Two days after about a dozen West Alabama and Black Belt mayors gathered in Thomasville to voice their support for the West Alabama Corridor, the project hit another speed bump in Montgomery.
At a Joint Contract Review Committee meeting in Montgomery on Thursday, Sen. Chris Elliott, R-Josephine, announced he wanted to put a hold on the contract to design and build the first phase of the highway, Alabama Daily News reported.
In response, Rep. Chris England, D-Tuscaloosa, whose district will be served by the widened highway, froze all $112 million in highway construction projects that were on the committee’s agenda, according to Alabama Daily News. Committee members and ALDOT officials will meet next week to discuss the impasse.
Elliott is no fan of the project. He has stated that he thinks the West Alabama Corridor ties up too much state money that could be used for other road projects. He earlier said the money would be better spent adding lanes to I-65, and Lt. Gov. Will Ainsworth agreed on social media.
In response to the negative talk about the Highway 43 Corridor, Thomasville Mayor Sheldon Day hosted a meeting Tuesday that drew more than a dozen mayors and representatives to voice their support for the project. The next day, Day met with Ainsworth to discuss transportation issues.
Day said at Tuesday’s meeting that it’s West Alabama’s and the Black Belt’s turn.
“When Gov. (Kay) Ivy announced this initiative, she wasn’t trying to bring us to the front of the table and lord over everyone,” Day said. “She was finally giving us a seat at the table. We don’t want to drive the bus. We just want to be on the bus. And for the last 50 or 60 years, we have not been on the bus.”
England made the same point at the contract review meeting Thursday. Alabama Daily News said England argued that the project is being questioned because it will serve a region with “a whole bunch of poor folks, a lot of Black folks.”
Ground was broken for the 80-mile expansion of the highway from Mobile to the Tuscaloosa County line in November 2021. Eight miles are under construction around Linden, marking the beginning of a $760 million project that West Alabama officials said has been promised by every Alabama governor for seven decades.
State Sen. Robert Stewart told the Black Belt News Network Tuesday that he is confident the Highway 43 Corridor will happen. “I have no worries,” Stewart said. “But we have to fight the mindset that it’s either-or. We can do both (the I-65 expansion and the Highway 43 Corridor).”
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