Government

Birmingham City Councilors Debate “Self-Promotion” and the Water Board, With Suggestions That City Officials Are Under Investigation.

A Birmingham City Council meeting consumed by debate over ads purchased by the council and the behavior of the Birmingham Water Works Board also entertained the suggestion that an investigation of city officials is underway. The references to a possible grand jury investigation – which has not been publicly revealed by any prosecutor’s office – seemed almost an aside in a discussion about the activities of the BWWB. Councilor Valerie Abbott during Tuesday’s meeting said that not only is a grand jury investigating the utilities board, but also the Birmingham City Council and the mayor’s office. “Lord knows what they’ll find,” Abbott said. Read more.

Legislative Overview: Lawmakers Take up Bills on Abortion, Immigration and Death Sentencing in First Week.

Alabama legislators kick-started their session last week, with committees approving bills on abortion, sanctuary campuses and death penalty sentences, among other topics. Those bills could go to the floor of the House or Senate this week. The governor’s recommendations for the General Fund and Education Trust Fund budgets also were introduced last week but have yet to come up for a vote. Read more.

Jefferson County Commission Approves United Way Funding Despite Concerns

The Jefferson County Commission OK’d paying $500,000 to the United Way at its meeting Thursday, but not before commissioners were assured senior citizens are receiving the “top notch” service they should be getting. Commissioner Sandra Little Brown asked that approval of the funding be delayed so she could pose questions to United Way officials who were on hand. She said she had received numerous calls about people not getting services they had received before.

Jeffco Legislators Predict Medicaid and Prison Funding Will Dominate Early Days of the Session.

Alabama legislators convened their regular session Tuesday facing some of the same problems that consumed them last year. “The main thing for all of us is going to be the budget,” said Allen Treadaway, R-Morris. The governor is recommending a $1.9 billion General Fund budget that is almost flat funding from this year, though he has said he was considering proposing a pay raise for state employees. His $6.3 billion proposed Education Trust Fund budget does not include a raise for education employees, who did get a bump in pay this year. But the two biggest elephants in the budget conference room will once again be Medicaid and prisons. Read more.

Ripples from Mideast Travel Order Reach Alabama Professor

Baher Sabah, a plastic surgeon from the Iraqi city of Babylon, was looking forward to his trip to America. “He loves America,” said Sabah's uncle, Safaa Al-Hamdani, a biology professor at Jacksonville State University. “When he has come to the United States for any reason, it was just like he won the lottery.” On tap for Sabah was the American Academy of Cosmetic Surgery's annual scientific meeting on Feb. 9-11 in San Diego. He had his airline ticket. He had his visa and, at the scientific meeting, he would have access to workshops, live patient demonstrations, displays of the latest technologies and, of course, lots of networking opportunities. All in all, said Sabah's uncle, “a golden opportunity to advance himself.” Now, as a result of President Donald Trump's recent executive order temporarily halting travel to the U.S. by citizens of seven Middle Eastern countries, including Iraq, Sabah has put his visa, his ticket and his golden advancement opportunity on the shelf. Read more.

Fairness and Safety. Education and Jobs. Similar Worries for Clinton and Trump Voters

(In the early days of a new president, BirminghamWatch is looking at what divides us and connects us close to home. This is the third of the stories.) On face value, the political and cultural divide in the Birmingham metro area — and, in larger part, the country — appears to be an ever-widening gulf of competing ideals and values. But if you take a closer look, you will see that supporters of President Donald Trump and of Hillary Clinton say they want many of the same things from government — fairness, safety and the support to achieve greater success. They value church and family, education and freedom. And they express feelings of disenchantment. Both sides complain of feeling left out, unheard and overlooked. Birmingham residents, like many interviewed in the Sylvan Springs area for a recent story on Trump Country, said it is important for government to treat people fairly and justly. Many said they want the government to make safety a priority. Read more.

Other stories from this series:

From Jefferson County’s Trump Country: “I feel like I’ve been left out a lot.”

A Big Blue Dot in a Sea of Red. But Jefferson County’s Presidential Vote Tally Masks Deep Community Divisions

ProPublica: How Jeff Sessions Helped Kill Equitable School Funding in Alabama

(The U.S. Senate confirmed Jeff Sessions as the next U.S. attorney general Wednesday on a vote of 52-47.) In the early 1990s, children across Alabama’s large rural stretches still attended faltering public schools, some with exposed wiring and rainwater leaking into classrooms. The education was in disrepair, too. Teachers couldn’t assign homework for lack of textbooks. A steel mill announced it would no longer hire local high school graduates because most tested below the eighth grade level. In short, Alabama’s most economically disadvantaged students, primarily black children and those with disabilities, were missing out on a basic education. Then, for a moment, change seemed possible. A civil-rights lawsuit challenging the system for funding Alabama’s schools succeeded, and the state’s courts in 1993 declared the conditions in the poor schools a violation of Alabama’s Constitution. Gov. Guy Hunt, who had battled the litigation, accepted defeat, and vowed to work with the courts to negotiate a solution for equitably funding all of Alabama’s schools. “This is a unique and timely opportunity to make historic improvements in Alabama’s public schools for our children,” Hunt said at a news conference in 1993, “and we will not miss this opportunity.”

From Jefferson County’s Trump Country: “I feel like I’ve been left out a lot.”

(As a new president takes office, BirminghamWatch is looking at what divides us and connects us close to home. This is the second of the stories.) Driving 20 minutes west of downtown Birmingham and taking a short jog off the interstate lands you solidly in Trump Country. It’s a world where trees outnumber people and hardware stores are still locally owned, where people believe in hard work and fair play, where voters believe entitlement programs should be cut back, and maybe taxes a bit, too. It’s a world where some people visit Birmingham, but mostly they try to avoid the crime and traffic they perceive in The City. This is Sylvan Springs, population about 1,542 in the 2010 U.S. Census, more than 97 percent of it white. At the largest polling place in the area, 94.29 percent of voters cast their ballots for Trump in November. That was one of 11 Jefferson County polling places where more than 90 percent of voters cast ballots for the candidate inaugurated as the nation’s 45th president on Friday. Read more.

From PARCA: Lackluster 2016 Receipts to General Fund and Education Trust Fund Perpetuate State’s Budget Woes

Both the accounts that pay for state government operations, the General Fund and the Education Trust Fund (ETF), ended the 2016 Fiscal Year basically flat when compared to the previous year, a sign that the state’s struggles to balance budgets will continue in the future. What would have been a moderately healthy year of receipts to

A Big Blue Dot in a Sea of Red. But Jefferson County’s Presidential Vote Tally Masks Deep Community Divisions

(As the nation inaugurates a new president this month, BirminghamWatch will look at what divides us and connects us close to home. This is the first of the stories.) Hillary Clinton was the clear winner in Jefferson County on election-day, besting Donald Trump in the race for president by more than 7 percentage points. But that result doesn’t mean the county escaped the polarization of the 2016 presidential election nationwide or the potential for conflict over public policy in the county and the region. Clinton won the county with 51.07 percent of the vote, or 156,873 votes, according to certified vote results from the Alabama Secretary of State. Trump took 43.87 percent of the vote, or 137,768 votes. Other candidates and write-in votes accounted for 12,550 votes, slightly more than 4 percent of the ballots cast in the county. Read more.