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Paul Hubbert in RetirementHeaded AEA for 42 years
Paul Hubbert retired as executive secretary of AEA on January first, a few months after he was told by his doctors he would need begin three days-a-week kidney dialysis. the anti-rejection medicine he's been taking since a 1989 liver transplant had damaged his kidneys. that was the first question we asked when we talked with the 77 year old retiree. How's his health? "On my first day of retirement I was in the hospital with pneumonia, and I have subsequently had another type of pneumonia, so hopefully I am all over that and on the mend again." And the financial health of the state? "Alabama's in trouble, financially. We're putting budgets together with bailing wire and adhesive tape . We're not facing up to the real problems. We've got a structural deficit. Thai is, were trying to provide more services than we have funds to provide. And that's the reason that we're having to patch budgets together every year." Hubbert says Alabama taxpayers will have to make some hard choices about what kind of state government services they want. "What we really need to do is look at what we want from government, what we expect from government in all areas...education, uh corrections, public safety, mental health, public health, you name it, and once we determine what we need and what we want, then we have to be willing to pay for it. And we're trying to operate a rather modest program with immodest means, I mean we're simply sub-par in terms of our funding." On another political issue, Hubbert says he can't undertand how former Democratic Congressman Artur Davis could change his politics so quickly. Davis will address the Republican Convention in Tampa next week. Hubbert says he can;t see how Davis sould make such a 360 degree turn in politics. Hubbert says he's in contact with the man who replaced him as AEA Executive Secretary, Henry Mabry,but not too frequently: "I don't want to get into trying to micro manage the operation from afar because I felt like when I walked out I should turn it loose, and I've done that." Hubbert and his wife go to the dialysis center near their home three times a week....taking along a tablet computer with books to read.
(Montgomery)--Students across the river region returned to k-12 classrooms this week...and it was the first time that's happened in 42 years without Paul Hubbert at the helm of the Alabama education associating, the teacher's union. |
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