Plenty of unfinished work in Montgomery as special session contemplated
Hundreds of proposed bills, including high priority prison and economic development proposals, died when the coronavirus outbreak upended the Alabama Legislature’s 2020 regular session. Now, when the House and Senate will return to Montgomery for a special session and what topics they’ll address are still up in the air. – AL Daily News
Cities struggle with funding as revenue drops off the board
Less than five months gone, and 2020 has seen Alabama stretched to its financial limit by coronavirus – at the city, county and state level. One casualty this past week was the City of Fairfield, which filed for bankruptcy Tuesday, citing millions of dollars in debt. Though Fairfield’s money troubles have been ongoing for several years, the filing was triggered by weeks of heavy expenses and little revenue during the virus shutdown. – AL.com
Glitches abound in state’s unemployment filing system
Some Alabama residents spent the holiday weekend struggling to claim their weekly unemployment benefits. The Alabama Department of Labor told local news outlets that about 53,000 people were blocked from filing the required weekly report telling state government that they still don’t have a job. Only then will another week’s worth of unemployment benefits will be issued. – AP
Alabama’s Dynetics is this close to building America’s next moon lander
When NASA named three finalists in April to compete to build America’s next Moon lander, they shared more than ideas NASA likes. Two of them – Blue Origin and SpaceX – are the most famous of the “New Space” generation of space companies getting a piece of the contract pie historically shared by Boeing, Lockheed Martin and other “legacy companies” in America’s space story. – AL.com
Contractor tied to two deaths in trench collapse already had 27 citations
The owner of the contracting company of which two workers were killed in a trench collapse in Mississippi earlier this month was previously issued 27 federal citations for safety violations. Shane Henderson was the president of the now-defunct Gilco Contracting, based in Tuscaloosa, when the Occupational Safety and Health Administration issued the citations in 2005 and 2008, The Commercial Dispatch reported Sunday. – AP
