I haven't had much time to blog since last Thursday. Here’s a roundup of coverage of the Alabama Prepaid Affordable College Tuition Fund from the weekend, and a few notes on my own plans for the next week or so.

Countrycat explains exactly what is at stake:

we're talking about the future of Alabama's children here, not the stock market or the next election. Will 50,000 or so young PACT beneficiaries get the college education their families thought they paid for or will they be forced to forego dreams of a higher education or end up deep in debt in order to earn a degree?

Havealittletalk has the best catch of the day on the Alabama Prepaid Affordable Tuition Fund debacle. After catching State Treasurer Kay Ivey citing some questionable numbers about the losses of the program she notes that Ivey attended the annual conference of th National Association of State Treasurers at a resort in Maine last August. Ivey was a discussion panelist for an event at the conference. The title of her remarks:

Achieving Accountability with Strategic Planning

Alabama Representatives Craig Ford and Johnny Mack Morrow have taken a step toward finding a way to stabilize Alabaman’s Prepaid Affordable College Tuition program by introducing two bills to provide funding from the state. They are referring to the PACT fiasco as Alabama’s version of AIG.

One of the bills will provide short-term funding from the state’s unclaimed property and capital improvement funds. The other will provide $150 million over the next five years from the Alabama Trust Fund. This is a welcome development. Too much of the discussion among policy-makers has been behind closed doors up to this point. I am glad to see someone finally stepping up with a public proposal. It would be an even better proposal if it included a provision for some type of public accounting for the way the PACT money was handled.  Read more…

Countrycat has the preliminary report from the Alabama Prepaid Affordable College Tuition board meeting in Montgomery today. A large crowd of PACT contract holders attended the meeting.

The board unanimously rejected dissolving the program. The plan is to keep the program with modifications.

“These include: close enrollment (no new contracts until current contract holders are secure); take $1.3 million from a state scholarship fund to help secure PACT (I’ll have to look up the details on this); and ask for legislative assistance with funding.”

Lt. Governor Jim Folsom Jr. stated unequivocally that PACT is going to survive, and that the legislature will fix the problem.

I just posted best wishes to everyone who is going to Montgomery this morning for the Alabama Prepaid Affordable College Tuition board meeting. I am grateful for the assistance and support we have received from the community here as we've struggled to deal with the many issues surrounding this fiasco.

Many opinions have been offered on it. I agree with those who have argued:

PACT participants are contract holders, and the only acceptable outcome is for those contracts to be honored.

I hope someone will be able to get a first-hand account, photos, or videos from the meeting. I will post an update here as soon as I have one.

I woke up this morning with the intention of blogging part six and part seven of havealittletalk's series on the Alabama PACT fiasco. I've been puzzling over those pieces for a couple of days, and I think they might have some bearing on our efforts to enforce accountability and transparency.

Then I took a look around and checked my messages. I discovered that the State Treasurer had made a public statement that had to be dealt with. That the Facebook groups were still growing. That a contact of mine has meetings with some state legislators next week. That there were open meetings issues to deal with ahead of Tuesday's board meeting.

I received some communication that made me think I needed to put together a guide to the PACT issue and some electronic contact information and get them out as quickly as I could.

It's a little tough to post this right now, considering all the disintegration that's being documented by other folks here, but I do feel the need to stay on it.

Alabama State Treasurer Kay Ivey spoke to some Republicans in Huntsville yesterday and she said some things that I find interesting about Alabama's Pre-Paid College Tuition Program.

The most interesting is this quote Mooncat highlights as part of a very helpful post on open meetings ahead of Tuesday's board meeting.

Ivey told the breakfast audience at Trinity United Methodist Church that she has "been hunkered down" with the board and financial risk experts to find solutions to shore up the program for the short term.

Today I found comment at my blog from a member of this Facebook group that is worth sharing:

We feel we need to work together- get numbers- and take this to Montgomery!

Alabama blogger BrokeSnake is thinking along the same lines. We’ve had a bit of discussion about this. He’s been all over this issue, and has even corresponded with some state legislators and posted about it at The Snake Pit.

Posted at Al.com under a Birmingham News byline just before noon today:

Two people who bought into the state's Prepaid Affordable College Tuition Program have sued the State of Alabama and several corporations, alleging breach of contract and negligence.

Filed in Calhoun County Circuit Court by two plaintiffs who paid in. Handled by Donald W. Stewart of Anniston. Plaintiffs seeking class-action status.

State Treasurer Kay Ivey is listed as the lead defendant.

Havealittletalk has pieced together a rough timeline of Alabama PACT investment manager hirings and firings since 2003, including information that makes us think Bear Stearns handled some of this money.

Unfortunately, details prior to 2003 are sketchy. If anyone can shed further light on this, I would appreciate it. I’ve got this on my list of things to look into with Lexis next week. Havealittletalk also has the best lead I’ve read all week:

We shouldn’t even need to have this conversation. The PACT isn’t an investment plan: it’s a purchased contract. It is because it says it is.

Two questions that have been plaguing me since the PACT fiasco started are:

“Was the money invested conservatively?”

“Was it invested responsibly?”

Variability of returns is one way to measure risk. Let’s begin with that.

That my heart leaped into my mouth when I discovered this.

I'm still recovering from the emotional high. And I have a one-track mind.

Love this flourish.

Thanks a million!

Countrycat demolishes the notion that Alabamians who paid into PACT were just stupid investors.

One more video from that meeting last Thursday. In this one, we see a banker telling how the banking community was sold on this program and encouraged to market it to their customers. You know, back when people had a lot more trust in their bankers.  Read more…

Havealittletalk strikes again, this time with a valiant attempt to piece together a few fragments of information about who is managing the money for the Alabama college saving program. You really want to read this one.

The trail of breadcrumbs starts with an update to the FAQ on the Alabama PACT website on March 13, the day after that public hearing we've been writing about.

countrycat has posted more video from that public hearing in Montgomery last Thursday. She had one over the weekend of a man suggesting that the PACT board be mindful of the wrath of god.

In the one below, we see some citizens proposing specific solutions to the problem, and being very clear that they don't want their money back -- what they want is for their children to have an education.  Read more…

Alabama blogger havealittletalk has uncovered a news story from January 14 of this year that reports State Treasurer Kay Ivey encouraging people to invest in the Alabama college saving program. Stupid or evil? I am not qualified to say.

Havealittletalk has also noticed the program's investments in the Cayman Islands increased by more than $9 million between 2006 and 2007. I am not sure what that means, but I think these are the sorts of details worth noticing.

Passing these along because a couple of people who are following our efforts in Alabama have mentioned the impending raid on the Florida fund. Word of caution: I haven't read these, and don't keep up with Florida politics, so read carefully and decide for yourself. Passing them along just as they were forwarded to me.

Herald: Florida’s prepaid tuition program won’t be raided, Crist says

Times: Raid on prepaid tuition fizzles

Tribune: Crist, Sink Say College Money Safe

Countrycat has an eyewitness account and her first video from yesterday’s hearing on the Alabama college saving program. Pure dynamite. She does a beautiful job capturing the fear and loathing that the citizens who are on the receiving end of this fiasco have for their government. And the unmitigated contempt that the few board members who bothered to show up have for the unwashed masses.

The citizens of Alabama really showed their quality yesterday.

They are connecting the dots:

More than once, I heard the meeting referred to as "just for show" or, more entertainingly, "just like a meeting in North Korea."

Might want to see it, if you haven't already. Avedon:.

"Investigative reporter Seymour Hersh describes 'executive assassination ring' [...] After 9/11, I haven't written about this yet, but the Central Intelligence Agency was very deeply involved in domestic activities against people they thought to be enemies of the state. Without any legal authority for it. They haven't been called on it yet. That does happen." I couldn't help wondering if Hersh is going to be allowed to live to finish his book.

The story says they reported directly to Cheney's office during the Bush years.

Earlier in the week, I linked to a site where a guy has archived many of his Alabama college saving fund documents, some going back to the 90s. The site is a parody of the actual Alabama PACT site, and uses modified versions of their graphics. Today the owner added a disclaimer to the top of the page and a pdf of a cease and desist letter from a state Treasury Department attorney. You can view a non-pdf copy here.

I knew we were probably going to see something good from the meeting when I popped in at Left in Alabama for a second today and saw this.

Left in Alabama blogger Countrycat made the trip to Montgomery to attend the hearing on the Alabama college saving program. The hearing was scheduled to last until 4 p.m.

State Treasurer Kay Ivey made it to the meeting. Lt. Governor Jim Folsom, who is trying to distance himself from this issue, did not. But at least he sent a representative.

Too early to say how things went, but more to come on this.

I’ve been sending e-mails and dropping links tonight. Trying to locate people who might be going to tomorrow's hearing on the Alabama college saving fund crisis and persuade them to read my best advice.

Today I discovered a blogger with a personal story. I also discovered a treasure trove of important documents. Those discoveries got me thinking it would be worthwhile to drop links at forums and on comments threads. And to take the extraordinary step (for me) of e-mailing people I have never met.

The specifics of the meeting I mentioned in my last post have been released. I am not sure how widely they have been disseminated.

The meeting is for people who have money in the Alabama college saving fund to express their concerns to the board that oversees the program. The board will meet on March 24.

Without belaboring the details, we have:

1. Meeting specifics announced on short notice.
2. Single session, during working hours. Anyone who can’t get there on Thursday doesn't get an opportunity to speak.
3. One-way communication. Two minutes per speaker. People can “have their say,” but they will not get answers to specific questions.

Just an update on the Alabama college saving program fiasco I wrote about this morning.

The details of the public meeting on this are being released on short notice. It's on Thursday, and the location still hadn't been announced as of this morning. Honestly, this is looking like there's going to be a railroad-job decision, and everyone who put money in "just made a poor investment decision," and "had their chance to have their say at the public hearing."

No time to get to the bottom of the finance fiasco - trying to do some political work with a limited window of opportunity.

Since I last posted here, we found out the Alabama college tuition saving program has lost 45% of its value since mid-2007. That's real crisis for people who have been paying into it. Also a disaster in the making for the Republican State Treasurer, who has gubernatorial aspirations.

This is preliminary, but it looks like mortgage-backed securities trading is involved. I'm not sure to what extent, or how significant it has been in generating the crisis.