TUSCALOOSA | Five of Alabama's gubernatorial candidates offered their ideas on how to improve children's well-being at the Doing What Matters for Tuscaloosa's Children conference Monday at the Bryant Conference Center. 

"My question today is, what are you going to do? The time has come that these men seeking office give us real answers to our problems," Tuscaloosa Mayor Walt Maddox said in his opening remarks at the annual conference. 

Gubernatorial candidates Robert Bentley, Artur Davis, Tim James, Bill Johnson and Ron Sparks participated in a panel discussion about ways to improve children's health, education, safety and security. The discussion was moderated by Hattie Kaufman, senior assistant dean for advancement at the University of Alabama School of Law. The candidates were given one and a half minutes to answer questions, with many focusing on education. 

Davis, a Democratic congressman from Birmingham, recalled a quote by former U.S. Sen. Hubert Humphrey - "The measure of a good society is how we treat people" - and said that Alabama has fallen short. 

"We're No. 1 in football, and we have a simple rule for our coaches. It's Top 25, or you're gone," he said. "But when it comes to the quality of life for our children, we sit at 49. It's time to do better and elect a governor who will make this a No. 1 priority." 

James, a Republican, said he wants to promote public education and combat the dropout rate by implementing a Reading Corps program in which college students and volunteers give additional help to children who are behind their grade level in reading. 

"You judge the character of a state based on how we treat our children and elderly. There's one thing I do believe in, and that is public education," said James, a Greenville businessman and the son of former Gov. Fob James. 

Ron Sparks, the state commissioner of Agriculture and Industries and a Democratic candidate, said he would raise money for education by taxing gambling. 

"The one thing we need to hear is that it takes money to educate our children," he said. "And our state is broke." 

Davis said he was the first candidate to propose raising the mandatory school attendance age to 18. "We need to say to young people that if you drop out, you lose your driver's license," he said. "We frankly need to say that if your child stays in school, we will give your family a $500 tax credit." 

Johnson, who resigned as director of the Alabama Department of Economic and Community Affairs last year to run for governor in the Republican primary, responded to Davis by noting that not all Alabama children will go to college, and that provisions needed to be made to help those who do and offer programs for those who will not. 

"We have to make sure that our children are engaged in a program that supports their future aspirations," he said. 

"My mind is on children who don't have breaks and opportunities," James said. "We try to say that life is fair, but life is not fair. It's time to remove the crutches and tell children they have to work hard." 

Sparks cited Davis' analogy to Alabama's No. 1 football team, and said that to be No. 1 in education, some tough choices have to be made. 

"I'm telling each and every one of you that I will not raise taxes on working men and women of Alabama," he said, "but I will raise taxes on those doing business in Alabama and not paying taxes. And that is gambling. We need to designate that money towards education." 

Bentley, a Tuscaloosa dermatologist and state legislator, closed with remarks about his experience dealing with state budgets. A Republican, he is serving his second term in the House. 

"Next year we'll have a difficult problem because all the stimulus money will be gone. You need someone with experience dealing with budgets," Bentley said. "You need a government with solutions to problems. The state is sick. Our economy is sick, and ladies and gentleman, you need a doctor." 

The Democratic and Republican primaries will be June 1. The general election will be Nov. 2. 

Sponsored by Challenge 21, Tuscaloosa's Promise and the Children's Policy Council of Tuscaloosa, this year's Doing What Matters for Tuscaloosa's Children conference addressed problems that children and their families face in West Alabama. 

Charles Nash, UA's vice chancellor for academic affairs, said the university began the conference four years ago. 

"We started through Tuscaloosa's Promise, and the promise that we make to our children about healthy starts, their health, their education, about caring adults and a safe place for after-school hours and an opportunity to give back to the community," he said. 

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Gubernatorial Candidates Tackle Education

Kim Garner
February 01, 2010

An education forum in West Alabama played host to five of the gubernatorial candidates, Monday. Republican candidates Robert Bentley, Tim James, and Bill Johnson along with Democratic candidates Artur Davis and Ron Sparks appeared in conjunction with the annual "Doing What Matters for Tuscaloosa Children" program. This year, the event featured the gubernatorial candidates debating issues affecting the state's school children.

Throughout the debate, several topics continued to surface including the dropout rate, the creation of an education lottery, and the taxation of gambling. Candidates varied on their responses as to how to best tackle the major issues creating turmoil in schools across the state.

Republican candidate Tim James says he feels as if the taxation of gambling won't fix funding problems in schools. "Sure, if you had gambling and taxing you'd raise a little money," James says, "But you'd also have tremendous social costs that would go with it." James says the issues on the forefront of his mind are economic development and the dropout rate, which he believes is closely connecting to the reading rate. "We have to raise the reading scores by the time they leave the 3rd grade," James explains, "if we do it, dropout rates collapse, prison numbers collapse, teen pregnancy--you name it, go down and you've created an educated workforce. That's how we improve Alabama." James says his focus on reading rates is based in statics showing children who can read by the time they leave the 3rd grade are more likely to graduate from high school.

Democratic candidate Ron Sparks, however, is in support of taxing gambling, and says although he has been criticized by some of the other candidates for his views, he believes gambling is not going away. "There's millions of dollars going to other states," Sparks explains, "that's from Alabama citizens, we're going across the line everyday buying lottery tickets."

Democratic candidate Artur Davis also shares the belief that gambling should be taxed, however; he describes a more drastic taxation than what his fellow candidates could support. "I am all for taxing gambling," Davis says, "the difference between me and Ron Sparks is I want to tax it above the national rate, at 20 to 25 percent." Davis says he believes gambling taxes in other states shouldn't determine what Alabama decides. "Folks in Mississippi don't like what they do in Mississippi," he says.  "Mississippi gives a huge tax break to its gambling interest...doesn't put its gambling proceeds back to investments back in the community. We don't need to copy that pattern in Alabama. We need to do better."

For Republican Robert Bentley, however, the issue of gambling has always been clear. "I have always voted against gambling," Bentley says, "Gambling never helps any area. They're talking about taxing gambling, but it skims money off the top of all of our economies so it always damages the economy of the state." However Bentley says he does believe the issue is ultimately up to the voters. "I don't want to have to deal with gambling for those next four years and I'm not going to do it. We need to vote, once and for all, let the people of Alabama vote yes or no. If they say yes, we need to tax it and regulate it."

Candidate Bill Johnson feels similarly that the voters should decide whether or not gambling taxes could benefit schools, although he does feel as though that money could make a substantial difference in Alabama's schools. "Three to five million could be huge amounts of money for Pre-K which we know is needed." Johnson says, "It would close the gap with out education trust fund budget, it could provide scholarships for kids that go to college, so there's all kinds of benefits that could come out of that."

Tuscaloosa school leaders in attendance say hearing what the candidates had to say was an excellent opportunity to make informed decisions. School board member Marvin Lucas says while funding is one of the most important things effecting schools, it will be good to know which candidate's beliefs best suit Alabama's schools. "We have to digest the information they give and take the good parts of it and look through the other parts and make sure we know which candidate we want to support when the election comes up or when the primary comes up."