Congratulations to everyone who gets President’s day off, and condolences to all of you who only just realized that today is a holiday for some people. 

Alabama top stories in brief

• A Spire customer was scammed into making a payment to a man who showed up at her door claiming to be a Spire representative. The man told her that if she didn’t make an immediate payment, he would shut off her gas. The woman did so, but later contacted Spire, who confirmed that the man was not one of their representatives. A Spire representative told WBRC that none of their employees would ever threaten to shut off gas without payment, and that if there was any doubt about someone’s identity, customers could ask to see the employee’s Spire badge or call Spire for confirmation. 

• A new bill pre-filed by Rep. Reed Ingram, R-Montgomery, would increase fines and jail time for panhandlers. Currently, the penalty for loitering is a $200 fine or 30 days in jail. The new bill would raise the penalty to a $500 fine or 3 months in jail. The first reading for this bill is scheduled for March 7. 

• The Alabama Department of Transportation is pushing for stricter rules around using phones while driving. Currently, texting while driving is illegal in Alabama, but a new bill set to come before legislators in March would require all phone use while driving to be hands free. A similar bill was proposed during last year’s legislative session, but failed to pass by three votes. 

• Two members of the Tennessee National Guard lost their lives when their Black Hawk helicopter crashed in Madison County Alabama, near the unincorporated community of Harvest. “Please join us in lifting their families up in prayer and support during this time of unspeakable grief,” said Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee. 

• The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency recently announced that it would be dedicating $52.6 million in funding to assist local Alabama water systems in removing chemical contaminants from drinking water. 

• A new clinic specializing in treating ALS recently opened at the University of Alabama at Birmingham. The clinic will allow those with ALS to see eight specialists in a single visit, which the clinic says will allow for more comprehensive care for each individual patient. 

Views differ on recent mass release of incarcerated individuals from ADOC

The recent early release of a large number of incarcerated individuals has sparked a variety of responses from activists and public officials in Alabama. 

The incarcerated individuals were released from the Alabama Department of Corrections due to a law passed in 2021, allowing for the early release of certain incarcerated individuals, with the requirement that they continue to be monitored electronically by the Board of Pardons and Paroles until the time when their sentence would have expired. 

This law was actually an expansion of a 2015 law, which only applied to those incarcerated after 2015. The 2021 bill simply extended the 2015 law to apply to all incarcerated individuals. Part of the purpose of the bill was to help ADOC deal with its issues of overcrowding in prisons, something that has gained more attention since the U.S. Department of Justice filed a lawsuit against the state for unsafe conditions in their prisons. 

Those impacted by this new law are being released three to twelve months earlier than they would have been otherwise. For many of them, they would have been released within weeks regardless. 

In response to the release, Alabama Attorney General Steve Marshall filed a lawsuit attempting to delay the release. The suit was dismissed by a Montgomery circuit judge. Marshall has been vocal in his disagreement with the release.

“Though we do not yet know what the full cost of this debacle will be in terms of lives lost, destroyed, and upended, the price of refusing to change course now is certain to be high—and will be paid again and again with every month that these releases continue,” said Marshall in an opinion published in Alabama Daily News on Feb. 15.

“People are released from these prisons all the time,” said Carla Crowder of Alabama Appleseed in an article published in Alabama Daily News the same day. 

In her article, Crowder argued that supporting those who got out of prison would be more beneficial to public safety. She points out that $10 and a bus pass is the current aid provided by Alabama to those leaving the prison system, and argues that it is inadequate for re-entering people into society. 

Our articles you might have missed

Last week’s Alabama Roundup focused on some of the criticism that the Alabama Department of Environmental Management has received due to the landfill fire near Moody Alabama.