What's going on in Alabama
Welcome back. Let's look ahead to the 2024 Alabama legislative session and back with our weekly Week in Review Quiz near the bottom. Ike Morgan |
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Hang on to your seats and wallets: The annual Alabama state legislative session kicks off at high noon Tuesday. As usual, Gov. Kay Ivey is expected to give her State of the State speech Tuesday evening. Look for the governor to spend some time laying out her plan for school choice. That and the absentee voting process are two of the issues expected to be front and center in the coming weeks, reports AL.com's Mike Cason. The school-choice debate will feature education-savings accounts, or ESAs. The idea there is that parents could take money that would've been spent on their child at their school, have it deposited into their ESA, and spend it instead at a private school or on homeschooling. There was legislation introduced last year around ESAs that didn't get any momentum at the Capitol. That probably won't be the case this time around with the governor and Republican leadership behind it. Democrats will be in opposition, preferring to see more money spent in the public schools where those students would be without the ESA option. In the absentee-voting debate, look for Republicans to try to narrow the circumstances in which a third party might help a voter receive, fill out or turn in an absentee ballot. Democrats will oppose it as right and left take their usual positions of concern regarding voter fraud vs. voter suppression, respectively. |
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Last week we had a mayor suspending a police chief for the third time. Now we have a mayor suing a sheriff. AL.com's Joseph D. Bryant reports that Birmingham Mayor Randall Woodfin said the city's suing over the right to use the county jail. The mayor has claimed before that the county was overcharging the city to house inmates. Now he's suing Sheriff Mark Pettway, technically, although he's butting heads with the county commission and Commission President Jimmie Stephens over the issue. The county has typically taken in the city's felony inmates. And beginning Jan. 1, for a while it took on misdemeanor inmates as well. But Woodfin said negotiations have stalled over the price the city should pay the county. |
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Whatcha gonna do when the pond goes dry? |
Now here's a sad story. It's sad in general but especially with Mardi Gras season underway along the Gulf Coast. AL.com's Dennis Pillion reports that crawdad harvests are way down this year. Now, I realize some folks are already thrown by the vocabulary, so let me clarify: For the purposes of this newsletter, if it's being cooked or it's on the plate, it's crawfish. If they're in the mud or they're being dug or sifted out of the mud, they're crawdads. Afterward, we'll all go back to our fancy friends and discuss the price of crayfish. But whatever you call them, there aren't as many many of them coming out of south Louisiana this year. An extension agent with the LSU AgCenter said December's production was likely less than 5% of what might be considered normal. (That doesn't mean it's that low elsewhere or that the next couple months won't bring the numbers back up.) The agent, Mark Shirley, blames the record drought Louisiana had in the summer and fall. During a drought, a crawdad will dig deeper to stay alive in moist dirt, like an earthworm does. But the record drought dried out the earth well beneath dry ponds, killing more crawdads (just like the folks song says). What does that mean to us in Alabama? There will be a lower supply of crawfish, meaning higher prices if you can find them. So when you go to order a plate of steamed crawfish and next to it on the menu it says "market price," make sure you inquire before you order. |
A couple of music acts represented the state at Sunday night's Grammy Awards, reports AL.com's Mary Colurso. Singer-songwriter Jason Isbell and his band, the 400 Unit, won the Grammy for Best Americana Album for "Weathervanes," and Isbell also won the Grammy for Best American Roots Song for writing "Cast Iron Skillet." The Blind Boys of Alabama's "Echoes of the South" won Best Roots Gospel Album. Lifetime, that makes six Grammys each for Isbell and The Blind Boys. |
In 1934, baseball legend Hank Aaron of Mobile. In 1950, Auburn All-America wide receiver Terry Beasley of Montgomery. |
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