How I became a U.S. Supreme Court citation

The alert came in an email from a colleague: “Congratulations on your work (a newspaper article) getting quoted by a U.S. Supreme Court Justice (Sotomayor) in her dissent. Hats off to you, Eric!”

Yes, I played a bit part in a U.S. Supreme Court opinion.

The case, Woodward v Alabama, concerned a peculiar practice in Alabama that allows judges to sentence convicted capital murderers to death even after their jury recommended the lesser sentence of life without parole. It’s called judicial override, and about 20 percent of Alabama’s 193 condemned killers are on Death Row as a result of one.

The nation’s high court declined to hear the case and issued no explanation. But in a written dissent, Justice Sonia Sotomayor, joined in part by Justice Stephen Breyer, said it was time to re-examine the constitutionality of this process. It is unique to Alabama; two other states technically allow it, but in practice don’t do it.

“Alabama has become a clear outlier,” she wrote.

Coincidentally I had downloaded the opinion earlier that morning, planning one day to blog about the issue. I had written frequently about the subject when I was a daily newspaper reporter (capital punishment is one of my specialties), which is what landed me in the middle of Justice Sotomayor’s opinion.

I tore through her decision, looking for my reference.

On page 6, Justice Sotomayor began exploring the pressures that elected judges face in Alabama when it comes to capital sentencing decisions. She cited the findings from a major report by the Montgomery-based Equal Justice Initiative, with one judge saying he imposed a death sentence to improve the racial balance in his personal sentencing tally and another boasting on the campaign trail about the death sentences he had imposed.

Then, at the bottom of page 7, I found my 60 words of “fame:”

With admirable candor, another judge, who has overridden one jury verdict to impose death, admitted that voter reaction does “‘have some impact, especially in high-profile cases.’” Velasco, More Judges Issue Death Despite Jury, Birming­ham News, July 17, 2011, p. 11A. “‘Let’s face it,’” the judge said, “‘we’re human beings. I’m sure it affects some more than others.’” Id., at 12A. (Emphasis mine)

She was referring one of many articles I wrote about the override practice and capital punishment in Alabama. The article Justice Sotomayor quoted was based on the just-released EJI study that was central to her argument that Alabama’s judicial override system is unconstitutional.

Jefferson County Circuit Court, which I covered, is the busiest court for capital cases in Alabama. During the period I covered the beat, 2005-2012, Jefferson County judges were responsible for nearly half of the state’s overrides.

It’s a thorny issue, to be sure.

Some of Jefferson County's most notorious 21^st century murderers – Kerry Spencer, the killer of three policemen; Kenny Billups, a drug dealer who killed five people on his birthday weekend; Brandon Mitchell, a convicted felon who killed three people while his partner killed a fourth over Thanksgiving weekend and Justin White, who raped and killed two young women – received death sentences from judges despite jury verdicts calling for leniency.

Circuit Judge Tommy Nail, the judge I quoted in the article that Justice Sotomayor cited, had one of those cases. He presided over separate trials in 2005 for two men were charged with capital murder in the deaths of three police officers serving a warrant at a drug house after an argument with one of the dealers.

Kerry Spencer killed all three officers and wounded another. His jury recommended life without parole – with 10 votes on at least one of the several capital counts against Spencer.

The co-defendant, Nathaniel Woods, picked the initial fight with the officers and later instigated the murders by luring the officers inside the house knowing they would be shot. His jury recommended death after he practically dared them to do so.

Had Judge Nail followed the two juries’ recommendations, the killer of three police officers would have received a lesser sentence than his mouthy co-defendant. The shooter would have lived (albeit locked up until death), and the talker would be in line for a lethal injection.

Is that fair? Or is that arbitrary and capricious (one of the issues that led the U.S. Supreme Court to temporarily ban the death penalty nationwide in 1972)?

On the other hand, most of the 32 states that allow capital punishment require a unanimous jury verdict of death, which is binding on the judge. But jurors’ reasoning is not always based on the law or devoid of personal sympathy – both requirements to ensure fairness in death sentencing.

One case I recall from Georgia involving the retrial of a leader of a gang that killed six people, including a particularly horrible death for the female victim. The killer’s brother already had been re-sentenced to death (in a separate trial, which I covered). But a juror in the second defendant’s case successfully held out for life without parole, explaining later to an angry judge that she felt sorry for the defendant in part because of his bad teeth. A valid argument on arbitrariness can be made there, too.

I deeply respect Judge Nail for his candor in that interview. Toward the end of my time at the paper, I noticed judges in my jurisdiction becoming increasingly reluctant to override jury recommendations. Several began referring to a jury verdict for the lesser sentence as one of the strongest mitigating circumstances favoring live without parole over death.

Proponents of Alabama’s system argue that judges are better equipped to make capital sentencing decisions than everyday people who suddenly find themselves thrust into a situation they never expected to face: making a life or death decision about a stranger.

Opponents say elected judges face too much pressure from law-and-order voters on a political hot-button issue. EJI’s study contended overrides happen most often on election years.

That led Justice Sotomayor to conclude, and Justice Breyer to agree that “Alabama judges, who are elected in partisan proceedings, appear to have succumbed to electoral pressures.” That “casts a cloud of illegitimacy over the criminal justice system,” Sotomayor wrote.

On the surface, it may seem surprising that at least two more justices didn’t join Sotomayor’s call to reexamine Alabama’s override system. After all, it potentially would be a narrow ruling, confined to one state’s practices.

Perhaps it was Woodward’s victim in this case, an on-duty police officer, that kept the appeal from getting the four justices’ votes needed for the court to officially consider the case, and rendered improbable the fifth vote needed to overturn Alabama’s system.

Appeals are pending on condemned killers in Alabama who had 10, 11 and even all 12 jurors vote for life without parole. This fruit is ripe for picking.

State still tops judicial campaign cash but for how long?

We may not see it happen again for some time.

Alabama judges raised and spent $4 million for their Supreme Court races in 2012, ranking No. 1 in candidate fundraising among all states with high court elections in the last election cycle, according to a new national report on judicial campaign fundraising released today.

Alabama candidates ranked fourth nationally for spending on air time to televise campaign ads ($3.4 million), and fifth in overall spending ($4 million), according to the biennial report, The New Politics of Judicial Elections 2011-12, which I helped research, write and edit.

Alabama has attracted the most spending by special interests seeking to elect favorable high court judges, some $51 million since 2000. But the 2012 election was the last desperate gasp by the old Alabama Democratic Party, which has since split in two and for now seems unable to field any credible candidates for statewide office.

The chief justice post and four of the eight associate justice positions were on the 2012 ballot in Alabama. The last election with that many six-year terms at stake, 2006, remains among the most expensive ever nationally for total spending ($14.5 million) and for a single seat (the $8.2 million chief justice race).

Normally, Alabama dispenses million-dollar judicial candidates like Pez candy. There were four in 2006.

But 2012 was an off year by Alabama judicial political standards. The sole credible Democratic candidate, Jefferson County Circuit Judge Robert Vance, didn’t even enter the field until less than three months before the general election. Despite spending northwards of $1 million in roughly 11 weeks, he couldn’t beat a disgraced former chief justice who was seeking political redemption, Roy Moore.

So while doing research for the 2011-2012 edition of New Politics, I was surprised to see Alabama still ranked so high nationally in campaign spending last election.

A decades-long battle for control of the Alabama Supreme Court pitted the old Democrat power structure, backed by plaintiff trial lawyers and the state teacher’s union, against Republican jurists and their corporate backers. Republican political operative Karl Rove, who cut his teeth politically by engineering a Republican takeover of the Texas high court in the 1980s, further honed his political skills by doing the same at the Alabama Supreme Court during the 1990s.

At the time, Alabama was one of several state battlegrounds in the tort wars, battles to limit legal money damages and civil liability for corporate and business interests. Those battleground states – including Texas, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Illinois – ended up decidedly pro-business. So much so, according to a 2012 study of their decisions by the Center for American Progress, those courts have recently sided with businesses in cases involving individual plaintiffs 70 percent of the time.

The majority on the Alabama Supreme Court switched from Democrat to Republican in 1998, and the takeover was completed in 2000. State Democrats tried to claw back, but never regained a solid grip.

Its glimmer of hope was Sue Bell Cobb, who was elected chief justice in 2006. By 2011, she was one of only two Democrats left holding any statewide office. When Cobb suddenly resigned that summer, state Democrat leaders were unable to recruit any credible judicial candidate for the 2012 race until the late insertion of Vance onto the ballot.

For the first time since Reconstruction, Democrats now are a minority in every branch of government. There are no Democrats among the state’s 19 appellate court judges.

Limited competition has meant the big money that had dominated Alabama judicial politics has gone elsewhere.

Research for the New Politics report identified 20 “Super Spenders,” organizations or individuals that have spent at least $1 million each to influence the outcome of one or more state Supreme Court races since 2000. Three are from Alabama.

On that list, the Business Council of Alabama ranks fourth ($6 million) and the Alabama Democratic Party is fifth ($5.6 million) in total spending from 2000-2012. The pro-business Alabama Civil Justice Reform Committee is 15^th on the list ($2.8 million).

But that trio’s outlay was anemic in 2012 – less than $150,000 among all three combined.

Alabama Supreme Court candidate campaigns last election received far more money from personal loans than they did in contributions from the nationally ranked Super Spenders. (More on the loans in a future blog post.)

As the New Politics report notes in an essay on Alabama, the likely battles will be in Republican primaries for Alabama Supreme Court seats, at least until the state Democratic Party revives. And expensive races in those primary campaigns are unlikely.

How long will it be before Alabama loses its perch as the top state for special interest spending? Not long, if Michigan continues its torrid pace. The state ranked first in total spending in 2011-2012, at least $13 million. Spending there this century is nearly $41 million.

Since the 2000 elections, The New Politics report has been published by the Justice at Stake Campaign in Washington D.C., the Brennan Center for Justice at NYU School of Law and the National Institute on Money in State Politics in Montana.

When I worked at The Birmingham News, my beat included covering judicial politics, including the 2006 Alabama Supreme Court campaign. New Politics was a regular resource for me as a reporter. I’m proud to have been part of producing this edition. 

A year that has healed some wounds

A year ago today, I woke up and got physically ill. Then I drove to my office to turn in my laptop computer and employee badge, ending a 29-year career in daily newspapers.

On the way out the building, I grabbed some old posters the company had offered – castoffs just like me and the scores of other employees who lost their jobs as of Oct. 1, 2012, as part of the Newhouse/Advance Publications shift from print journalism.

This morning, I awoke with a song in my heart, celebrating my first year as a freelance journalist.

My daughter commented about how less grumpy I was in the morning, versus a year earlier. My mother has said I seem less angry.

Despite the struggle that has been the last year – or perhaps in large part because of it – I am happier.

For six years or more, it seems like my family and I have lurched from one disaster to another – some natural, some financial and some resulting from my wife and I both having careers then in a crumbling industry.

When Anna and I were hired in 2000, The Birmingham News prided itself as one of the last of the cradle-to-grave employers. Newhouse, the owners, preferred to keep employees from organizing into unions by offering guild-style pay and benefits, as well as a pledge never to lay off employees from the daily newspaper due to the economy or change in technology.

But the newspaper industry has been mired in a paradigm shift for decades, one of the many changes the Internet has brought to our world. Newspaper revenues dropped, first affecting publicly traded companies whose executives vainly tried to maintain rich dividends and profit-margins in a shifting economy.

Privately held media companies like Newhouse were shielded for years. I recall that when Anna and I were about to buy our first house in 2002, the latest set of layoffs was being announced at our old employer (owned by a publicly-traded company) while we at The News got the latest in a series of letters reminding us of “The Pledge.”

But by 2008, a variety of forces brought reality crashing down on Newhouse employees. Thus began the death of a thousand cuts – wage freezes, furloughs, a pension freeze, reduced sick leave, benefit cuts like parking and insurance subsidies – accompanied by multiple buyouts of diminishing value that always carried the threat of layoffs if financial targets were not reached.

As the newsroom shrank, demands increased on those who remained. This was accompanied by a mad scramble to establish relevance in the modern Web-based world without any clear vision of how to accomplish that goal – but still underscored with the threat of job loss for those who could not keep pace or meet the standards set by ever-shifting measurement tools.

Anna got out, putting her considerable skills to better use as point person on healthcare reform for Viva insurance company. But I tried to hang on in newspapers, preferably until I hit my retirement age of 67 that also would mark my youngest child’s fourth year in college.

Newhouse provided notice it was killing “The Pledge,” which was followed at some papers by a publisher purge. The guillotine fell in late May 2012, when Newhouse announced that Birmingham and its other Alabama newspapers would shift to three-day print publication and a more youthful, 24/7 emphasis on the Web platform, al.com. Massive layoffs would accompany that change.

But the specific heads didn’t roll until mid-June, touching off an agonizing period of weeks while people accepted their announced fate of either being retained or cast aside.

Those of us who were told we didn’t have the tools for the new world order were asked to stay on until Oct. 1, 2012, which may go down as the world’s longest layoff. Things got awkward as the transition neared – new employees came and got training and new equipment, departing employees were displaced to rearrange the office furniture and as the transition neared, vacation leave for departing employees was denied while the folks remaining took some time off.

I will always be thankful, however, for how we were treated financially. When the Birmingham Post-Herald closed eight years ago, there was no lay-off period and no severance. People on vacation learned they had no job awaiting them back home. One guy called in with a story to file, but was told there was no paper to print it.

Instead, we who were laid off at The News got paid for that “world’s longest layoff” period, some 15 weeks or so. We also got severance pay based on longevity. In my case that provided paychecks past the end of the year, allowing me to get established in my freelance work.

As a consumer, I miss having a daily local newspaper. As a journalist I mourn for an industry, and its audience, that no longer has the time or sufficient resources to study an issue in depth and present it in a compelling manner. As someone who got into daily newspapers with the goal of providing the information needed for an informed electorate, I am concerned about the increasing superficiality across the news industry for coverage on a local, state, national and international level.

I dearly miss being a daily newspaper reporter and the depth and storytelling opportunities presented by my favorite beat, the court system. It was a large part of who I am, and some days I’m still angry that was taken from me. And I regret I never was able to reach my professional goal of becoming a full-time food writer exploring how to live to eat and eat to live.

But I have thoroughly enjoyed my work over the past year, working on legislative affairs materials for a local hospital system and helping author and edit The New Politics of Judicial Elections, a national report on judicial campaign financing that is soon to be released. I maintain a presence in the Birmingham News and al.com through monthly restaurant reviews. I plan to expand my client base soon, or bow to certain realities.

It’s been hard work with some mighty long hours as multiple freelance deadlines overlapped. Most of the work has been done in my basement office, which I have dubbed “The Cave.” To fit in family duties, this troll often starts work at 4 a.m. or 5 a.m.

But I’ve had the joy of working for Alabama Possible, formerly the Alabama Poverty Project, as moderator of a talk on race, poverty and justice with former Judge Scott Vowell and noted lawyer J. Mason Davis. I was able to do a little publicity for my church centennial.  I got to help a high-school buddy out with some copy for his online organics business, Safe Organics.

I’ve gotten to spend more time with my children, especially during this past summer’s “Camp Daddy” weeks. I have the flexibility to do even more to help my family. I hope I’ve become a better husband.

Sure, in some ways we’ve still got the proverbial foot on a banana peel. I’m less financially secure than I was two years ago today, when the thought of squeezing out more years of my daily newspaper career seemed plausible.

But I am more secure than I was a year ago today, amid the uncertainty of starting all over in a market crowded with talented displaced journalists.

I have a year of accomplishment under my belt. And a smile on my face.

We’ll see what tomorrow brings.

Justice delayed, justice denied

If Chris McNair has taught us anything here in Birmingham, it’s this old adage:

Justice delayed is justice denied.

McNair is the father of Denise McNair, one of the four little girls killed in the Klan bombing of the 16^th Street Baptist Church 50 years ago this month. For decades afterward, an alabaster wall of silence, coupled with federal government complicity, delayed bringing the bombers to justice.

McNair also is a former Jefferson County commissioner and one of the reasons county sewer rates are so high. Commissioner McNair was a central figure in a bribery-for-contracts scheme during the early years of Jefferson County’s court-ordered sewer rehabilitation program that began in 1996.

McNair was the only elected official among more than a dozen county employees, construction contractors and engineers who went to prison for their roles in rigging sewer contracts. The corruption added at least $336 million to the cost of what became a $3.2 billion program funded solely by sewer customers.

In 2006, McNair was convicted of some bribery charges, and in February 2007 he pleaded guilty in connection to others. On Sept. 19, 2007, a federal judge sentenced McNair to five years and ordered nearly $852,000 in restitution.

McNair was 80 years old then. But legal wrangling allowed him to delay reporting to prison until June 2011. The 87-year-old was released last month under just-expanded medical hardship rules, after serving only 26 months of a 60-month sentence.

Normally in federal prisons, defendants must serve at least 85 percent of their terms; under those circumstances McNair would have spent nearly twice as long behind bars than he actually did.

Chris McNair was 85 when he finally went to prison. Had he accepted his punishment when he was sentenced in 2007, he would have served his full term of 51-60 months and still have been freed many months before the planned ceremonies marking his daughter’s supremely tragic death.

McNair’s was a cynical crime. At the time, commissioners oversaw county departments (the struggle to end that practice continues even now). As a result, elected members of the legislative branch also performed executive-branch roles as super department heads.

Commissioners then didn’t meddle in each other’s fiefdoms – a professional courtesy that helps explain why so many former Jefferson County commissioners are now convicted felons. McNair ran the sewer department, and therefore the court-ordered sewer rehabilitation program that was begun in 1995 to settle a lawsuit over excessive sewer discharges.

If McNair said a sewer bidding policy or contract was OK, the other commissioners broke out the rubber stamp.

When county sewer department officials took care of their buddies by steering them no-bid engineering contracts, McNair signed off on them. When the sewer department officials created a system that limited construction bids to their buddies, McNair signed off on it. And he willingly went along when county sewer officials dragged their feet to expand the list of qualified contractors so construction bidding would be more competitive. McNair didn’t say a word when county employees routinely allowed contractors to bypass the bidding process and award new, lucrative work at inflated prices.

In return, those engineers and construction companies helped rebuild and outfit a photography studio for McNair, a state-of-the-art showcase for the professional photographer. The charges against him included receiving cash and construction services for a lake house in his native Arkansas.

Under McNair’s watch, the estimated cost of the sewer rehabilitation program nearly tripled to $3.2 billion. Financing schemes to pay for all that led to another round of federal corruption convictions and ultimately to the county’s bankruptcy. With government services cut beyond the bone, residents now spend hours in line waiting to renew a car tag or register new property. Part of that wait ultimately is attributable to McNair’s corruption.

Chris McNair deserves sympathy. Few can look at the bombing on Sept. 15, 1963, and not feel at least some of the pain he and the families must have endured all of those years while waiting for the men who killed Denise McNair, Addie Mae Collins, Carole Robertson and Cynthia Wesley to be brought to justice.

Delay in bringing 16th Street bombers Robert Chambliss, Bobby Frank Cherry and Thomas Blanton to court was a denial of justice, not only for the McNairs and the other victims’ families but for society as a whole. A fourth suspect died before he could be brought to face a jury.

In the same vein, delay in McNair’s imprisonment also was justice denied to the Jefferson County residents who, decades from now, still will be paying off the bonds sold to fund the county’s sewer rehabilitation program.

Chris McNair should not be denied a prominent spot on the podium this month when his daughter’s death is properly remembered as a clarion call for civil rights. Five decades ago, his was a powerful voice for nonviolence amid the anger many felt over those four girls’ horrible deaths.

But the reputation McNair built after the bombing is part of why he was elected to the state legislature in 1973 and to the Jefferson County Commission in 1986. It was why he was in a position to profit from corruption in the sewer program in the years leading to his sudden resignation in 2001.

He took the bribes and he admitted guilt. His delay in reporting to prison allowed him to escape full justice.

On a day commemorating the four little girls killed in that terrorist attack, the concept of justice should be black and white. But sadly, it also will be shrouded to a small degree in shades of gray.

 

A magical 14th anniversary with the love of my life

Unbelievably good food in a welcoming atmosphere, plus the company of the most wonderful woman on Earth made for a most special 14^th anniversary dinner at Bottega Restaurant on Wednesday night.

 

It was a celebration of our life together. We chose Bottega because that is the restaurant where we dined the night I officially discussed my intention to marry Anna with her father, Larry Clark. I was wearing the same suit we bought for the rehearsal dinner my mother threw for us the night before our wedding. I also had on the shirt my dear friend, Paula Kapiloff, had made just for the occasion back in 1999.

 

 

But most of all the night was a celebration of our love, a bond that has helped us build a world far better than I could have imagined, provided the strength to overcome when we’ve faced adversity and shaped two smart, creative and funny children.

I guess it’s inevitable when one or both partner is a food freak that celebrations tend to revolve around food. In fact, I was able to recite to our waiter at Bottega on Wednesday exactly what I ate at the restaurant that night in September 1998 with Anna and my future father-in-law.

On this magical night, a fish on the Bottega menu sparked the memory of our first night in a beachside town in Portugal during a first-anniversary trip, at a fish restaurant where the chef’s image was emblazoned on the labels for the house wine. The grilled octopus on Wednesday’s menu transported us to a back-alley restaurant in a Portuguese town we visited to see ancient Roman ruins during that same first-anniversary trip.

I’m sure discussion on future anniversaries will turn to our magical 14^th anniversary meal. Fine dining is a leap of faith for Anna, who does not eat meat. But the kitchen and the entire staff came through for both of us.

With my first bite of grilled octopus – salty, lemony, smoky and slightly sweet – I had to briefly shut out the world to concentrate on the swirl of flavors and textures. First the perfect bite from the octopus, not at all chewy or tough. Then the rich fat and firm meat from pork belly bites on the same plate. In the background a fava-bean mash provided the high-pitched beat of a jazz drummer’s cymbals, a steady platform for the lead instruments.

I’m afraid I threw off the kitchen’s timing because I lingered over this plate, savoring every bite. To bridge the gap, the kitchen sent out one of the menu side dishes -- the first-of-the-season Chilton County peaches, grilled and served with pine nuts. If you have not grilled peaches before, you owe it to yourself to do so this summer. The hardwood smoke and caramelized sugars amped the peach flavor up past 11.

We each got a pasta plate – for Anna, specially made ravioli with a creamy sauce slathered in classic spring vegetables, asparagus and green peas; for me, lobster spaghetti. One sign of a great kitchen is its ability to build flavors, intensifying the theme. Claw, knuckle and tail meat got a boost from lobster broth, nudged further by red chili peppers and garlic and what tasted like copious amounts of butter. But the spaghetti stood up to all that boldness.

It was yet another astonishing dish. But what make places like Highlands Bar and Grill and Bottega Restaurant so special is the service. It leaves me in awe.

It’s not just the unobtrusive waiter who suddenly appears when needed, or the never-empty water glasses or the perfectly balanced cocktails. It’s not the killer peach cobbler adorned with anniversary greetings, or the glass of Muscat delivered to Anna merely because I had ordered sherry with dessert. It’s not even Chef Frank Stitt himself coming out from the kitchen to wish us a happy anniversary and make sure the vegetarian is as satisfied as the omnivore.

 

I had mentioned only one time that we were celebrating our 14^th anniversary, a typed notation when I made the online reservation a week earlier. But by the end of Wednesday evening, every server in that restaurant had taken time to wish us a happy anniversary.

It’s those little touches that make a great dinner unforgettable.

Sense prevails over justice

Rosemary Bolin is a sensible person. When her husband, Mike, was ready to ditch his comfortable and secure job on the Alabama Supreme Court and become county attorney in the land of the largest municipal bankruptcy, Rosemary said something very sensible:

Are you nuts?

Justice Mike Bolin

Of course, I’m sure she said it in a more loving way. But that was the basic message Justice Bolin conveyed this week when he explained why he accepted the job of Jefferson County’s top legal advisor late last week only to have Rosemary Bolin convince him over the weekend to turn it down.

When he accepted the offer, the lifelong Jefferson County resident said he was taking the job out of a sense of duty and service to the community. Bolin also cited the advantage of having spent 12 years as Jefferson County Probate Court judge, running a county department, before his election to the state high court in 2004.

The paycheck sure wasn’t the lure. Although the previous two county attorneys were paid northward of $375,000 per year, Bolin would have been paid $220,000, a little more than what he is making now. Assuming re-election to the Alabama Supreme Court in 2016, Bolin could serve past the mandatory retirement age of 70 (judges cannot seek election after they turn 70; he’s 64 now).

From a pure career standpoint, becoming county attorney would have been a step down. With its myriad legal problems -- including filing the largest government bankruptcy in U.S. history -- Jefferson County spends on outside counsel roughly 20 times the amount it spends on its in-house county attorneys. The way Jefferson County hemorrhages legal fees, the real money is in being outside counsel.

Frankly, landing Justice Bolin would have been one of the best things to happen to Jefferson County in a generation – if for no other reason than the instant credibility he would have brought to the county’s reputation.  But success would have required enough miracles to put Bolin well on the pathway to sainthood.

And that’s essentially what Rosemary Bolin pointed out, Justice Bolin told Birmingham News/al.com reporter Barnett Wright.

“She was just worried about the challenges facing every player on the county team," Bolin told Wright. "And I think she worried about whether or not I would be happy giving up a job that I am happy with, taking on a world of problems where any lawyer that comes in here is going to have a learning curve.”

This is the hornets’ nest he would have called home:

The county owes $4 billion in bond debt, and while some of that principal probably will be wiped out, the county is expected to emerge bankruptcy still owing $3 billion. About one-fourth of its overall debt currently has a steady revenue source, a one-cent sales tax. But most of Jefferson County’s bond debt was from the $3 billion it borrowed for a corruption-plagued court-ordered sewer rehabilitation program; the sewer revenues available to retire that debt are inadequate despite gargantuan rate increases since the project began in 1996.

The county’s creditworthiness is laughable, making it nearly impossible to take on any new capital projects any time soon to address a fast-crumbling infrastructure. After litigation killed an occupational tax that generated $70 million per year, the county was left with no cash. A vindictive legislative delegation, which controls the county’s economic destiny, won’t replace the tax or come up with alternate revenue.

A revenue drought that started in 2009 has forced county commissioners to cut hourly staff beyond the bone – leaving the state’s largest county government unable to fulfill even the most basic of services. People wait all day in line to renew a car tag or register a vehicle. Zoning and road maintenance are unable to meet demand. The sheriff’s office cannot adequately secure courtrooms and at one point stopped responding to wreck calls. Criminal defense lawyers once had to pool money to provide toilet paper to the overcrowded county jail.

Somehow, some folks in the 1980s thought it was a brilliant idea to make Jefferson County commissioners the heads of various departments. Running county departments put tremendous power in the hands of the commissioners, especially during a period when they routinely approved the others’ recommendations as a legislative courtesy.

It created the climate that resulted in a rigged, pay-for-play scheme during the sewer rehabilitation project during the late 1990s and early 2000s. Roughly two dozen federal convictions followed, including county commissioners, several other county officials and contractors.

One of the few beneficial things the legislative delegation has done was to require the Jefferson County to hire a county manager who would supervise department heads, theoretically getting the politicians out of the day-to-day business of running the government. But commissioners continue to resist that loss of power. Some continue to meddle in county departments.

The current commission leadership seems resistant to legal advice it doesn’t want to hear. Some of the disputes between key commissioners and the former county attorney, Jeff Sewell, concerned legal advice Sewell gave – including how the commissioners needed to stop meddling in departmental affairs. Given the hubris that leads some Jefferson County commissioners to believe they personally can successfully negotiate against the best and brightest on Wall Street, perhaps those commissioners viewed such legal advice as misguided and inappropriate.

Give commissioners credit for thinking big in seeking a new county attorney. They’ve put up several big names on their wish list. But in the county’s situation, landing one of them may be wishful thinking.

When destruction brought salvation

The first in a series of deadly tornadoes hit my neighborhood, Cahaba Heights, about dawn on April 27, 2011. Rotating at 100 mph+, it blasted a path through a once leafy community, heavily damaging dozens of homes, businesses and the elementary school, which remained closed for more than a week.

We were lucky. No one in my family was hurt and other than damage requiring a new roof, the house was intact.

But half of our yard had blown apart. Towering 50-year-old pines were felled by the winds, taking out everything in their path -- bushes, smaller trees, a pear tree, fencing, a make-shift kiddie fort, and near the back of our lot, an apple tree and once massively bushy fig.

 

 

Compounding my sadness after the logs were removed and several stumps had been ground was the discovery that my prized hydrangeas were gone. I had planted some – snowflake hydrangeas and harmony hydrangeas in honor of the King of Hydrangeas, Eddie Aldridge, and his lovely wife, Kay – about a week after we closed on our current house.

Also wiped out were three blue French hydrangeas, one grown from a cutting from my childhood yard in Atlanta. Another was from a cutting given to us by Eddie Aldridge (one of the great cultivators of hydrangeas before his retirement) from 19^th-century root stock he had discovered and preserved. The third was a gift upon the birth of our first child.

 

But destruction brings rebirth and regeneration. Although no trace of the hydrangeas remained after the logs had been hauled, within weeks green leaflets peeped from the very spots where five had once blossomed.

Their recovery inspired what would become my own rebirth and regeneration while my career in newspapers, which defined me, was blowing down like all those trees only in slow-motion.

Today, a flower garden and Yoshino cherry trees bloom where the pines once were rooted. Another garden is built around snowflake and harmony hydrangeas and watermelon-red summer-blooming crepe myrtle trees. Flanking one end are pink azaleas that bloom twice a year including near my daughter’s April birthday. Every time I walk outside my house and look at my ever-blooming gardens, I smile.

 

 

I started with a vision and a relatively generous budget, thanks to a loan from my 401(k) that I took out the day after the storm, knowing we would need cash to recover from the damage. I wanted to create a flower garden, plant new trees that would reflect our personality as opposed to that of the original owner who sold us our home. I wanted to create some kind of spectacular hydrangea garden in the other main area of storm damage. Anna, my wife, added to the project an expansion of a garden I had created around our mailbox, and another near our front door.

We knew we wanted crepe myrtles. Both Anna and I love their color during summer’s oppressive heat, and the reds were extra special to us. When Anna and I bought our first home, a towering crepe myrtle in the front yard was filling out its red blossoms, which we enjoyed as we celebrated the closing with glasses of champagne while sitting in folding chairs in the otherwise empty living room.

Our desire for Yoshino cherry trees was a nod to when Anna and I lived in Macon, Ga. and fell in love beneath the blooming cherry trees that the city celebrates with an annual festival.

 

What I lacked in tools, I compensated with enthusiasm. With a shovel and pick, I dug out the ground-out root shavings and the roots themselves, then expanded the mailbox and front-door garden areas. I have the great fortune to live near Cahaba Heights Hardware, a few blocks up the road, which delivered truckloads of a planting mixture of topsoil, sand and mulch. They also delivered a palate of this decorative stone and enough pea gravel and concrete mix to lay borders.

 

Another benefit of Cahaba Heights living: My son is friends with a co-owner of a great garden shop, Sweet Peas in Homewood. Jon Culver was not only a great adviser, but also every plant and tree we ordered from Sweet Peas thrived.

I did most of the work during two week-long vacations (actually one was an unpaid furlough). Anyone who has gone through a long-simmering major workplace upheaval understands the excruciating atmosphere as people desperately try to prove their relevance and survive the next round of cuts.

Backbreaking, sweaty physical labor from prepping the garden areas, building soil from the truckloads that I distributed around the yard with a wheelbarrow, moving rocks, digging pits and planting trees – all flowed into an oasis from the pressures at work.

As the gardens took shape, some bordered by poorly-mortared stone walls, each day’s considerable progress became a late-afternoon treat for my wife and children. They also enjoyed a much happier Dad.

 

Despite some challenges, including a persistent grass that overtook my hydrangea garden last summer, everything looks good. The cherry blossoms, while still modest, were an improvement this spring over their first. The flower garden, full of perennials, has thrived so much that once-planned additional plantings now are unnecessary. Nearly two-dozen fragrant hyacinths bloomed this year, some twice during a confusing warm-then-cool winter.

This year I hope to put in pea gravel paths through the hydrangea garden, as originally planned, and show the weeds in there who’s boss. We need more daffodils/jonquils. I need to regain control of the rest of my back yard and improve the three vegetable planters I installed as part of the recovery plan. I will enjoy every second.

 

 

 

Two years ago, as I surveyed the devastation, I could not have imagined what I see there today or how it ultimately would help me. From destruction came my salvation.