The Senate Judiciary Committee is holding hearings on President Trump’s Supreme Court nominee, Judge Amy Coney Barrett. Barrett would fill the seat left vacant with the death of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. Watch the hearings live Monday-Wednesday at 8 a.m. Central on WBHM’s website. This special coverage will preempt WBHM’s regular schedule.
Jefferson County Commissioner Lashunda Scales gave absentee voters some cautionary advice during Thursday’s commission meeting, but county attorney Theo Lawson said her concern is unwarranted. Scales suggested that absentee voters continue to send in copies of their identification and have the signatures of two witnesses to avoid the possibility their vote would not be counted if a recent federal judge’s ruling is overturned. Lawson said that caution is unnecessary. Read more.
Corrected — Help is on the way to deal with a flood of Jefferson County absentee ballots in the general election. Deputy county manager Cal Markert during a Jefferson County Commission meeting Thursday said 24 temporary workers are expected to start work in the clerk’s office by Monday. These temp workers will deal with in-person absentee voters as well as a backlog of mailed-in absentee ballots. Circuit Clerk Jacqueline Anderson-Smith told BirminghamWatch recently that 400 to 500 persons have been coming to the Birmingham Courthouse every day to cast their ballots. A similar wave of voters is descending on the Bessemer Courthouse, and lines of people wanting to vote have formed at both locations. Alabama appears on its way to having a record number of absentee ballots cast this year. More than 130,000 voters already had requested absentee ballots earlier this week. Oct. 29 is the deadline to apply for absentee ballots. Read more.
Deputy county manager Cal Markert said the strategic plan he presented to county commissioners at their committee meeting Tuesday morning is a roadmap for the county. “It also sets clear direction for the county as a whole,” Markert said after presenting the 25-page document. “It sets clear direction for each department. Each department has created their own plan that supports this master plan.” Accountability is key, he said. The strategic plan includes a system for residents and employees to grade their experiences, and it includes a system to map damage to roads, so the county can address the worst roads first. Read more.
The Birmingham City Council has approved the rezoning of a downtown property that will allow for the construction of a five-story, multi-family apartment complex. The 4.75-acre property, located at 2420 First Ave. S., is currently a construction yard, but developers plan to “raze and redevelop” the property into an apartment complex that will include 273 units and 253 parking spaces. Read more.
The FY 2021 budget passed Tuesday night by the Birmingham City Council contains a number of austerity measures stemming from the COVID-19 pandemic, which since March has stymied the local economy and caused the city’s business tax revenue to plunge. The budget, which was approved by the council with no changes to Mayor Randall Woodfin’s original proposal, is nearly $50 million smaller than last year’s and cuts the city’s contributions to schools, libraries and public transit, among other departments. Some of those changes have proven controversial, but other cuts — particularly those to external nonprofit organizations such as the Birmingham Zoo, Jones Valley Teaching Farm and Ruffner Mountain Nature Preserve — went largely unquestioned even by opponents of Woodfin’s budget. Leaders of those nonprofits say they were unsurprised by the cuts, and even before the budget’s passage they appeared resigned to the loss. Instead, faced with their own significant budget shortfalls, those organizations are adapting to survive a hostile, post-COVID landscape. Read more.
Alabama set a high for absentee ballots in 2012, when 89,000 were successfully cast. But Secretary of State John Merrill said the state is on pace to surpass that number. “For the Nov. 3 general election, we've actually had more than 125,000 ballot applications that have been submitted to us and more than 50,000 that have been successfully returned already,” he said. “As you can see,” Merrill said, “we're going to shatter that record.” But the secretary of state said election officials in the state’s 67 counties aren’t worried because they’re ready. “We've already made preparations for this, hiring additional people, enabling more than what we would perceive the necessary number of tabulators to be available on election day to process the ballots,” he said. Read more.
Redevelopment on Ensley’s Ramsay-McCormack Building is finally underway, Mayor Randall Woodfin announced Thursday. The 10-story structure will be deconstructed and replaced with a five-story building constructed using salvaged materials from the original. Woodfin’s announcement came the same day a city-run façade improvement pilot program was announced to target nine “priority redevelopment areas” in the city, including the Ensley Commercial Business District. Read more.
The governor and a federal court made changes Wednesday that could affect the election process on Nov. 3. The governor issued an order allowing election officials to begin counting absentee ballots at the same time the polls open, at 7 a.m. on election day. Secretary of State John Merrill welcomed the move to ease the counting of an unusually large number of absentee ballots. The state was not as welcoming of another development on the voting front. A federal court judge also Wednesday issued a ruling that lightens absentee voting requirements for older and infirm Alabamians and allows counties to offer curbside voting if they chose to do so. Attorney general Steve Marshall said he would appeal that ruling. Read more. It’s Oct. 1, Do You Know Where Your Absentee Ballot Is? You can see where your absentee ballot is in the process, as well as finding your polling place and registration status. For more absentee ballot information, read BirminghamWatch’s earlier story: Absentee Ballot Season Gets Underway
The discussion appeared to be over before Tuesday’s Birmingham City Council meeting had even begun. Council members had disinterestedly trickled out of the afternoon’s budget workshop until only a voting minority of the nine-member council remained: Councilors Valerie Abbott, Steven Hoyt, Clinton Woods and Crystal Smitherman. The remainder of the council, led by President William Parker, voted down Smitherman’s proposed amendments to the budget. They opted instead to approve it as proposed by Mayor Randall Woodfin, with Abbott joining them in that vote. The budget has been controversial since Woodfin announced it last month. With the city facing a $63 million shortfall due to the COVID-19 pandemic, Woodfin made several significant cuts to its operating budget. He defended some of his cuts, such as those to the Birmingham school board and the Birmingham-Jefferson County Transit Authority, arguing that those organizations would make up the loss via other funding sources. Other departments, including the library and parks and recreation, were given budget cuts that led to hundreds of full- and part-time city employees being furloughed. Unchanged, Woodfin told residents, was his administration’s commitment to neighborhood revitalization, which had been one of the central promises of his campaign. His proposed budget continued to allocate $10 million for street paving, $1.5 million for dilapidated structure demolition and $1.25 million for weed abatement. His new Birmingham Promise Educational Initiative also continued to receive its $2 million. Read more.
