With public opposition building against a proposed $6 one-way toll on a new Mobile River Bridge and Bayway, two local planning boards emerged as the bodies with the practical power to stop the project in its current form.
Mobile-based political strategist Jon Gray said the state had failed to lock down that local support in advance. “Somebody dropped the ball,” Gray said of the oversight.
Why the local boards matter
Gray said a freeway project that uses any federal funding must appear in the transportation improvement program, or TIP, maintained by the relevant local planning organizations. For the Bayway project, that means the Mobile County Metropolitan Planning Organization and the Eastern Shore MPO.
Those approvals were needed by the end of the federal fiscal year on Sept. 30. While the bulk of the project was to be state funded, primarily through the proposed toll, roughly $140 million in federal money had already been spent across various planning stages, and the state might need to tap a federal bond program. That federal exposure is what triggers the local sign-off requirement.
A commissioner says he will vote no
Mobile County Commissioner Jerry Carl, a member of the Mobile County MPO, said he intended to vote against the plan when the board met.
Carl said he hoped a no vote would kill the toll without sinking the bridge and Bayway project as a whole, though he acknowledged he could not be certain of that outcome.
“We’re just going to have to take a chance because we can’t take a chance on the tolling itself,” Carl said. “So, we’ll vote it down, hopefully, and then we’ll just address that afterwards.”
The Mobile County board’s membership also included Mobile Mayor Sandy Stimpson, city councilmen John Williams and Fred Richardson, and seven Mobile County mayors. Gray predicted that board would ultimately let the plan through: “Looking at the Mobile County Planning organization, I think you’re going to see it pass through.”
Pressure from Montgomery and from voters
Gray attributed part of that expected outcome to lobbying from the state. He said Gov. Kay Ivey and her staff were applying intense pressure on planning organization members.
“I would say there was a full panic coming out of Montgomery when they realized that if the MPOs in both Mobile and Baldwin don’t approve this, this thing could be dead,” Gray said.
In his assessment, though, pressure from constituents would outweigh pressure from the capital, especially on the Eastern Shore.
“The mayor of Daphne, the mayor of Fairhope, the mayor of Spanish Fort, the mayor of Loxley, I don’t see how any of those elected officials can vote in favor of this and choose to keep their jobs,” Gray said.
Meeting schedule
The Mobile County MPO was set to vote at a Wednesday morning meeting. The Eastern Shore MPO had meetings scheduled for Aug. 28 and again on Sept. 25, leaving little margin before the federal deadline.