Samford University’s board of trustees named a new president Wednesday. Beck A. Taylor, now president of Whitworth University, will succeed Andrew Westmoreland effective July 1. Westmoreland is retiring as president, a post he has held since 2006. Taylor will be the university’s 19th president. Read more.
A bill that would increase penalties for those who participate in riots was slowed down in a House committee today after some lawmakers expressed concerns that the bill is limiting First Amendment rights to protest. Read more.
The Alabama Senate on Tuesday defeated a plan to start a lottery and allow casinos in the state by two votes. Twenty-one votes were required to approve the constitutional amendment, but the Senate vote was 19 to 13 in favor. Gov. Kay Ivey said the defeat just meant more work needed to be done on a gambling proposal, and she still supported giving Alabamians a vote on whether they want a lottery and gaming. “This issue is too important to not get it right,” Ivey said in a statement. “No doubt gambling is complex and challenging, but I remain committed to giving the people of Alabama the final say." Read more. Also in the Legislature Bill to Limit Executive Branch Spending Advances House Passes General Fund Budget that Increases Funding for State Agencies Bill Stalled That Would Increase Penalties for Rioting State Budgets, Legislative Authority, Gambling Bills in State House This Week
Tony Petelos, the only county manager Jefferson County has had, told county commissioners at their committee meeting today that he will soon retire. “After 34 years of public service in many different jobs throughout the years and 10 years here at the county, I'm going to announce my retirement this year,” he said from his seat at the end of the board table. “I don't have a date set, but I just want to give you a heads up that I do plan to retire this year. I've got a couple of projects I'm still working on and I want to get those done, but it's been a pleasure and an honor to work with you.” Read more.
After multiple delays, demolition of the long-derelict Banks High School is moving forward. The Birmingham City Council voted unanimously Tuesday to approve the one-year extension of a loan agreement with the Alabama Department of Environmental Management to tear down the building, which has sat vacant in the city’s South East Lake neighborhood since 2007. Read more.
“Shaking the Gates of Hell: A Search for Family and Truth in the Wake of the Civil Rights Revolution,” by John Archibald (Knopf) A rhetorical, almost visual thread runs though John Archibald’s family memoir. The thread is silence. Silence in a noisy and violent time. Safe silence. Complicit silence. This silence haunts the author, a Pultizer Prize winning columnist for The Birmingham News and AL.com. Archibald follows in the frustrated tradition of white Southern writers — W. J. Cash, Clarence Cason, Jonathan Daniels — and writers who are children of Birmingham — Diane McWhorter, Paul Hemphill, Howell Raines — who try to understand and explain the South and what happens there. “Shaking the Gates of Hell” is Archibald’s attempt at a conversation about historical silence with his deceased father, with his younger self, with his home state and region. The author’s father, Robert L. Archibald, Jr., was a Methodist minister who served at churches in Birmingham and north Alabama. Read more. Family, Faith and Race Collide in Columnist John Archibald’s New Book (WBHM)
In the iconic “Letter from Birmingham Jail,” Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. wrote of his disappointment with white clergy who opposed the Civil Rights Movement. Alabama Media Group columnist and Pulitzer Prize winner John Archibald came to love that document, which was dated 11 days after his birth, for its clear message against injustice. But the letter contains another layer: Archibald’s late father was a Methodist minister in Alabama whose career spanned the turbulent 1960s. He wondered what his dad said about race from the pulpit during those times. So he combed through two filing cabinets that contained every sermon his dad delivered. Read more.
Two local environmentalist groups are suing the Birmingham Water Works Board alleging it failed to comply with a 2001 consent decree that ordered protection of undeveloped land around the Cahaba River watershed, a major source of Birmingham’s drinking water. Cahaba Riverkeeper and the Cahaba River Society, represented by the Southern Environmental Law Center, have filed a complaint in Jefferson County Circuit Court hoping to compel the BWWB to place permanent protections, overseen by an independent third party, on its land holdings surrounding the Cahaba River, the Little Cahaba River and Lake Purdy. The lawsuit cites the worry that, because the land in question is “some of the last undeveloped land in a rapidly urbanizing area,” the BWWB may cave to “intense development pressure.” In some cases, plaintiffs say, the board already has. Read more.
On Oct. 21, Bonnie and Harold Sachs entered a north Alabama emergency room because, despite a negative COVID-19 test, Harold Sachs’ symptoms, including decreased blood oxygen levels, were worsening. He was tested again and, when the results were positive, he was admitted to the hospital. Bonnie Sachs kissed her husband of 50 years before he was taken to the COVID unit. She wouldn’t see him in person again until he died Nov. 9. “He didn’t know me, he was on a ventilator,” Bonnie Sachs told Alabama Daily News. Harold and Bonnie Sachs’ and many similar stories in the past year are the reason Sen. Garlan Gudger said he filed Senate Bill 307, which says that, during public health emergencies, health care facilities shall continue to allow visitors under certain conditions. “I think everyone needs compassionate care at the end of life,” Gudger, R-Cullman, told Alabama Daily News. “And I think they need their family to be there to help patients get over whatever illness or virus.” Read more.
WASHINGTON — The Senate on a highly partisan vote Saturday approved a $1.9 trillion coronavirus relief package. The vote on (HR 1319) was 50 for and 49 against. Both of Alabama’s senators joined every Republican present to vote against the bill, which now goes to the House of Representatives. However, the Senate blocked a Democratic move to increase the minimum wage that had been in the bill. On the House side, representatives in the week that ended March 5 passed a multi-faceted bill aimed at expanding voting in the U.S. and the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act, both mostly along party lines. Read more.
