The Alabama Legislature passed a bill budgeting hundreds of thousands of state dollars to a couple of nonexistent nonprofit organizations. Three Alabama Democrat State Legislators created two nonprofit organizations 5 months after the bill in 2006 to receive grants from the taxpayers, totaling $800,000. They have yet to explain where the money went.

In spring 2006, the Alabama Legislature approved a bill that took a portion of the state's coal severance tax revenue and gave the money to various organiza­tions. The new law dictated that Marion County Community Development Association Inc. and West Alabama Development Association of Fayette County Inc. would each receive $100,000 a year of the tax revenue. But those two groups didn't exist at the time the law was passed, according to secretary of state incorporation records. 

Sen. Roger Bedford, D­-Russellville, and two members of the House of Representatives, Mike Millican, D-Hamilton, and William Thigpen, D-Fayette, created the two nonprofits five months later, according to incorporation records.