Thursday 5/8/2008 DAILY NEWS DIGEST

Birmingham News – House committee approves Senate-passed measure that would restrict access to public benefits for undocumented immigrants over 18 years old.

Mobile Press-Register – Senate-passed ban on smoking survives close committee vote, moves to House for final consideration.

Birmingham News – The Birmingham News reviews the state’s two operating budgets.

Huntsville Times – Legislature considering bill that would more than double fund that Huntsville can leverage through Tax Increment Financing districts; TIF may play large role in efforts to lure VW facility to North Alabama.

Huntsville Times – Huntsville facing budget shortfall due to falling sales tax revenues, higher energy prices.

Huntsville Times – The Huntsville Times urges legislature to approve Education budget, avoid special session.

Tuscaloosa News – Documents reveal that a previously undisclosed probe of Siegelman prosecution was halted by federal official.

Tuscaloosa News – AEA says it will drop legislative battle to overturn ban on “double-dipping,” but will pursue court challenge of policy.

Tuscaloosa News – Summary of yesterday’s legislative activity.

Tuscaloosa News – U.S. Justice Department files suit against Satsuma alleging discrimination in housing for persons with mental disabilities.

Tuscaloosa News – Rep. Marcel Black (D-Tuscumbia) wants House Judiciary Committee to study issue of where convicted sex offenders can legally live.

Anniston Star – The Anniston Star questions apparent priorities of Alabama’s state senators following report that Senate approved resolution backed by John Birch Society.

Anniston Star – The Anniston Star compares the legislature’s refusal to consider constitutional convention to Charles Dickens character “so starved for nutrition that he begs for more from a pot of unfulfilling gruel.”

Times Daily – The Times Daily comments on the failure of the legislature to approve bill that would have ended ban on “double-dipping.”

Times-Journal – Sen. Lowell Barron (D-Fyffe) blames GOP for failure of constitutional amendment to borrow $1 billion for road construction program.

FROM TODAY’S ANNISTON STAR:

Alabama House panel urges Bush to open travel to Cuba

MONTGOMERY — A House committee wants the federal government to end its nearly 50-year-old embargo on trade and travel restrictions to Cuba.

With an eye toward a market ripe for Alabama poultry and American cruise ships, the House Tourism and Travel Committee passed a resolution Wednesday urging the Bush administration and the state’s congressional delegation to remove restrictions they see as “outdated and unnecessary.”

Committee Chairman Rep. Johnny Mack Marrow, D-Red Bay, said the United States trades and travels with countries such as China, Japan, and Germany—all countries once considered enemies.

“We have never had a war with Cuba, but trade and travel is still prohibited,” he said.

Of the limited trade that the United States does have with Cuba, Agriculture and Industries Commissioner Ron Sparks said Alabama exports more goods than any other state.

More than 50 percent of the poultry and 90 percent of the utility poles that are exported to Cuba come from Alabama, representing a $350 million economic impact, he said.

“There is opportunity there, and we need to change this embargo,” Sparks said. “If we don’t lift the embargo in my lifetime, we need to at least lift the travel restrictions.”

Restrictions on tourism and trade with Cuba have been in place since the United States broke off diplomatic relations with the Caribbean country in 1961.

The only U.S. citizens who can travel to the country with special visas are students, professors, architects, historians, physicians, lawyers and journalists.

But that hasn’t stopped the Communist country from becoming a popular vacation spot for European and Asian countries and Canada.

Since 1990, Cuba has worked its way to the eighth most popular North American and Caribbean destination for tourists.

Alabama’s tourism industry wants to stake its claim on some of that popularity by establishing the first U.S. cruise route to Cuba.

Leon Maisel, president and CEO of the Mobile Bay Convention and Visitors Bureau, said currently 120,000 people come into Mobile to cruise, but that number could grow exponentially if people could cruise to Cuba.

Mobile and Havana are sister cities, and are only a day’s boat ride from each other, making them an appealing and closer option than cruising out of Florida.

Patti Culp, executive director of the Alabama Travel Council, said if cruising can lure people to Alabama, the state will use its attractions to entertain them for a while before they sail away.

“We hope to convince them to cruise, but we also want to convince them to come through and see Alabama,” she said.

Committee member Rep. Lea Fite, D-Jacksonville, said while increasing cruise traffic might not benefit Calhoun County directly, it could make an impact.

“People will be coming down I-65 and spending dollars and that benefits the entire state,” he said. “Everybody else can trade with and go to Cuba except us and we just need to go ahead and call the embargo off.”

Fite said he suspects that any move to lift the restrictions would come after a new president is elected, and then the exposure to a free-market society will make Cubans hungry for the same freedoms Americans have.

“I think everybody is concerned about the south Florida vote, and nobody wants to rock the boat,” he said. “Hopefully after the election, we will have someone with some foresight to try something different.”