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The appointment of the Democrat Gerald Dial to direct the new Rural Alabama Action Commission has been criticized as political payback for his appearance in a commercial for Republican Governor Bob Riley’s re-election campaign… e.g., in this Huntsville Times article or in this editorial from the Tuscaloosa News:
Gov. Bob Riley’s appointment of Gerald Dial to head rural development efforts for the Alabama Development Office does not bode well… The governor isn’t casting the appointment as a quid pro quo to reward Dial for his role in one of the nastiest (and most untrue) attack ads of the political season. But that’s how it looks… [Dial] arrives with too much political baggage.
If you subscribe to this theory about why Dial was appointed to this newly created $84,500 per year job, then you will find irony in Dial’s comment from a release (pdf) that he circulated last year to explain why he defeated an otherwise popular proposal that would have created a state Center for Rural Development, “I will not sit back and see your tax dollars wasted to create jobs to pay individual political debts.”
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Dial should have added: “unless I am the one getting the money” to his news release.
Bob Riley is a good man. He prides himself on making appointments of people with character and integrity. But he missed the mark with Dial.
Someone should have checked the court records in Montgomery where they would find a $6.2 million judgment rendered against Dial by Judge Charles Price on March 6, 2000.
The comment makes Dial look bad, but bottom line this is Riley’s bad appointment.