WASHINGTON – Alabama’s senators, Republican Richard Shelby and Democrat Doug Jones, were united this week on nominees who went to the Senate for confirmation. Here's a breakdown of the votes during the week ending Aug. 31. Read more.
Alabama’s senators split votes on a proposal to defund Planned Parenthood, with Republican Richard Shelby voting for a measure to remove the group from a budget bill and Democrat Doug Jones voting to retain funding. The proposal failed. However, the overall catchall funding bill passed with support of both of the state’s senators. Here are their votes on major issues in the week ending Aug. 24. Read more.
Jefferson County Sheriff Mike Hale today announced plans to put a school resource officer, mostly retired law enforcement offices, in every school in the Jefferson County School System. That plan includes forming a Threat Assessment Team to identify patterns of troubling behavior and supplying resources for managing students who display them. Read more.
Jefferson County commissioners expect to have the makings of a balanced budget for fiscal 2019 by the end of the day Thursday. That’s a welcome change after hearing Monday that some funds had been targeted for uses commissioners didn’t anticipate. “It’s not that we had less than we thought we had,” Commissioner David Carrington said Wednesday. “It’s that what we thought we had had already been allocated, primarily to the renovation of the 2121 Building.” Read more.
The days of Jefferson County residents having to go to the courthouse to file for disability or tax exemptions will be over if commissioners pass a resolution from the tax assessor for online exemptions. Read more.
Bessemer Mayor Kenneth Gulley was re-elected in municipal elections Tuesday, and it appears three of the six City Council seats on the ballot will go to runoffs, along with two of the seven school board seats. Several other cities in the state also had municipal elections Tuesday, including Gadsden, Huntsville and Montgomery. Find links to vote results.
A little less of Birmingham will be accessible to the public in the wake of Tuesday’s City Council meeting, in which the council ceded two rights-of-way to private companies. The council also voted to close portions of two downtown streets to make way for the construction of the BJCC’s new open-air stadium. Of the two rights-of-way discussions, the first — which focused on a stretch of property on the corner of 13th Street South and First Avenue South, near Railroad Park — proved to be the more controversial. Read more.
Army veteran Ronald Whitson gives credit to Legal Services Alabama for keeping his family home in Birmingham. “I’ve been to the top, and I’ve been to the basement, and I know how important Legal Services is,” Whitson said. For Mike Letson, Whitson’s LSA attorney, what he did for Whitson is more than a job, it’s a passion. “You feel you are on the right side of justice,” he said. However, the program that Whitson and Letson praise has been controversial, the frequent target of partisan political battles since its start in the mid-1970s, with roots in the nation’s War on Poverty. Now the Alabama program’s federal parent, Legal Services Corporation, once again faces defunding, this time in President Donald Trump’s 2019 budget proposal. Justifications for defunding the LSC include concern about the program’s lack of accountability measures and the value of transferring responsibility to the states to “encourage nonprofit organizations, businesses, law firms and religious institutions to develop new models for providing legal aid.” LSC helps provide legal assistance to low-income people in civil matters, including housing, family law and veterans’ rights. The agency distributes its $385 million budget through grants to 133 offices nationwide, including Legal Services Alabama’s seven offices and one call center. This is the third of BirminghamWatch’s Trump’s Budget Wish List series, detailing programs that President Donald Trump proposes cutting and the effect these choices could have in Alabama. Read More Read the earlier stories:
Jay Roberson wasn’t present at Tuesday’s Birmingham City Council meeting, but his recently announced resignation loomed over proceedings. A discussion over whether to reallocate funding for parks in his district led to a prolonged debate over how much spending power lame-duck councilors should have — with the only present outgoing councilor, District 1’s Lashunda Scales, expressing outrage that the discussion was even happening. Read more.
President Donald Trump is battling with countries he says are unfairly hurting America’s foreign trade, but some of his moves may adversely affect industries in Alabama in the process. Trump’s new tariffs against China, Canada and the European Union — some proposed, some already in effect — are concerning the state’s auto manufacturers, farmers and newspaper publishers, and they have prompted responses from both industry representatives and politicians. In particular, Doug Jones, Alabama’s newly elected U.S. senator, has criticized an investigation by the Department of Commerce that may cause price hikes in vehicles made in Alabama using parts imported from abroad. The range of tariffs is wide but fluctuating, as Trump continues to negotiate with trading partners. Even as he announces additional tariffs and other countries retaliate by increasing their own against American exports, the president has said that he would remove all tariffs if other countries would do the same. Read more about the three areas where Alabama businesses and workers could get caught up in a potential trade war.
