Last week, Alabama Senate President Pro Tem Del Marsh (R-Anniston) was a guest speaker at the South Baldwin Chamber of Commerce’s Leadership series and gave a talk on many of the issues the state has been facing or will face in the coming legislative session next year.
When it came time for audience questions, Marsh was asked about whether or not he would pledge that the Coastal Alabama counties would get adequate support for necessary road and infrastructure upgrades in light of the legislature using BP Oil Spill funds to help shore up the state’s budget back in 2016.
Marsh reviewed the fight about the oil spill funds, intimating that Baldwin and Mobile counties under some discussed scenarios were lucky to get anything at all.
“I’m not going to argue politics, but there was a chance that none of it was going to come back to Baldwin County,” Marsh said. “It’s hard to believe, but we made sure that we put people in a room, we forced this issue, and made sure that decision was made before that money got spent elsewhere, and trust me, money in government doesn’t stay there long, they find a way to spend it. So I was possibly not as pleased as you want to be, but I was pleased that money did get to the coast as it should have.”
The deal Marsh and other leaders helped craft back in 2016 took the $610 million gained from the oil spill settlement and only gave $90 million of it back to Baldwin and Mobile counties to split between themselves for much-needed road and infrastructure projects.
Several projects in Baldwin County that were depending on that funding were either adjusted or shelved completely, like the four-laning expansion of Country Road 181 from 104 to 32.
The suggestion from Marsh and other Alabama legislators that Coastal Alabama should be happy we got anything at all is insulting to the people of this region and what we had to live through during the BP Oil Spill.
Did oil wash up on the beaches of Birmingham? Was Anniston’s shrimping industry devastated? Did a lack of seasonal visitors devastate the restaurant industry and lead to several business closures in Huntsville?
Of course not. That was Coastal Alabama’s burden to bear.
And when it came time to make right and give this area what it truly deserved in terms of monetary funding to help with the recovery from the devastation of the oil spill, our state legislature, true to form, took Coastal Alabama’s money and reallocated it throughout the state.
Despite the fact that Baldwin County generates a large amount of tax revenue for this state and makes up the bulk of the state’s tourism industry, the rest of the state still can’t figure out that if they would invest money down here for roads and infrastructure, it would return to them exponentially more tax and tourism spending than the initial investment.
Investing in Baldwin County will pay dividends that will benefit the entire state. Give us the tools and funding we need, and we can get the job done.
So, Senator Marsh, we hope you hold to your pledge to make sure that Coastal Alabama gets the money and resources we need.
The people of our county will hold you to that, though the track record on promises from Montgomery is that promises to Baldwin County aren’t often fulfilled.
