Dear Editor,

I didn’t think that Republicans and Democrats in Montgomery could ever agree on anything. I have long given up on the idea that anyone in the state Senate or the state House of Representatives could do anything that made sense.

That is why I was pleasantly surprised to find out that the state House of Representatives unanimously passed a bill last week and it was a bill that actually does something productive.

Dr. Robert Bentley wrote the Re-Employment Act of 2010, which will put 5,000 Alabamians back to work and gets them off of the unemployment rolls. This bill gives companies who hire people who are unemployed a tax deduction equal to half that person’s salary and reports say it will result in thousands of people who are currently unemployed getting a job.

Furthermore, the bill is deficit neutral because the tax cuts to the businesses are recovered by the economic impact of getting people off of government unemployment checks and returning them to the status of productive, salary-earning citizens.

Dr. Bentley represents Tuscaloosa, but I am proud to say that he grew up in Shelby County, has gone to Montgomery and has made a difference. He has gotten great bills passed that will actually help the people of Alabama, and he did what I thought was impossible. He got Republicans and Democrats to work together and agree on the right thing to do and put people back to work.

It is this kind of action that makes him a great public official and that is why he will now get my vote for Governor. If he can get a unanimous vote on a jobs bill through the legislature, he can do great things as Governor.