Alabama editorial roundup

Recent editorials from Alabama newspapers:

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Oct. 21

The Gadsden Times on Gov. Kay Ivey’s health becoming a campaign issue:

Kay Ivey turned 74 on Oct. 15. We’ve mentioned that fact more than once in discussing Alabama’s governor and her bid for a full term of her own. (She’s the incumbent because, as lieutenant governor, she replaced Robert Bentley after he resigned in disgrace in April 2017.)

We’re not practicing age discrimination by doing so. The current president of the United States is only two years younger than Ivey, (and) some of the Democrats who loom as possible opponents to his re-election are in their 70s …

Ivey’s age - and health - blew up as a campaign issue last week when former Alabama Law Enforcement Agency Secretary Spencer Collier claimed she suffered stroke-like symptoms - allegedly was incoherent - during a 2015 visit to Colorado, and that her chief of staff ordered the state trooper traveling with her to keep mum about the incident to his superiors. The trooper, according to Collier, told his supervisor that Ivey suffered a transient ischemic attack, a temporary blockage of blood flow to the brain commonly called a mini-stroke. Collier claimed Ivey later asked that the trooper be reassigned.

Ivey denied the allegation, saying it was nothing more than Colorado’s high altitude not agreeing with her, and produced a letter from her doctor saying the tests done on her at a Denver hospital were negative and that she’s at low risk for a cardiovascular event.

Ivey’s Democratic opponent, Tuscaloosa Mayor Walt Maddox, has seized on this as he struggles to gain traction with the election approaching. Maddox already has touted his relative youth - he’s 45 - in campaign advertisements, and on Oct. 18 he held a press conference demanding that Ivey provide further answers to Collier’s allegations and calling this a cover-up and an example of corruption in state government.

Ivey has refused to debate Maddox and has waged a carefully managed campaign without a lot of heavy lifting. That’s why Collier’s allegations - he’s volunteered to take a lie detector test - are getting so much attention.

Ivey’s supporters will say this is just politics and a desperate attempt by Democrats to spring an “October surprise” in the election.

We’ll point out that Collier is a Republican who spent eight years as a state legislator. He says his only reason for chiming in is over the alleged attempts to keep Ivey’s trooper escort silent.

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An NBC poll released earlier this month found Ivey with a 25-point lead over Maddox, 51 percent to 26 percent, with 22 percent undecided. Of course Maddox is trying to swing those undecideds and possibly turn loose a few Republican votes to make this a competitive race.

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Still, we imagine Ivey’s supporters might like just a bit of reassurance. Four years is a long time.

Online: http://www.gadsdentimes.com/

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Oct. 21

TimesDaily of Florence on flu season:

Roughly 36,000 people die and more than 200,000 are hospitalized each year because of the flu, according to Harvard Medical School, and people can spread the flu to others even if they don’t feel sick. Between 20 percent and 30 percent of people carrying the influenza virus have no symptoms.

That is why everyone who can should get immunized each year with the flu vaccine, to protect not only themselves but others, including those who, for various reasons, can’t get immunized.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, everyone 6 months of age and older should get a flu vaccine every season. That goes especially for children, the elderly and people with weakened immune systems.

Now is the best time to get vaccinated, before flu season arrives in earnest. Currently, the CDC is not receiving reports of flu activity in Alabama, but there are reports next door in Georgia and Florida.

“We recommend people get vaccinated early in the season because we did have deaths associated with the flu last year,” said Dr. Burnestine Taylor of the Alabama Department of Public Health in Montgomery.

The reason, according to the CDC, is it takes about two weeks from the time you are vaccinated for your body to produce sufficient antibodies to protect you against the flu virus.

Apart from doctors and pharmacies offering flu vaccinations, county health departments are still administering doses.

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Unless you have a medical condition, such as an allergy, that prevents it, there is no reason not to get vaccinated against the flu. …

The flu vaccine works by exposing your body to a dead flu virus or a single gene of the flu virus, according to the CDC. Neither is infectious. The mild flu-like symptoms you may experience after vaccination are simply your immune system revving up for what it thinks is the flu. That primes it to fight the real flu virus if it encounters it later on.

The flu virus isn’t perfect. If the flu manifests in a mutation different than what this year’s vaccine was formulated to fight, you may get only partial protection from it, but that is still better than none at all. That is why one should still get vaccinated even after an outbreak is underway - to get at least some protection.

And while it is possible to have a bad reaction to the flu vaccine, the odds of that are far less than having a bad reaction to the flu itself.

Online: https://www.timesdaily.com/

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Oct. 24

The Decatur Daily on constitutional amendments up for vote:

Four statewide constitutional amendments and, in Morgan County, one local amendment will be on the ballot when voters go to the polls for the Nov. 6 general election. The local amendment for Morgan County will finally end a source of temptation and embarrassment for those who hold the county’s highest law-enforcement office.

Local Amendment No. 1

The local amendment for Morgan County will end once and for all the practice of sheriffs here being allowed to keep any money they have left over after providing food for the jail inmates in their custody.

The practice of using leftover food money to supplement their income had embroiled Morgan County’s past two sheriff’s in scandal. …

Sheriffs should be paid a flat salary, and they should not have an incentive to skimp on taking care of the inmates in their custody in order to supplement their pay.

The local amendment provides that, if passed, “beginning the next term of office the annual salary of the sheriff of Morgan County would be $5,000 less than the annual salary of the chair of the Morgan County Commission and to provide that all allowances or amounts received by the sheriff for feeding prisoners would be deposited in a special account and used only for that purpose.”

Morgan County should join Limestone County in paying its sheriff a proper salary and in seeing to it that jail food is spent on inmates and for nothing else.

The Daily recommends Morgan County voters vote yes on Local Amendment No. 1.

Statewide Amendment No. 1

This amendment would authorize “the display of the Ten Commandments on state property and property owned or administrated by a public school or public body” while “prohibiting the expenditure of public funds in defense of the constitutionality of this amendment.”

This amendment is a bait and switch. While it prohibits the expenditure of public funds to defend the amendment’s dubious constitutionality, it leaves any public institution that displays the Ten Commandments on public property on the hook if it does get sued.

It is legal and constitutional to display the Ten Commandments on public property in certain limited, historical contexts, but not in the purely religious context this amendment’s authors intend. This amendment will lead to more lawsuits and, despite what it claims, taxpayers will be left with the bill.

The Daily recommends voting no on Statewide Amendment No. 1.

Statewide Amendment No. 2

Continuing with using Alabama’s overlong state constitution as a weapon in the culture war, this amendment would “affirm that it is the public policy of this state to recognize and support the sanctity of unborn life and the rights of unborn children, most importantly the right to life in all manners and measures appropriate and lawful; and to provide that the constitution of this state does not protect the right to abortion or require the funding of abortion.”

As long as Roe v. Wade is the law of the land, this amendment is null and void, and in the event Roe were overturned, it would still have no force. Restricting or outlawing abortion would take legislation. This is just making the state constitution even longer to make a political point.

The Daily recommends voting no on Statewide Amendment No. 2.

Statewide Amendment No. 3

This amendment would remove the state education superintendent from the University of Alabama’s Board of Trustees, remove the requirement that trustees step down after they turn 70 years old and keep the current number of trustees the same, representing current U.S. congressional districts, even if Alabama loses a district after the 2020 census.

State superintendents rarely attend meetings, and keeping the current number of trustees makes it easier for the university system’s leadership to be representative of the state’s population. This proposed amendment passed the state Legislature unanimously.

The Daily recommends voting yes on Statewide Amendment No. 3.

Statewide Amendment No. 4

This amendment states that “if a vacancy in either the House of Representatives or the Senate occurs on or after October 1 of the third year of a quadrennium, the seat would remain vacant until a successor is elected at the next succeeding general election.”

Had this amendment been in force last year, voters in Alabama House District 4, which includes parts of Morgan and Limestone Counties, would not have had to vote four times - two party primaries and two general elections - in the span of a year for the House seat vacated when Rep. Micky Hammon was forced from office following a felony conviction.

The Daily recommends voting yes on Statewide Amendment No. 4.

Online: https://www.decaturdaily.com/