Digital Media Center
Bryant-Denny Stadium, Gate 61
920 Paul Bryant Drive
Tuscaloosa, AL 35487-0370
(800) 654-4262

© 2024 Alabama Public Radio
Play Live Radio
Next Up:
0:00
0:00
0:00 0:00
Available On Air Stations

Hubbard: Ethics Case appears Political; what to do with old Xmas Trees?

It looks like Alabama House Speaker Mike Hubbard is gearing up for a fight. The Republican lawmaker faces twenty three counts of using his elected office for personal gain. Hubbard’s legal team issued a subpoena for a recorded phone conversation between a talk show host and a prosecutor. His lawyers say they believe there might be other conversations involving prosecutors. Deputy Attorney General Matt Hart claimed prosecutors are not acting with political motivations. Defense lawyers say the call shows an effort to taint the jury pool. Hubbard is pleading not guilty to the multiple felony ethics charges.

The Alabama Crimson Tide and the Ohio State buckeyes are tuning up their game for Thursday’s Sugar Bowl in New Orleans. Both teams want to play in the national championship against either Oregon or FSU. Alabama also probably wants to erase the memory of last year’s Sugar Bowl where the Tide fell to Oklahoma forty five to thirty one. Head coach Nick Saban says the fact that Ohio coach Urban Meyer hasn’t led the Buckeyes to a bowl game isn’t a big factor…

“I think that anytime you can gain experience in situations, you hope your players can handle it the right way because they’ve done it before, they understand what it takes”

The Rose bowl and Sugar Bowl are only warm-ups for the national championship game in Texas. The winners of each bowl game will get a chance at the title later next month…

Cities across Alabama are urging homeowners to recycle their old Christmas trees. Birmingham and Prattville are among the towns offering curbside pick-up of used holiday trees. Both towns say to put your old tree where you dump leaves and branches for yard debris removal. Prattville city spokeswoman Theresa Lee says, in her town, the sanitation department takes it from there…

“And they’re just radio back and say ‘hey, there’s a tree at….’ I don’t know…’1802 Jenny Drive,’ and one of your supervisors will take the truck out and go through that neighborhood at every location where they’ve seen a tree at the curb, and toss it in the back, and take it back.”

Prattville uses a chipper to grind up Christmas trees for landscaping mulch. Montgomery and Mobile don’t have curbside tree removal. Montgomery says there are drop off locations at elementary schools. Mobile has seven drop off points including spots on Forest Hill Drive and Government Boulevard…

Shoppers in the Decatur area are still waiting for a Bass Pro Shop to open. The store is part of a proposed development called Sweetwater. The project is on hold and the property remains in a legal dispute. The Decatur Daily reports the plan is expected to officially die on Wednesday. That’s the deadline for a number of steps in a development contract. The newspaper reports that the project's demise dates to at least September, when the developer lost the option to buy over five hundred acres of land. That property would have been home to the Bass Pro Outdoor World store.

Pat Duggins is news director for Alabama Public Radio.
News from Alabama Public Radio is a public service in association with the University of Alabama. We depend on your help to keep our programming on the air and online. Please consider supporting the news you rely on with a donation today. Every contribution, no matter the size, propels our vital coverage. Thank you.