Whitmire: How the IRS covers up political corruption
By Kyle Whitmire | kwhitmire@al.com This is an opinion column. The story I’m about to tell you wouldn’t be possible today, and that’s a problem. In 2017, my colleague John Archibald and I felt around in the dark for the edges of a criminal conspiracy. We worked at it for months. State Rep. Oliver Robinson had been up to something — that much we could tell. He’d taken a conspicuous interest in the Environmental Protection Agency’s efforts to clean up toxins in north Birmingham. He opposed the agency expanding its mission to include the nearby suburb of Tarrant, and his charity, the Oliver Robinson Foundation, had been trying to persuade residents not to let the EPA test their soil. We suspected he was getting paid by somebody. But there’s what you think, what you know and what you can prove — and the first two don’t matter. We couldn’t yet close the loop, so we couldn’t write the story. But to kick over one more rock, I asked for his non-profit’s 990s, the disclosures charities must make to the IRS. Specifically, I wanted a form the IRS doesn’t include in its online databases — Schedule B, which shows donors who contributed more than $5,000. “You’re not going to find anything,” Archibald said when I left to pick up the documents. “I’ll bet you a Coke.” Dirty Business: How Alabama officials conspired against their own people I wasn’t ready to give up hope. I had to look. Robinson’s lawyer, Doug Jones, left the documents at his law office’s front desk. As I walked back to the elevators in the downtown office building, I slid the 990s out of the manila envelope. I flipped to Schedule B and … I’m not an… Read More
