JeffCo Commissioner Cautions About Travel Expenses
Jefferson County Commissioner Steve Ammons
Jefferson County Commissioner Steve Ammons urged county employees and department heads Tuesday to be careful of excessive spending when traveling on behalf of the county.
“I was just making sure that employees understand that we’re still keeping an eye on travel,” Ammons said following the commission’s committee meeting. “It’s not a vacation.”
Ammons’ eye was drawn to a trip someone from the county compliance office will take Sept. 18-22 to the Compliance & Ethics Institute Conference in Las Vegas. That trip will cost $3,354.55.
“If you’re going to do work and you’re going to a place that’s expensive, I get that it’s going to be,” he said. “That’s going to be an expensive town to go to and stay in. But we’re going to other places, and I just wanted to make sure that department heads are holding their employees accountable and aren’t in the luxury suites, that they’re actually staying in something that’s reasonable.
“It doesn’t have to be a fleabag motel,” Ammons said, “but it can be a decent hotel. Most conferences stay in very nice hotels.”
Travel was on the mind of Commissioner Sheila Tyson, who complained that she sometimes doesn’t hear about information-seeking trips of her fellow commissioners or their staffs until the traveler has returned.
She said she’s attended leadership workshops to benefit the county, but she did so by writing grants.
“My staff needs to go to workshops where they can improve their knowledge in order to improve their district,” Tyson said. “It’s all about the citizens.”
Commissioner Lashunda Scales, who chaired the meeting in the absence of commission President Jimmie Stephens, cautioned that trips that are in the county budget don’t require preapproval. She said that requiring preapproval in those instances would place another layer of bureaucracy on commission members.
In another matter, commissioners moved to Thursday’s commission meeting agenda an Alabama Department of Transportation project involving a manhole cover on U.S. 280.
“They’re resurfacing and doing some lineage work on 280 from Hollywood Boulevard to First Avenue North, and one of our manhole covers has got to be raised,” Deputy County Manager Cal Markert said. “We just have to do an agreement with them.
“They’re going to widen the road and they’re going to pave the road,” he said. “That manhole has got to be raised so that it’s flush with the new asphalt.”
YouTube agrees to pay Trump $24 million to settle lawsuit over Jan. 6 suspension
YouTube is the latest social media company to pay Trump tens of millions of dollars to resolve lawsuits brought before he returned to power. The money will fund a new ballroom at the White House.
From painting to producing: Birmingham DJ Andrea Really releases first album
Birmingham DJ Andrea Really wasn't always a music producer. She used to be a prolific painter. But when her art studio burned down in 2017, she pivoted careers. Really spoke with WBHM about that journey upon the release of her first album this summer, called Zeitgeist.
A year after Helene, a group of raft guides embarks on a river clean-up mission
A popular rafting river in the Appalachian mountains is still closed a year after Hurricane Helene, because there's just too much debris. Now, rafting guides have come together to help clean it up.
Lesotho’s Famo music: from shepherd songs to gang wars
In Lesotho, a style of traditional accordion music called Famo has become entangled with deadly gang rivalries. Once the soundtrack of shepherds and migrant workers, today it's linked to killings, government bans — and a fight over cultural identity.
Comic Cristela Alonzo grew up in fear of border patrol. ICE has ‘brought it all back’
For the first seven years of her life, Alonzo lived in an abandoned diner in a south Texas border town. Her new Netflix stand-up special is called Upper Classy.
Compass-Anywhere real estate merger could squeeze small brokerages
The deal, announced earlier this week, would combine the two largest U.S. residential brokerages by sales volume.
