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Birmingham City Council Appoints Board Members for Art Museum, Civil Rights Institute

Stressing the importance of diverse leadership, the Birmingham City Council voted Tuesday to appoint a slate of new board members to both the Birmingham Museum of Art and the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute. Four BMA board members – Maye Head Frei, Mark Drew, Joel Piassick and current board chair James K. Outland – were appointed to second terms. Norman B. Davis Jr., BMA Director Graham Corray Boettcher described as “a supporter of the museum for years,” was appointed to replace James Hudson, who resigned from the board. Attorney C. Randall Minor will fill the seat vacated by Larry Thornton, who had served two consecutive six-year terms on the board. The council also appointed 18 new members to the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute’s board of directors on Tuesday. Andrea L. Taylor, the president and CEO of the BCRI, told councilors that the new appointees were “chosen in a period of some disruption and brouhaha that found us in a very awkward position as an organization.” Read more.

by Sam Prickett

Jefferson County Owes Medicare and Medicaid More Than $1 Million for Overpayments to Cooper Green Hospital

Jefferson County Commissioners learned during their committee meeting Monday that the county is on the hook for more than $1 million in back payments for Medicare and Medicaid that was overpaid when Cooper Green was a hospital. The situation was uncovered as the result of an audit ordered by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid services. The problem dates back to 2008. Read more.

by Solomon Crenshaw Jr.

Battle Looms over Trump Administration Bid to Ease Safety Rules for Big Rig Trucks

In Washington, D.C., a new Trump administration plan to relax safety rules for truck drivers has rekindled old heartaches for families across the country. On a sunny Labor Day morning in Oklahoma, Linda Wilburn’s younger son, 19-year-old Orbie, hopped into his 1994 red Camaro and headed east from Weatherford on Interstate 40. The college freshman, excited about his new rental house, needed to collect more stuff from his parent’s place, 10 miles away. At mile marker 87, he encountered a stall blocking both eastbound lanes. The young man slowed and stopped the Camaro. And then, on Sept. 2, 2002, Orbie DeWayne Wilburn was dead, smashed from behind by a big rig bearing down on him at high speed. The 41-year-old truck driver from Kentucky, who also also died at the scene, had driven from Bakersfield, Calif. – nearly 1,300 miles away – to Oklahoma “without a rest break at all,” said Orbie’s mother. Now the Wilburn family is steeling themselves for a new fight as the anniversary of Orbie’s death approaches. This week, the Trump administration formally proposed easing the rules over rest breaks truck drivers must take and giving them more flexibility over their on- and off-duty time. Read more.

by Marjie Lundstrom, FairWarning

Report: Alabama Community Corrections Harms Low-Income Participants

WBHM A recent report from the Southern Poverty Law Center says Alabama’s community corrections program unfairly burdens low-income people and threatens public safety. Community corrections, operating in 51 of Alabama’s 67 counties, is overseen by the state Department of Corrections but run locally. It’s designed to be an alternative to prison. The report’s main criticism is that community corrections relies on fees as a primary revenue source. These include fees for drug testing, supervision or electronic monitoring. Read more.

by Andrew Yeager, WBHM

Immigrant Rights Worker and Son Detained by ICE

Updated — Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers in Homewood today detained a board member of Adelante Alabama Worker Center, a human rights group based in Hoover that has been active in obtaining the release of immigrant detainees. Marcos Baltazar and his son, who’s name was not disclosed, were detained, said Resha Swanson, Adelante policy and communications coordinator. The two, who are immigrants, were making a routine check-in with ICE at the time of their arrest. Read more.

by Virginia MacDonald

Getting by in Food Deserts: Mobile Grocery Stores, Neighborhood Farms Help Residents Find Fresh Food

Roland Washington checked off the names of his neighbors who had come to buy groceries at the mobile store that twice a month visits his apartment complex near Tarrant, an area of Birmingham that has few to no options for fresh food. The mini crowd-control task for which Washington volunteers his time is managing the people who come to take advantage of the wholesale-priced fresh produce, meat and other food provisions sold on a first come-first serve basis. He makes sure no more than a few people enter the trailer at a time. For Washington and his neighbors, that mobile grocery store is the difference between getting fresh vegetables and fruits or not. The Corner Market, the mobile grocery store run through a program of the Community Food Bank of Central Alabama, is an initiative aimed at relieving the difficulties faced by people who live in food deserts. Food deserts are defined as areas where at least 500 people live more than half a mile from a full-service grocery store. The lack of access to fresh food is a problem faced by people across the world. About 23.5 million people in the U.S. live in food deserts, according to a U.S. Department of Agriculture report. Nearly half of them are low-income. Closer to home, almost 2 million people in Alabama live in food deserts, according to a 2015 report on food access by the The Food Trust. In Jefferson County, that number is 205,657. In Birmingham, 69 percent of residents live far enough away from a grocery store to make it difficult for them to obtain fresh food, Mayor Randall Woodfin told the City Council in a meeting this spring. He said part of all nine council districts exist in a food desert. The Corner Market and other mobile grocery stores are one way communities are trying to alleviate the difficulties for people who live in food deserts. Read more.

by Cheryl Slocum

Self-Storage on Montclair Allowed Despite Moratorium

A self-storage facility on Montclair Road will be allowed to expand despite a citywide moratorium on such businesses, the Birmingham City Council decided Tuesday. The council voted to allow Montclair Storage to continue with construction on a 10,000-square-foot expansion to its current facility, which had been roughly halfway completed when the council enacted the moratorium last month. The facility currently operates in a building formerly occupied by the now shuttered Montclair Baptist Medical Center; the expansion would also be on that property. Read more.

by Sam Prickett
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