Do Not Look To Alabama For Help

The AP is reporting on the next hurricane to hit the Gulf Coast:

Alabama has a message for its neighbors: Don’t count on us next time you need shelter from a storm. And it’s not because Louisiana evacuees made a mess last time they came.Gov. Bob Riley said Tuesday that Alabama will take fewer out-of-state evacuees into shelters this year, so that shelter space will remain available for Alabama residents. He said the state will be especially cautious about filling shelters if there’s a chance another hurricane could affect the Alabama coast.

More than 6,500 evacuees, mostly from Louisiana, filled 28 shelters at community colleges across Alabama over Labor Day weekend last year as Hurricane Gustav neared the Louisiana coast. Most came in buses, many from the New Orleans area.

Riley said the decision to limit the number of out-of-state evacuees in shelters was not related to complaints by some community college officials that school buildings used for shelters were left in disrepair after the evacuees returned home.

I was wondering how long it would take states to get around to this……after all the bad press that evacuees got after Katrina it was only a matter of time.

AL: Investigation Of State Workers Union

The board that oversees state employees voted Wednesday to request investigation of a pension deal between the Alabama State Employees Association and Nationwide Life Insurance Co.

The vote by the Alabama State Personnel Board followed a lawsuit filed by a pair of state employees against the association and Columbus, Ohio-based Nationwide.

The suit claims that the employees union agreed to a bad deal for state workers and received millions from Nationwide in return.

“I’m worried about the 11,000 state employees and how these funds have managed to be kept a secret,” said personnel board member John McMillan. “There’s just a very distinct line between right and wrong.”

McMillan said the investigations conducted by four agencies, including the attorney general’s office, could result in financial penalties or even criminal prosecution.

AL: Steel Mill Expansion

SSAB’s steel mill in Axis has beaten out the company’s mill in Iowa for a $460 million expansion that will create 180 new jobs, the company said Tuesday.

The Swedish company’s investment is the second largest announced in Mobile County in recent years, behind the $4.5 billion ThyssenKrupp AG steel plant in Calvert. Together, the plants could make Mobile a steel-industry center.

SSAB said it would begin construction in 2009 at the northern Mobile County mill and complete work in 2011. The company projected that new employees will make an average of $65,000 a year.

The profit outlook for steelmakers has darkened with the economy, but Britten said the spending shows SSAB’s confidence. “A company that commits this amount of money in this economic environment speaks a lot,” he said.

IPSCO spent $425 million to build the Axis mill, which opened in 2001, and added a $45 million heat-treatment unit in 2004. Adjusted for inflation, that total would be worth $525 million today.

AL: Baldwin Grad Rate

A majority of Baldwin County high schools produced more graduates, and their students scored higher on the graduation exam last year, than state averages, according to figures recently released by the Alabama State Department of Education.

Five out of seven of the county’s high schools posted graduation rates of more than 90 percent in 2008.

All seven showed improvement from 2007, according to state data.

Only one school, Baldwin County High, did not meet the state’s academic standards because of test scores. But even that school showed a 1 percent improvement in the number of students graduating.

Those figures are expected to drop drastically next year as the state plans to change its formula for calculating the graduation rate.

The new formula will put the county average at closer to 67 percent, according to a recent study by the Montgomery-based Voices for Alabama’s Children group, which used a nationally recognized formula.

AL: Mobile Bad For Kids

Mobile County ranks near the bottom, and Baldwin County is near the top in Alabama when it comes to overall child well-being, according to a new report released by Voices for Alabama’s Children.

Mobile County placed 52nd among the 67 counties in the state, while Baldwin County finished 12th.

Mobile was hindered by factors that included its lagging high-school graduation rate, high juvenile crime rate and the large number of children living in poverty and in single-parent homes

The poverty rate for children in Mobile County is 31 percent, compared to 19 percent in Baldwin.

Children who grow up in poverty are prone to difficult experiences, the report emphasized: They generally have less access to health care, Tilly said, and are more likely to drop out of school and land in the juvenile justice system and possibly jail.

The graduation rate in Mobile County’s public schools is 59 percent, which is 6 percentage points lower than the state average. Baldwin’s graduation rate is 67 percent.

Mobile County had twice as many juveniles arrested for violent crimes as the state average. Last year, 295 out of every 100,000 juveniles were arrested for violent crimes, compared to 94 in Baldwin County.

AL: Sex Charges

The former America’s Junior Miss choreographer who was accused of giving drugs and alcohol to teenage girls he taught at his Florida dance studio, then having sex with them pleaded guilty to all charges today. George Fagan pleaded guilty to one charge of lewd and lascivious behavior and two charges of unlawful sexual activity with a minor, said Chris White, the chief of operations for the Seminole County office of the Florida State Attorney’s Office.

Investigators have said there was never any indication that Fagan did anything wrong while working in Mobile with America’s Junior Miss contestants.

Fagan reached a deal with prosecutors that would put him in jail for 6½ years, followed by four years probation,

AL: Most Doubts About Bailout

Many Alabamians dislike the financial bailout recently signed into law, and an even larger number express doubts that it will work, the results of a new Press-Register/University of South Alabama poll suggest.

Slightly more than half of the 411 people surveyed statewide between Monday and Thursday said they opposed the plan, which will allow the government to spend up to $700 billion in taxpayer money to buy distressed assets from banks and other financial institutions.

Some six out of 10 of those polled were “not very confident” or “not confident at all” that the rescue will succeed.

Almost 90 percent rated the economy as at least fairly bad; four out of 10 said their personal financial situation had deteriorated in the past year.

In a similar statewide survey in late 2004, roughly two out of 10 said their personal circumstances had worsened, while 60 percent labeled the economy’s condition as at least fairly good.

AL: No Funds For Mobile County

That’s the frustrated refrain sounded by Alabama activists after Congress recently approved $6.5 billion for fresh disaster needs in other states, but nothing more for areas of Mobile County still recovering from Hurricane Katrina.

The Appleseed center is one of several groups lobbying for the federal money. It would help resi dents of the Coden community and other unincorporated areas to repair and rebuild homes whacked by Katrina more than three years ago. While federal officials have already allocated tens of millions of dollars for housing and other building needs, another $100 million or so is required, according to Gov. Bob Riley’s administration, which puts the number of eligible applicants at around 1,200.

But efforts to nail down more money have so far fallen short, even though almost half of Alabama’s nine-man congressional delegation sits on the appropriations committees that drive the money train.

Another possible stumbling block is that Mobile County hasn’t done much with the housing aid it already has received. As of the end of last month, the county had spent less than $2.2 million of the $17 million in available federal funding, according to numbers provided by local housing officials. They have attributed the delays to problems with house titles, asbestos and other issues.

Even if that money were all spent, however, it would only cover 10 percent to 15 percent of the families in need, said Jim Fuller, president of the South Bay Communities Alliance, which represents areas in south Mobile County.

AL: Annexation A Good Thing?

To answer that question–in my area of MS it was not all it was cracked up to be.  I wish my fellow Gulf Coastians good luck with this one.

Two out of four areas outside Mobile voted to annex into the city Tuesday.

The city claimed victories in a section of Theodore, south of the city’s boundaries, and in the Windmill Place subdivision, just west of Cody Road.

Two other areas, one along Moffett Road and another that included two subdivisions on Snow Road, voted against joining the city.

Tuesday’s balloting marked Mobile’s third major annexation effort in the past 13 months.

In September 2007, Mobile Terrace residents voted to bring themselves and retail-heavy stretches of Airport Boulevard and Schillinger Road into the city.

And in January, the Mobile Regional Airport joined the city.

In Theodore, sales taxes at stores will increase from 7.5 percent to 9 percent. There are no stores in Windmill Place.

Property taxes in both areas will rise once a five-year grace period ends.

Gulf South: Hospitals Are The Worse

The South is the worst place to live if you’re seriously ill, according to a new report that graded each U.S. state for residents’ access to palliative care, a fairly new specialty that focuses on patients’ quality-of-life issues rather than elusive cures for diseases.

The report, organized by the Center to Advance Palliative Care and National Palliative Care Research Center in New York, evaluated Americans’ access to hospitals that offer this type of care among patients with such serious and chronic illnesses as heart disease, liver and kidney failure and Alzheimer’s. (Hospice care is palliative care applied to people at the end of life.)

The 10 worst states, from worst ascending to better: Mississippi, Alabama, Oklahoma, Nevada, Wyoming, Louisiana, South Carolina, Texas, New Mexico, Kentucky.

In 2008, 90 million Americans are living with serious illnesses such as cancer, heart disease, diabetes, Parkinson’s, stroke and Alzheimer’s. As baby boomers age, this number will more than double over the next 25 years.