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Oct 29, 2024 | 
altoday.com | Paul DeMarco |Apryl Marie Fogel
Last Wednesday, October 23, through Thursday, October 24, the Alabama Forestry Association (AFA), the Alabama Forestry Commission (AFC), the Alabama Department of Conservation and Natural Resources (DCNR), and the Alabama Association of Resource Conservation & Development Councils (RC&D) hosted around 40 women in government to participate in outdoor events in Baldwin County.
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Oct 28, 2024 | 
altoday.com | Apryl Marie Fogel |Bethany Blankley |Paul DeMarco
Last Monday, the City of Hoover held its regularly scheduled city council meeting, during which the city’s chief financial officer, Jennifer Cornett, spoke. Ordinarily, the CFO would speak when presenting budget updates, during occasional budget amendments (Hoover has had many this year), and giving general operations information. However, Cornett’s first year has been anything but ordinary.
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Oct 15, 2024 | 
altoday.com | Bethany Blankley |Apryl Marie Fogel |Paul DeMarco
Kay Ivey has joined a group of twenty-four additional Republican governors who want to know how many illegal foreign nationals have been flown into their states by a Biden-Harris administration plan they argue is burdening their residents and creating an unsafe environment. Those being flown in have arrived through more than a dozen parole programs created by U.S. Department of Homeland Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas.
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Oct 15, 2024 | 
altoday.com | Apryl Marie Fogel |Paul DeMarco
Last Monday, Councilman Derek Murphy took a moment to address an issue that city council President John Lyda and Mayor Frank Brocato have ignored for months. The problem, which Alabama Today first brought to light on July 22, 2024, centers around who is responsible for the legal fees associated with the Certificate of Need the city sought.
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Oct 11, 2024 | 
altoday.com | Paul DeMarco |Apryl Marie Fogel
The terrible storms that tore through the Southeast last week have left devastating results in parts of Florida, Georgia, South Carolina, Tennessee and North Carolina. The loss of life, injuries, and property damages make hurricane Helene one of the worst in the Nation’s history. Alabama has had its fair share of terrible storms in its history.
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Sep 16, 2024 | 
altoday.com | Apryl Marie Fogel |Paul DeMarco
Hoover’s new CFO, Jennifer Cornett, has had a wild ride since beginning earlier this year. She came out of the gate strong, insisting she would clean things up and make city finances more transparent. Unfortunately, she had to get through a mess she inherited before she got to that. It is a mess that city leadership, Mayor Frank Brocato and Council Council President John Lyda created or allowed to continue and have since tried to pin on staff hand-picked, hired, and often promoted by Brocato.
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Sep 16, 2024 | 
altoday.com | Paul DeMarco |Apryl Marie Fogel
Since the pandemic, the Alabama economy has had its ups and downs. However, the good news is that the business climate in Alabama has outperformed other states. One sector of the Alabama business community that has really increased is the construction industry. A recent study by the Associated Builders and Contractors of Alabama showed that between 2015 to 2021 there was a 97 percent increase in commercial construction output to the tune of $9.4 billion.
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Aug 27, 2024 | 
altoday.com | Apryl Marie Fogel |Daniel Sutter
In a dizzying three months, Alabama Today has reported on the curious case of delayed annual audits and the secret forensic audit being done in the most roundabout way using the least transparent process possible. The firm brought in was Kroll Analytics, which the City Attorney’s law firm seemingly hired to evade public record laws so that the city could claim privileged communication even when there wasn’t. We still need answers on the funding or cost of the report.
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Aug 19, 2024 | 
altoday.com | Apryl Marie Fogel |Daniel Sutter |Steve Flowers
For months, the City of Hoover has attempted to hide the details of its ongoing forensic audit while evading questions about its annual audit. At the August 05, 2024 city council meeting, Mayor Frank Brocato read a statement about the status of the two audits. The forensic audit was first reported only after it came up during an unrelated hearing.
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Aug 18, 2024 | 
altoday.com | Daniel Sutter |Steve Flowers |Apryl Marie Fogel
Inflation is a top concern of voters. Yet economists generally argue that the costs of inflation are exaggerated. Can we reconcile these views? To begin, inflation as measured by the Consumer Price Index (CPI) has fallen significantly since hitting 9.1 percent in June 2022. Inflation was 7 percent for all of 2022 but only 2.9 percent in July. Remember also that inflation is the rate of change in prices. A decline in inflation means that prices are increasing slower.