2018 Election
Court of Civil Appeals, Place 2
Court of Civil Appeals, Place 2
REPUBLICAN PRIMARY
There is no Democratic primary in this race
Jefferson County Commission
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JeffCo Sets Largest Budget Ever
Angela Dixon, the chief financial officer of Jefferson County, was quick to acknowledge the help she got from the county’s budget office in delivering the county’s largest ever budget.
“These ladies are the gems of Jefferson County,” Dixon said of Lene Wormley and Marilyn Shepard. “They have gotten the distinguished budget award for four years straight, and it’s only two people in the office.”
Those few workers prepared the total of $1,264,956,131 budget passed Thursday by the County Commission. Read more.
About News
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From a Bad Situation Comes a Powerful Defense of Local Journalism
“Most family newspaper sale announcements bear some variation of stock language regarding the new owner’s ability to ‘assume the families’ stewardship,’ ‘continue to provide strong local reporting,’ and ‘maintain the legacy’ of the selling family. Sadly, we feel that none of that will be true in our case.”
— George Lynett, publisher emeritus of Times-Shamrock Communications
Read more.
Jefferson County Commission
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Much Obliged: JeffCo Wins New Award for Helping Autauga County After Tornado
The Roads and Transportation Department of Jefferson County received a heartfelt “thank you” Thursday for coming to the rescue of Autauga County after it was hit by a January tornado.
The county road crew became the first recipient of the first One Family Award because of its efforts in the wake of the tornado. The award was presented last week during the convention of the Association of County Commissions of Alabama. Read more.
Education
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Nature-Based Education on the Rise in Alabama
At least three forest schools have opened across Alabama in recent years. It’s part of a nationwide movement to teach kids in nature. Read more.
Education
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Alabama First Grade Readiness Gets Support From Governor’s Education Commission
The future of a bill that would effectively mandate kindergarten in Alabama still faces an uphill battle, even as members of a state education commission said that they support the bill. Read more.
COVID
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COVID Cases Increasing in Summer Spike
COVID-19 is trending upward in Alabama and across the country, following a pattern of summer spikes set since the virus first arrived in the U.S. in 2020. Read more.
Public Health
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7 Cases of Tuberculosis Found in 4 Alabama Chicken Processing Plants
Alabama state health officials are asking workers in the region’s poultry industry and their close contacts to get screened for TB after the outbreak. Read more.
Birmingham City Council
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Birmingham City Council Declines to Nominate Full Slate of Candidates to Board Overseeing Property Taxes
UPDATED —The Birmingham City Council has passed on the option to submit a full slate of nominees to the Jefferson County Board of Equalization, the body that oversees property tax appraisals in the city and countywide.
At its Tuesday meeting, councilors voted to nominate only one candidate, incumbent board member Karen Wadlington, to continue service on the board. Alabama law allows the council to nominate up to three candidates for each vacancy on the three-member board. The terms of two of the board’s three members have now expired, according to a county spokesperson, which allowed the City Council six total nominations. Read more.
Jefferson County Commission
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In Search of Midnight Oil: JeffCo County Manager Preparing for Annual Budget Hearings
County Manager Cal Markert displayed a wry smile when asked if he is looking forward to budget hearings in August.
“I look forward to it being over and done, I guess,” he said after the Jefferson County Commission’s meeting today in Bessemer. “It’s coming up and we’ve got to do it. It’s just a lot of extra work. Not extra work but a lot of work.”
Setting the county’s budget is an annual balancing act of determining where funds can be allotted to accomplish needed projects, and it involves hearings during which department heads meet with Markert and county commissioners to make their case for requested funds during fiscal 2024. Read more.
Environment
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North Birmingham’s Bluestone Coke Plant Issued Warning for Clean Water Act Violations
The industrial plant has 60 days to clean up contaminated water in Five Mile Creek before it faces a federal lawsuit, local environmental groups warn. Read more.
Birmingham Zoo
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The Birmingham Zoo wants to build a new cat exhibit. First it must deal with unmarked graves
The zoo has filed for a permit with the Alabama Historical Commission to professionally exhume the graves and reinter them nearby. Read more.
Congressional Redistricting
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Alabama Legislature Passes Controversial Congressional Map
The approved map aims to address the federal court ruling but leads to tensions and claims of voter suppression. Read more.
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Alabama House, Senate Approve Separate Congressional Maps
Republican supermajorities in the Alabama House and Senate approved two separate congressional maps with a single majority-Black congressional district and one with a Black population ranging from 38% to 42%.
Democrats in both chambers, who support maps with two majority-Black districts, opposed both proposals and said they would not satisfy federal courts that ruled that the state’s earlier congressional maps violate the Voting Rights Act. Read more.
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In Dueling Alabama Congressional Map Proposals, a Dispute Over Possibilities
Can Alabama draw new maps on explicitly racial lines? Maybe.
“It’s kind of head spinning and even lawyers who are in the space get a little confused,” said Michael Li, a redistricting expert and senior counsel at the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University.
At the Tuesday public hearing, attorney James Blacksher and Rep. Chris England, D-Tuscaloosa, went back and forth about whether Alabama’s new maps can split counties to be on explicitly racial lines. The answer to that question remains to be seen.
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Lawmakers Begin Redrawing Alabama’s Congressional Map
The effort to redraw the congressional map began Tuesday with a public hearing at the State House. This follows the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision upholding a lower court’s ruling that Alabama’s congressional map does not reflect the state’s Black population. Read more.
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Alabama Legislature
Reading Birmingham
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New Book Explores Stories of Early African American Activists in Birmingham
Segregation in the New South: Birmingham, Alabama, 1871-1901 (Louisiana State University Press, 2023) by Carl V. Harris
Birmingham is known around the world as a place where African Americans fought and sometimes died to secure their rights as citizens and dismantle Jim Crow segregation. But Jim Crow did not spring up fully formed, nor was it a system that had always existed. It was the product of a long and tortuous push and pull between blacks seeking justice and whites seeking control.
At its birth in 1871, Birmingham was a Reconstruction-era city, and Birmingham came of age in a time when white Southerners and African American Southerners, many only a few years removed from enslavement, were struggling to find their places in a new post-war racial order. This is the story, and the stories of early African American activists who are largely unknown today, that Carl V. Harris tells in his new book Segregation in the New South: Birmingham, Alabama, 1871-1901.
Harris, who taught history at the University of California, Santa Barbara, died before completing this book. His colleague, W. Elliott Brownlee, edited and finished the manuscript. Harris’ earlier book, Political Power in Birmingham, 1871-1921 (University of Tennessee Press, 1977), was the first scholarly book on Birmingham’s history and it is still indispensable for anyone wanting to understand the political dynamics of Birmingham’s early decades. Read more.
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