http://www.al.com/opinion/mobileregister/index.ssf?/base/opinion/113429626840310.xml&coll=3&thispage=1 – Alabama Roadbuilders exec Billy Norrell’s commentary on the need for additional gasoline taxes.
http://www.decaturdaily.com/decaturdaily/news/051211/siegelman.shtml - Prosecutors says case against Siegelman difficult to prove; money allegedly went to campaign coffers, not to benefit Siegelman personally.
http://www.gadsdentimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20051211/NEWS/512110333/1016/NEWS01 - DOT makes case for gasoline increase.
http://www.gadsdentimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20051211/NEWS/512110337/1050/OPINION01 - Gadsden Times editorial on efforts of Montgomery City Council committee to craft landlord tenant protections may pave the way for state to take action.
http://www.montgomeryadvertiser.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20051211/OPINION01/512110301/1012/OPINION - Editorial outlines barriers, including costs, of access to public records.
http://www.tuscaloosanews.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20051211/NEWS/512110345/1013/EDITORIAL2 - Dana Beyerle’s weekly political column for the NYTimes regional papers.
FROM THE ANNISTON STAR:
The following article appeared originally last week in the Montgomery Advertiser. It appeared as an AP story in today’s papers in Tuscaloosa, Anniston, Gadsden, and Florence,
Lack of state landlord law leaves tenants unprotected
By Sebastian Kitchen
Associated Press
12-11-2005
MONTGOMERY — When someone used Lottie Manner’s bathroom upstairs, water gushed through the ceiling and drenched her living room below.
Flush the toilet or unplug the tub, and water would come pouring down. All the water left mold and a stench.
“When you drain the tub, it pours down like it is raining down here in my living room,” said Manner, who moved from Ohio earlier this year. “They sent somebody out here to look at it, but they didn’t do anything.”
Her property management company, the J.M. Harrison Agency, knew about the problems and in a letter, the agency said it tried to fix them.
But it really didn’t have to because there’s no state landlord-tenant law requiring it to.
Alabama and nearby Arkansas are the only states that don’t have landlord-tenant laws. The other 48 states protect renters’ rights and about half the states share the same law, according to Robert McCurley of the Alabama Law Institute, a nonpartisan agency that drafts major bills.
The institute drafted the one landlord-tenant bill — dozens have been introduced over the years — that made it out of a Senate committee last year. That sole survivor was never voted on by the full Senate.
While most legislators agree on the need for a landlord-tenant law, they can’t settle on how to balance the rights of the owner and renter.
“Landlords shouldn’t be afraid of this legislation,” said John Pickens of the Alabama Appleseed Center for Law & Justice, which with Alabama Arise, Legal Services of Alabama and the Southern Poverty Law Center have been vocal in supporting a bill.
“If they take care of the premises and do what’s right, there is nothing to be feared in this legislation,” said Pickens, the center’s executive director.
Greg Masood of the Alabama Association of Realtors countered that requirements on property managers would increase the cost of business and mean higher rents.
“It is a perfectly noble goal to want to improve conditions for those who live in rental property, but at the same time some of the bills to us seem to impact those the most who can afford to pay the least,” he said.
Rebekah Young of the Southern Poverty Law Center contended legislators don’t pass a landlord-tenant law because it goes against their financial interest.
In 2002, almost 42 percent of Alabama state legislators disclosed that they owned or had interest in rental property, according to the Center for Public Integrity.
More legislators had “outside ties,” a personal or professional link, to rental property than other category. About 17.5 percent listed real estate.
Alabama’s inaction spurred Montgomery to study enacting a landlord-tenant ordinance. The city has nearly 30,000 rental units. Of those, 21,000 are duplexes or apartments, and 9,000 are houses.
“It’s the Legislature’s fault for not addressing the issue,” said Young, who has been working with the council members to come up with a proposal. “What else are municipalities supposed to do? Their only recourse is to draft ordinances.”
Spearheading the city’s effort is Councilwoman Janet May. She wants an inventory and regular inspections of rental units, and she wants landlords to register with or be licensed by the city.
Real estate agent Sandra Nickel liked the idea of inspecting a unit when the tenant changes, something required in other communities.
“If we had such a thing,” Nickel said, “then I think most of our other issues would take care of themselves.”
May expects the planning, development and transportation standing committee, which she chairs, to forward a proposal to the full council early next year.
“We need to take it and digest it,” she said. “I don’t want to rush.”
Council President Charles Jinright agreed with May about the complexity of the issue. Jinright said he wants to do his own research before making a decision.
Mayor Bobby Bright, though, opposes a landlord-tenant ordinance because it’d cost millions of dollars and would leave the city playing referee between renter and property owner.
“We can’t afford to do what some organizations want us to do to protect the poor,” he said.
Bright conceded there might be a need for improving existing housing codes but doing so simply wouldn’t do any good because the city doesn’t have the manpower to enforce them.
Unless the city or the state acts, tenants such as Manner simply have to put up with the waterworks in their living rooms — or move.
Manner decided to move. J.M. Harrison didn’t return repeated telephone calls for comment. In October, the agency’s Bobby Belcher wrote Manner that a man in her apartment kept workers from making repairs.
Manner denied the accusations.
Belcher also wrote “if you are not there, we will assume you have taken care of these problems yourself.”
The experience left Manner bitter and convinced her of the need for a landlord-tenant law.
“Alabama is so far behind everything and everybody,” Manner said. “It is just a shame.”
———
Calhoun County’s ‘executioner’ busy during holiday season
By Jenny Bone Miller
Star Staff Writer
12-11-2005
Deputy Tomas Hall hasn’t thrown any Christmas trees to the curb this year.
“But that could happen,” Hall acknowledges. “I’ve had to throw decorated trees with the presents under them out three times before.”
Hall, a grandfather with a kind smile, is known as “the executioner,” because he physically ejects people when the court orders a writ of execution, evicting them from their homes.
Evictions in the county typically triple in December.
The reason for that is unclear. It could be that landlords are tired of letting tenants slide on their rents and want to get their books in order at the end of the year, as District Judge Larry Warren theorizes. Or it could be that people are spending their money on Christmas presents instead of rent, as one landlord said.
Last year, there were about 1,200 evictions in the county. Some of those tenants moved out before Hall knocked on their doors.
“They have plenty of notice,” Hall said. “If they don’t get out, we set them out.”
Tenants get three eviction notices and have a total of 27 days to move out before the Sheriff’s Office moves anything. Hall also calls several times to warn them.
“A lot of people think they can live where they’re at and not have to pay,” said a landlord of several properties who did not wish to be identified. “But if you ain’t paying, you ain’t staying.”
Friday morning, Hall evicted a man who had been renting business space for a car dealership on the Bynum-Leatherwood Road in Anniston. The tenant was not there, so the owners of the property called a locksmith. The tenant had not paid his $550 rent in three months.
A two-toned El Camino on blocks, a rust-coated once-white El Dorado, and a Honda Civic from the 80s with no headlights were among the cars featured on the weedy lot.
“All the neighbors were complaining about how he keeps the place,” said Troy Foster, who works for the owners of the property. “I don’t blame them. I wouldn’t want to look out my window all day and see this.”
Muscular county jail inmates in their early 20s who participate in a work-release program accompanied Hall in his squad car. They would move the contents of the office, a freestanding tin building, to a curb beside the road. That property will be classified as abandoned.
An old man in a mesh hat stopped to peer at some of the chairs, apparently shopping, before the inmates were even finished with their work.
The work took hours. Eighteen dusty batteries were stacked inside the office. Auto parts, tires, loose papers, a piece of a tow truck, dirty toys and empty cans covered the floor so that it was not visible.
Friday’s eviction was one of four Hall performed last week. That’s a typical workload, he said.
“What makes this job easy for me is to be understanding to people,” Hall said. “I believe in the golden rule, treating people how I’d want to be treated if the situation was reversed.”
“I know it’s a bad situation, but we all have problems, and this is not something that you can’t overcome,” he said in his calm way as he would to an evictee, making lots of eye contact.
He said he sometimes puts his arm around the tenants if they want to talk.
If children are present, he sometimes asks parents if he can give them the stuffed animals he keeps in the back of his car.
A few times, he has had to be tough. One young man who was being evicted from his elderly father’s house threatened Hall and set his father’s house on fire.
Another man pointed a shotgun at Hall because he did not want him to repossess his pickup. Seven officers arrived as backup and piled onto the man (Hall, though shaken, remembered to take the pickup when it was all over).
The majority of evictees are people who have had medical problems and bills or people who have lost their jobs, said Judge Warren, who has handled the county’s civil eviction cases for 19 years.
“We usually have a big bump in cases in December,” he said. The court will not serve writs of execution during the week of Christmas.
Because bankruptcy laws became stricter on Oct. 1, the number of people filing for bankruptcy increased. Since they are protected from prosecution after they file for bankruptcy, many stopped paying rent. Now they’re facing eviction.
In Alabama, the only state laws governing the landlord-tenant relationship are those concerning evictions — tenants have no rights. If the heat breaks in an apartment in the dead of winter, for instance, a renter is still obligated to pay rent, even if the dwelling is uninhabitable.
Some evictions occur after a renter refuses to pay rent on a faulty apartment, said Ron Gilbert, policy analyst with the Alabama Arise Foundation in Montgomery. His organization supports legislation that would give tenants stronger rights.
The mentions of Hall on police scanners continue to increase. A resident listening to the police scanner called the Sheriff’s Office a few months ago, disturbed.
“That guy called us up and said, ‘What are these people doing that’s so bad?’” Chief Deputy Matthew Wade said. “He said, ‘ya’ll must be killing three or four people a week. That guy, the executioner, I don’t know how he lives with himself.’”
When Hall heard about the call he threw his head back and laughed.
“I’ve heard that several times. People will be concerned,” he said. “They just don’t understand the court’s terminology.”
