Alabama top stories in brief

• The Alabama Department of Transportation will purchase the Foley Beach Express bridge from the Baldwin County Bridge Company for $57 million and remove tolls for drivers on the bridge. The closing date has not yet been announced but is expected to be in May. Tolls will end when the purchase is finalized. ALDOT will also construct a second bridge over the Intracoastal Waterway which is expected to be finished in 2026. Once completed, the new bridge and the Foley Beach Express bridge will become one-way, with the new Intracoastal bridge carrying traffic southbound and the Foley Beach Express bridge carrying traffic northbound. 

• HB415, a bill that repeals the Distressed Institutions of Higher Education Revolving Loan Program, is moving to the full Alabama House of Representatives. The program was initially created and passed in 2023 to financially support Birmingham-Southern College. However, State Treasurer Young Boozer denied funding from the program citing concerns over Birmingham-Southern’s ability to repay the potential loan. An attempt was made to replace Boozer as the administrator of the program but never made it out of a House committee. Now, if passed by the House and Senate and signed by Gov. Kay Ivey, HB415 would transfer all money from the program fund back to the Education Trust Fund within 30 days of passing. 

• The Mercedes-Benz plant in Vance, Alabama will see a United Auto Workers union vote starting on May 13 and ending on May 17. According to the National Labor Relations Board, the election will see 5,200 workers eligible to vote. Earlier in the year, the UAW announced they would move to file an election when 70% of workers signed a petition for unionization.The Vance plant isn’t the only auto-manufacturing plant seeing union elections in the southeast. A Volkswagen plant voted to join the UAW in Chattanooga, Tennessee last Friday, April 19. Union efforts have seen opposition by Gov. Kay Ivey and other governors in the south who say unions will cause job cuts and economic losses. 

• The Alabama House of Representatives approved a $9.35 billion Education Trust Fund budget package last week. If approved by the Senate, the budget would be an increase of $550 million from last year, and would include a 2% increase in pay for education employees. 

• In 2017, a bill was passed to end judges’ ability to override a Jury’s decision to sentence a person to life in prison with the death penalty. A bill to retroactively apply that law to those who experienced judicial override prior to the law change was rejected by the Alabama House Judiciary Committee. The bill, HB27, was sponsored by Rep. Chris England, D-Tuscaloosa, and would have impacted 33 people currently on death row. 

• The Alabama Senate approved SB270 last week, which would set stricter rules for how government organizations handle open record requests from the public. According to the non-profit group, Muckrock, agencies in Alabama take an average of 188 days to respond to a request. The new law would require agencies to acknowledge requests within 10 days and to give a response to requests within 15 days of when they acknowledged receiving it. Requests that are deemed to “take more than eight hours of staff time to process” by the agency can require fees and have an extended timeline of up to 180 days before legal action can be taken. The bill states that all fees must be reasonable, but does not include any specific amount. The bill does not increase the records that the public can see. The bill’s author, Sen. Arthur Orr, R-Decatur, clarified when asked that the bill did not include body cameras and would not force police departments to provide access to body cam footage. 

Our articles you might have missed

• In The Longleaf Hiker this month, Xander Swain explores Little River Canyon with friends and reflects on the importance of preserving history in addition to protecting ecological sites. 

• Check out our latest feature, which focuses on “StarFell” a comic series by Mike Uhlir that takes place in a fictional town based off Wetumpka, Alabama. 

• In the latest edition of The Breathing Room, Hannah Irvin explains why she dislikes the phrase, “you can do anything you set your mind to” and proposes an alternative.