Virginia Martin

Payday Loan Bill Dies, but Issue Not Dead

Last year, 189,231 Alabamians took out 1.6 million payday loans worth about $563.6 million from lenders in the state. They paid about $98.4 million in fees, according to a database kept by the Alabama Department of Banking. “It’s absolutely massive,” Dev Wakeley, a policy analyst for the progressive advocacy group Alabama Arise, said recently about the fees paid by borrowers. “All this money is getting syphoned out of communities and most of it goes out of state.” Payday lending reform, specifically the fees allowed to be charged to borrowers, has become a perennial issue in the Alabama State House. A bill by Sen. Arthur Orr, R-Decatur, to give borrowers up to 30 days to repay the money instead of what can be 10 to 20 days, was killed earlier this month on an 8-6 vote in the Senate Banking and Insurance Committee. “The fact that this bill got shut down in committee does not negate the fact that there is a massive need for reform,” Wakeley said. Read more.

Nevada Caucuses Voting Tonight, WBHM Publishing Live

WBHM is publishing live results from the Nevada caucuses.

Contributors to U.S. Senate Candidates

Candidates in this year’s race for the U.S. Senate on Feb. 20 updated the lists of their contributors leading up to the March 3 primary elections in Alabama. Following are contributions of $5,000 and up for each candidate. The information comes from the Federal Election Commission database. Read more.

Jeff Sessions Leads the Republican Pack in Contributions This Year Toward Senate Nomination Race

Jeff Sessions has collected almost a half million dollars in contributions in 2020 as he campaigns to reclaim the U.S. Senate seat he held for two decades before resigning to become U.S. attorney general. Reports filed Thursday with the Federal Elections Commission showed Sessions with net contributions of $446,866 from Jan. 1 to Feb. 12, far outdistancing six opponents in the March 3 Republican primary for the Senate. Democrat Doug Jones, the incumbent who is unopposed for the Democratic nomination, led all candidates with contributions of $2.43 million during the first 43 days of this year. Read more.

Contributors to U.S. Senate Candidates.

Jefferson County Memorial Project Efforts Continue Into the Next Decade

The Jefferson County Memorial Project, a grassroots, citizen-led organization that focuses on uncovering and reconciling racial terror and racial violence that is a part of the county’s past, is in its second year of operation with no end in sight. The coalition has continued its work with city committees to delve more deeply into local incidents and to make plans for memorials in their areas, with events to raise awareness, with a student essay contest and with a quilting project to illustrate the area’s past of racial violence through art. More academically inclined work also is continuing, and JCMP on Tuesday released a new report that built on last year’s work documenting Jefferson County’s lynching victims and describing the ways police, the media and businesses fed into the violence of the era. Read more.

“There Is Always More We Can Learn”: Jefferson County Memorial Project Finds More Lynching Victims, Documents Systematic Racial Oppression

The Jefferson County Memorial Project on Tuesday released “Jefferson County’s Broken Systems,” its second report about lynchings that took place in Jefferson County between 1883 and 1940. The report provides more details about the history of Jefferson County’s 30 documented lynching victims who are memorialized at the Equal Justice Initiative’s National Memorial for Peace and Justice, discovered four more lynching victims and examined what systems allowed racial terror to continue. “There is a larger system of terror that institutions from government to law enforcement to business were complicit in. What this report tries to do is to draw out that larger picture of how an entire community is implicated in this system of racial terror,” said Abigail Schneider, JCMP director. Read more. Read More About the JCMP

Jefferson County Memorial Project Efforts Continue Into the Next Decade

‘Alternative Cover’ Landfill Bill Moves Forward; ADEM Says Coal Ash No Longer Permitted Material

MONTGOMERY — The Alabama House of Representatives on Thursday approved legislation that clarifies landfills’ ability to use materials other than dirt to cover new garbage each day. Previously approved “alternative cover” materials have included shredded vehicle components from scrapped cars, contaminated soil and coal ash. The Alabama Department of Environmental Management said Thursday that it no longer allows the use of coal ash as cover and, while a Walker County landfill still has a permit to use it, it soon will not. Sponsor Rep. Alan Baker, R-Brewton, said House Bill 140 is needed to codify what ADEM has allowed for about three decades. “It would be up to ADEM to decide in permits what covers are allowed,” Baker said on the House floor. Read more.

Construction, Welding, GED: The Impact of Prison Education

WBHM Across Alabama, state inmates are getting GED certificates, learning to fix cars, and even how to code. As Alabama faces mounting pressure to reform its prison system, many state leaders want to increase funding for these educational programs. Read more.

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Morgan County Tax Dispute Will Have Statewide Impact

MONTGOMERY — The Morgan County Commission and the county’s school districts went head-to-head in a Montgomery County Circuit Court hearing on Tuesday in their fight over who should receive online sales taxes, and now they must await a decision from the judge. As they wait, the stakes continue to rise in their tussle over whether a local law was effective in prying money from the County Commission’s general fund and distributing the bulk of it to the three public school systems in the county. The crux of the legal dispute is whether the local law, sponsored by state Sen. Arthur Orr, R-Decatur, conflicts with the statewide Simplified Sellers Use Tax law. Read more.