MOBILE, Ala. (WALA) – A Mobile County grand jury has indicted the former finance director for the city of Semmes on ethics and theft charges.

Heather Renee Davis, who also previously served as city clerk for the city of Satsuma, faces a 12-count indictment. Ten of the counts are ethics violations.

Allegations

Prosecutors allege Davis improperly used her public positions in Semmes and Satsuma for personal gain, including misappropriating public money and resources.

Two counts accuse her of first-degree theft by deception involving amounts over $2,500. One count is tied to the city of Semmes and one to the city of Satsuma.

Arrest and bond

Jail records show Davis was arrested and later released after posting a $60,000 bond.

Today’s installment of campaign-related news items from across the country.

* When it comes to campaign finance laws, both parties’ campaign committees have faced restrictions on how much money they could spend in coordination with candidates’ campaigns. Those limits are now effectively gone.

As MS NOW’s Jordan Rubin explained, “The Supreme Court’s GOP-appointed majority ruled for Republicans in their campaign finance challenge to restrictions on political parties spending on ads with input from the party’s candidate.”

A Punchbowl News report added that the ruling, written by Justice Brett Kavanaugh, “handed Republicans a massive win” and is likely to “usher in the biggest change to campaign finance law since the Citizens United decision.”

The same report went on to note that Tuesday’s high court ruling “allows for unrestricted coordination between candidates and party committees. That means committees, like the NRSC or the DCCC, can run unlimited TV ads with allied candidates. More importantly, they can also buy those ads at the much cheaper rate offered to candidates. … Tuesday’s SCOTUS ruling will also eradicate the need for independent expenditure arms at party committees.”

Republicans already enjoyed a significant financial advantage over Democrats. The Republican-appointed justices just made it easier for the GOP to capitalize on that advantage.

* In Colorado’s closely watched Democratic primaries, incumbent Sen. John Hickenlooper fended off a challenge from the left, but some of his colleagues weren’t as fortune: Democratic socialist Melat Kiros ended long-serving Rep. Diana DeGette’s career in Denver’s congressional district, while state Attorney General Phil Weiser scored a major upset by defeating incumbent Sen. Michael Bennet in a gubernatorial primary.

* In the race for North Carolina’s open Senate seat, former Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper leads former Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Whatley in the latest New York Times/Siena poll, 50% to 43%, pointing to a possible pickup opportunity for Democrats.

The agents are one of three areas of focus the companies will pursue in a new partnership that will bring new AI-powered solutions to the financial industry, FactSet said in a Tuesday (June 30) press release.

The partnership brings together FactSet’s data, analytics and workflows with Google Cloud’s agentic AI capabilities and infrastructure, according to the release.

The new jointly designed agents will be built using Google Cloud’s Gemini Enterprise Agent Platform.

Another area of focus will be FactSet AI enhanced with Gemini models. FactSet is embedding Google’s enterprise Search and Gemini model capabilities in the FactSet Workstation to launch the new agents for finance; leveraging Google Cloud’s AI capabilities to accelerate the development of new Workstation products with deep research functionality and multi-modal experiences; and directly integrating with Google grounding to improve FactSet’s AI-enhanced insights.

The partnership’s third area of focus is deeper financial intelligence in Gemini Enterprise, which is Google Cloud’s AI platform for building, governing and deploying agents. FactSet’s MCP and agent sharing functionality will deepen the platform’s financial intelligence and provide financial professionals with seamless interoperability between the FactSet Workstation and Gemini Enterprise, per the release.

FactSet CEO Sanoke Viswanathan said in the release: “AI is fundamentally shifting how financial professionals access data, derive insights and make decisions. Together with Google Cloud, we are putting trusted financial data and advanced AI capabilities to work, empowering our clients with more intuitive, connected and intelligent agents.”

Google Cloud Chief Product and Business Officer Karthik Narain said in the release: “By combining Google Cloud’s agentic AI capabilities with FactSet’s deep financial expertise, we are enabling investment professionals to surface insights faster, automate complex workflows, and realize commercial value from AI.”

The PYMNTS Intelligence report “Financial Services Pulls Ahead in the Enterprise AI Race” found that 85% of financial services and insurance firms are increasing their AI budgets over the next 12 months.

The top justifications for these investments are productivity and efficiency gains, cited by 65% of the firms, and strategic or competitive positioning, also cited by 65%, according to the report.

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