Making it right, As long as it takes, yadda yadda

BP refuses to pay Alabama's oil spill claim, citing lawsuit; state education budget cut

BP PLC told Gov. Bob Riley today that it wouldn’t pay the state of Alabama’s $148 million claim because Attorney General Troy King sued the oil company.

BP said in a statement that "immediate resolution" was "unachievable at this time."

Riley, blaming the lawsuit for lost revenue, said he would have no choice but to cut the state schools budget for the fiscal year ending Sept. 30 by an additional 2 percentage points, from 7.5 percent to 9.5 percent. Because there are only two weeks left in that budget year, it means the state’s K-12 school systems, colleges and universities will see a roughly 25 percent cut in this month’s state aid check.

"If that lawsuit hadn’t paralyzed our negotiations, we wouldn’t have had to make these additional cuts to education funding," Riley said in a statement. "One man made a brash, reckless decision to sue BP while the state was still working to recover lost tax revenue from the company."

So Bob Riley is not only siding with BP in its dispute with his own state, he's making state schools and colleges pay for that. Way to go.