Prichard city government is bracing for a coverage gap that officials say leaves police cars, fire trucks, garbage trucks and the employees who drive them financially exposed. At a specially called meeting Friday, City Council President Traci Hale told council members and residents that American Municipal Insurance Corp. (AMIC), the carrier that has covered the city’s liability risks, had rejected Prichard’s appeal to keep its policy active. “As of 12:01 (a.m.) … we will no longer have insurance covered by AMIC,” Hale said from the podium, meaning coverage was set to lapse just hours after the meeting ended.
Why the Lapse Matters
Municipal liability insurance is what typically stands behind a city when something goes wrong. If a city employee is involved in an on-the-job accident, or is sued over actions taken in the course of their work, the policy is usually what pays for a legal defense and covers damages up to a set limit. Without it, City Council Attorney Moshae Donald Walker warned employees at the meeting that they would be on their own. “They should expect if there’s any liability or loss that occurs within the scope of their employment that the city of Prichard will not indemnify them,” she said.
Walker went further after the meeting, cautioning that any city employee who gets behind the wheel of a municipal vehicle after midnight could be taking on personal financial risk. “That’s not to say that the city does not have a legal duty to indemnify them, but with where the city’s finances are currently, the city probably will not be able to pay for a defense for any city employee that is operating within the lines of their employment,” she said.
Council Orders Vehicles Turned In — Again
Facing that exposure, the council voted 3-0 Friday to recall all non-emergency city vehicles. It was the third time council members have made that demand of city employees; the previous two requests were largely ignored, with vehicles staying in employees’ hands. The recall does not apply to emergency vehicles such as police cruisers and fire apparatus, but Walker acknowledged that first responders are losing their coverage as well. Asked directly whether the Fire Department would respond to a call Saturday, she offered a less-than-certain answer: “We hope so. They should show up.” Mayor Carletta Davis instructed city employees not to comply with the council’s recall order.
The uncertainty extended to Prichard’s rank-and-file. A man who identified himself as a Prichard police detective pressed council members on what the lapse would mean for his paycheck. “If we can’t work, we can’t drive these vehicles, are we still getting paid?” he asked. No one on the council could give him a definitive answer.
By Monday, City Attorney Josh Briskman said the fears about first responders going dark had not materialized. “If people are worried about them calling Prichard Fire Department and them not showing up, that is not our directive right now. The fire department needs to continue to operate, and I think that has been made clear to everybody that needs to know that,” he said. Councilwoman Stephani Johnson-Norwood said the fire chief had reported that no fire calls went unanswered over the weekend.
Mayor Weighs Self-Insurance
Speaking publicly for the first time since the city lost its municipal coverage, Davis told a City Council committee Monday that she is exploring whether Prichard could self-insure, an approach already used by the city of Mobile and other larger Alabama municipalities. In the meantime, she said, the city will rely on the immunity protection Alabama law extends to municipalities.
Davis said AMIC cited a high number of claims and difficulty getting information from the previous mayoral administration when it decided to cancel the city’s policy. She cited figures showing that over the past five years, AMIC paid about $1.6 million in claims against Prichard and its employees, while the city paid roughly $3 million in premiums over that same span.
“We want to be good stewards of the dollars that we’re charged with managing,” Davis said during a meeting of the Public Works and Public Safety Committee. “And so it’s, you know, almost a blessing that this has come up for us to be able to re-evaluate to see what is the best financial path forward for our city.”
City Attorney Briskman echoed the mayor’s reasoning, pointing to the same gap between premiums paid and claims paid out. “Based on those numbers, the city could do it,” he said. “And there are a lot of municipalities moving away from the insurance company that let us go.”
Not everyone at the meeting was ready to commit to that path. On Friday, Council Attorney Walker had expressed doubt about whether Prichard was in the financial position to self-insure. Johnson-Norwood said Monday she believes the proposal has merit but wants outside expertise brought in before the city commits. “But I do think we need to look at … some insurance experts and just make sure we’re doing the right thing,” she said.
Under state law, civil liability against a city or its employees is generally capped at $100,000 per injured person and $300,000 per incident. That cap does not apply to lawsuits filed against employees in their individual capacities, and without insurance, the city would be on the hook to directly pay litigation costs, plus any settlement or judgment, that AMIC previously covered.
Garbage Piling Up, Contract Fight Looms
The insurance lapse also reaches into an essential city service most residents notice immediately: trash pickup. Because garbage trucks were covered under the same lapsing policy, the council voted 3-0 Friday to declare a formal “state of emergency” for garbage collection after RDK Truck Sales, the company that leases Prichard its garbage trucks, demanded the vehicles be returned. Residents say pickups have since fallen behind, with trash piling up in parts of the city.
“We have a great deal of trash piles on the ground,” Davis said.
To bridge the gap, Davis is asking the council to approve a 90-day emergency contract with A-1 McDuffie Sanitation, at a cost of $14.25 per residence per month — a little more than $128,000 a month based on roughly 9,000 homes, though city officials have raised questions about whether that household count is accurate and whether Prichard is fully collecting the $15 monthly municipal fee meant to fund the service. The council is scheduled to vote on the contract Thursday. A city spokesperson said garbage collection would resume on a delayed schedule in the meantime.
“We also want to make sure that we are providing consistent garbage service to our citizens, and I want to remind everyone that by contracting out, we will be able to do that,” Davis said.
Contentious Meeting Over Who Should Haul the Trash
Davis has said she wants to outsource garbage collection on a long-term basis and shift city sanitation employees to other roles, a position that triggered a sharp back-and-forth with council members during Monday’s committee meeting. Johnson-Norwood pushed back forcefully, calling the situation “a manufactured emergency” and pressing the mayor on why the city’s own garbage trucks haven’t been repaired instead of leased or replaced by an outside contractor.
“Will you tell us why the trucks have not been repaired?” Johnson-Norwood asked, slapping the table during the meeting. Davis responded that the broken trucks predate her time in office. “They’ve been there 14 months,” she said. Johnson-Norwood shot back: “Well, you’ve been here for almost 10. And you came in claiming that you were going to fix these things.”
Johnson-Norwood said two of the city’s own garbage trucks are parked behind the Prichard Department of Public Services, overgrown with vines, while a third has been at a Mobile repair shop for 15 months. She wants the two idle trucks transferred for a full evaluation before the city commits further to McDuffie. “We want these trucks that are sitting — you can look at them at public works; they’re over-covered with vines and so forth,” she said after the meeting. “If they’re no good, OK, we can’t use those, OK, that means we have to stay with McDuffie longer. … If we have to use them to get services for our citizens, we will. OK? But in the meantime, don’t hand me a crap of bull and say, ‘This is the only way we got to go.'”
Davis said the problems go beyond repair costs. She said the city currently has only a handful of sanitation workers to drive garbage trucks, and that leasing costs $8,500 a month per truck. She said her predecessor’s administration took out eight-year loans on trucks designed to last only two years, and that loan payments for the trucks and garbage cans — totaling roughly $60,000 a month — won’t be paid off until October.
“I am trying my best to fix it, as you said that I committed to doing,” Davis said. “I’m trying to fix it with our council. … The citizens are tired of every time you turn around, (they) can’t get (their) garbage picked up ’cause a truck just broke down.” She said contracting with a private company would mean any future breakdown or staffing shortage is no longer the city’s problem to solve.
Davis also spoke about her own experience with unreliable trash service before taking office. “Two years ago, I was having problems with my trash, my garbage being picked up,” she said. “It wasn’t picked up for a year – for an entire year. … I had to burn my garbage.” Garbage collection complaints are not new in Prichard; residents similarly complained in 2022 that pickups were happening only once every two weeks instead of weekly.
Despite the friction, council members and Davis agreed the immediate crisis demands action, and the council appeared prepared to approve the emergency McDuffie contract Thursday while continuing to debate a long-term solution.
Background: A City Already Under Financial Strain
Prichard, a city of roughly 20,000 residents just northwest of Mobile in Mobile County, has weathered years of well-documented financial difficulty, including a municipal bankruptcy filing in 2020 tied largely to underfunded pension obligations. The insurance lapse and garbage collection dispute add a new and immediate dimension to those long-running budget pressures, touching both the city’s workforce and the public services residents rely on daily. City officials say they hope to have replacement insurance coverage, a resolution on self-insurance, and a long-term garbage collection plan in place in the coming weeks.
Council Approves Emergency Trash Contract
The council followed through on Thursday, voting to approve the 90-day emergency contract with A-1 McDuffie Sanitation. Civic Affairs Director TJ Pettway said trash pickup under the new contract would begin Saturday.
Under the finalized deal, the city will pay $123,775 per month, or roughly $14.25 per home. Pettway said Prichard’s 911 addressing databases show more than 8,600 homes in the city, a figure lower than the roughly 9,000-home estimate officials had been working from earlier in the week.
“We’ll communicate that with the citizens on the day they will receive service,” Pettway said. “In this transitional process, it will have no delays, but we will have trucks rolling. We’ll have a contract and a concentrated plan in place in order to have that communication process.”
Pettway said three of the city’s own garbage trucks are currently being serviced and could return to the streets soon. Mayor Davis said the focus for the next 90 days is simply restoring reliable service. “We don’t know what’s gonna happen, but what we are going to do for the next 90 days is get trash off of the ground and garbage picked up,” Davis said. “We’re very pleased that the council and administration were able to work together to resolve that issue.”
The vote came days after Clifton Dubose, the Prichard sanitation worker at the center of Tuesday’s road-rage shooting, was identified as the driver of a city garbage truck at the time of the incident. Mayor Davis said the case leaves the city with just two garbage truck drivers on staff.
Shooting Involving Sanitation Worker Tests the City’s Insurance Gap
Tuesday’s shooting involving Dubose has emerged as an early test of how Prichard will handle liability now that its municipal insurance policy has lapsed. City officials say Prichard will pay any resulting claims itself, out of city funds, until it secures a new insurance carrier, since AMIC’s policy covering the city and its employees expired Aug. 1 — just days before the shooting.
If the driver and passenger who were shot at during the confrontation file a claim against the city, it would be among the first Prichard has faced since coverage lapsed, raising questions about who within city government will investigate, manage and defend the claim. Mobile-based personal injury attorney Bill Eiland, who says he has filed more than 50 claims against Alabama cities, said he recently filed a claim against Prichard shortly before the insurance lapsed, on behalf of a client he says was seriously injured after falling through a defective manhole cover on city property. He said that claim will still be handled by the city’s former insurance carrier, but new claims will not have an insurer behind them.
“Now there is no insurance company, so you’re just dealing with a frantic Prichard City Hall,” Eiland said. “You know who’s handling the claims? Who’s trying to adjust these claims?”
“Just because they don’t have any insurance doesn’t mean they don’t have to pay the claim,” Eiland said, noting that Alabama’s statutory caps on municipal liability — generally $100,000 per injured person and $300,000 per incident — still apply regardless of whether the city carries insurance. He said a family in the Dubose case could potentially seek damages for emotional trauma and property damage, and that claims may simply take longer to resolve while the city has no insurer to process them.
Eiland added that the situation illustrates why drivers should carry uninsured motorist coverage on their own policies. “Uninsured motorist coverage is for you in case that other party has either no insurance at all or not enough insurance,” he said. “This is a perfect example as to why you would need uninsured motorist coverage if you had a claim against the city.”
South Alabama News asked the mayor’s office how claims will be handled going forward, whether the city attorney’s office or outside counsel would manage them, and whether any claims have been submitted since the insurance lapsed, but did not receive a response.
Update, Aug. 7, 2026: A1 McDuffie Sanitation deployed four trucks — three automated side-loader models and one rear-loader — to begin collecting the backlog of household garbage across Prichard starting Saturday, Aug. 8. Crews said they would collect garbage that has accumulated on the ground, including at homes with more than one garbage cart, as part of efforts to establish a consistent collection schedule under the 90-day contract.