Alabama top stories in brief

• Alabama Department of Veterans Affairs Commissioner, Kent Davis, was removed from his position by Gov. Kay Ivey almost immediately after a meeting in which the State Board of Veterans Affairs held a tight vote choosing to keep him as commissioner until the end of the year. Ivey and Davis have clashed several times this year. In September, Davis agreed to resign at the end of the year, then, on Oct. 10, the board voted to ask Davis to reconsider his end of year resignation. Following that meeting, Scott Gedling, the board’s vice chair, wrote a letter claiming Davis had manipulated members of the board and said Davis should step down. Ivey then scheduled a special meeting of the board to remove Davis, which occurred this week. She made public a letter notifying Davis, which included the list of reasons she believed justified his removal. The vote to remove Davis narrowly failed, leading Ivey to use her executive authority to remove Davis from the position. Ivey wrote that she had “ample legal causes” to justify Davis’s removal and criticized the board for not removing Davis. For his part, Davis’s attorney, John Saxon, said that he was unsure Ivey had the legal authority to fire Davis, since he was hired by the board and reports to them. Brigadier General Jeffrey Newton was named as the interim commissioner by Ivey.

• Alabama’s State Department of Education has requested a $53 million increase in funding dedicated to school security, which is $51.4 million more than last year. The funding increase would cover the cost of implementing a bill passed into law this year, which places new security requirements on schools and authorizes the Board of Education to award grants to schools to help them implement these security measures. 

• Gov. Kay Ivey announced on Oct. 25 that Alabama would be deploying 125 members of the 152nd Military Police Company from Hartselle to the Mexican border. The 269 soldiers currently deployed by Alabama there will be recalled in phases. The 152nd will be deployed for approximately 400 days, according to Ivey. 

• A new $1 billion prison has reached almost 40% completion. Elmore Specialized Men’s Facility, set to open in 2026, is being constructed to be more like a college campus, rather than a standard prison. Sen. Clyde Chambliss, R-Prattville, who is also chairman of the prison oversight committee, said, “We’re building a hospital. We’re building a mental health facility. We’re building a prison. And a community college. All in the same spot.” Set to hold 4,000 beds, with 700 of them specifically allotted for inmates with medical issues, the prison’s 300-acre campus will include roughly 50 buildings intended for a variety of activities,  aimed at providing a rehabilitative approach, such as technical skills classes taught by Ingram State Technical College. This rehabilitative approach stems from a report filed by the Department of Justice in 2020 that documented the unsafe and often violent conditions in Alabama’s men’s prisons. A second prison, proposed to be built in Escambia County, is waiting on additional funding needed for construction after Elmore’s construction rates rose by $400 million.

• In the midst of increasingly low rates of granting parole to eligible inmates in Alabama, Alabama Board of Pardons and Paroles chair Leigh Gwathney received tough comments and questions at the most recent meeting of the Joint Legislative Prison Oversight Committee. The current average of granting parole across the board is about 20%. Clyde Chambliss, R-Prattville, delivered the bulk of criticism against Gwathney, referencing questions about the low percentages that had been given to Gwathney in January, questions that have remained unanswered. The questions primarily concerned the protocol the board creates to determine which cases get granted parole, a protocol that technically would grant parole to upward of 80% of monthly cases. Chambliss said in a statement, “You set the rules, the Board sets the rules, they are called parole guidelines. I am having a hard time understanding conformance to your own rules.” In the meeting, Chambliss requested that unanswered questions regarding the board’s protocol be answered at the end of November.

Our articles you might have missed

• “Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?” In the most recent edition of The Breathing Room, Hannah Irvin echoes Mary Oliver’s famous poem, “The Summer Day,” as she invites readers to consider what to do with their own wild and precious lives.

• Beneath our feet, an entire world exists for those willing to explore it. In his latest edition of The Longleaf Hiker, Xander Swain travels to Lost Creek Cave and relates his time spent there, explains why he loves caving and discusses the importance of protecting the cave ecosystem. 

Announcements 

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