Photo courtesy of Steve Lawrence
Steve Lawrence is running for Hoover City Council Place 5.
Steve Lawrence has lived in Hoover more than 38 years and in recent years has become increasingly concerned about what’s going on in city government — so much that he decided to run for Hoover City Council Place 5, currently held by Derrick Murphy.
In particular, Lawrence said he has become concerned about what he sees as a lack of transparency by certain city officials and poor decisions regarding city finances and issues like stormwater flooding.
The city administration for an extended period of time kept quiet about missing and deleted financial records, unbalanced transactions, unreconciled accounts and IRS penalties and used the city attorney’s office to quietly hire an auditor that specializes in detecting fraud instead of asking the City Council to do it openly.
Lawrence said Hoover residents and taxpayers should have been told upfront that there was a problem instead of city officials trying to keep it quiet. “Nobody tells the public what’s going on. The people were kind of left in the dark,” he said. “If it’s bad news, just tell people. Keep us in the loop.”
Also, it’s difficult to get details about city financial records, he said. The city’s financial audits have been late the past several years, and while some financial documents are available online, they’re presented in a way that makes it hard to find information, he said. Finance officials post scanned copies of documents instead of presenting information in a way that’s easily searchable by computer, he said.
He’s also concerned about a relationship rift between the current mayor and City Council, he said. Elected officials need to be working together and communicating openly with one another instead of the city administration withholding certain information while asking the council to vote on significant economic incentives for businesses like the developers of Riverwalk Village in Riverchase, Lawrence said.
Mayor Frank Brocato has maintained he did communicate with council members about city finances during that time, but certain council members chose not to attend regular meetings he would schedule with them, he said. The complaints against him are more about politics, he said.
Lawrence said he also would like the state auditor to review Hoover’s finances because the company hired to do a special review of Hoover’s finances did not actually perform a full “forensic audit.”
One of the City Council’s main responsibilities is to make sure that money is handled correctly, he said. While the city does appear to have healthy financial reserves, he doesn’t think the Riverwalk Village development will be a net positive for city finances because the city is giving the developer so much money in tax rebates and cash payments.
The council in November 2023 voted 5-2 to grant an estimated $25.8 million in tax rebates to the private companies doing the development, plus up to $16 million in cash payments over the next 10 years to help get the project started.
The council also agreed to lease 30,000 square feet of space on the first floor of the south office tower in the complex. The rent will be another $700,000 per year for 10 years, except the first year’s rent will be waived, City Attorney Phillip Corley said. That amounts to about $6.3 million in rent.
But Lawrence said the agreement also calls for the city to pay additional costs totaling an estimated $3.1 million for things such as insurance, property taxes, security, utilities and operations and maintenance costs for its office space, putting total cash payouts at $25.5 million. He also said the incentive cap for the tax breaks equals $54.1 million (after the $16 million in upfront payments is subtracted), putting total incentives at about $80 million.
He would rather have seen some of that money go into things like a technology incubator, he said.
Lawrence also said the city should be doing more to help resident with stormwater flooding problems. He understands that some residents may be responsible for the stormwater management of their own property, but he believes there likely are cases where the city or some other entity is responsible for some of the flooding due to problems in city stormwater infrastructure or public road projects, he said.
“This small problem has become a big problem,” he said. “The City Council needs to act and do something to help the residents of Hoover.”
Lawrence said he also believes the Hoover school system needs additional funding. He supports allowing voters to decide on a 2.4-mill property tax increase for schools. However, realistically, with higher assessed property values, voters will likely reject it, he said. He also opposes raising sales taxes because Hoover struggles to attract new businesses and its current sales tax revenue remains stagnant. A better solution is to dedicate an existing half cent sales tax specifically for schools, while the City Council reduces spending to offset additional money to schools, he said.
Lawrence, 55, lives in Trace Crossings. He has more than 30 years of experience in commercial insurance and risk management and his company currently is contracted to do business with Insurance Office of America. He is on the Park Trace Swim & Tennis Homeowners Association board and is a past board member for the UAB National Alumni Society and past volunteer for organizations such as Samaritan’s Purse, Hoover City Dad Brigade, Salvation Army, Church of the Highlands Serve Day and Habitat for Humanity.
He earned a bachelor’s degree in political science with a minor in criminal justice from UAB in 1994.
Read more about Lawrence here or visit votestevelawrence.com. Read more about his opponent, Derrick Murphy, here.
The city election is Aug. 26.
