote that the “software solution has led to tens of thousands of dollars in unpaid bills, thousands of angry vendors, and frayed nerves throughout almost every state agency, yet, it is still being dismissed by those responsible for the debacle as a mere glitch.”
Have a very, very Merry Christmas. And may it not be too glitchy.
Joey Kennedy, a Pulitzer Prize winner, writes a column every Wednesday for Alabama Political Reporter. Email: [email protected].
