Alabama

It beats the “Stars Fell” motif used for the past half decade.  Via the Alabama Governor’s office:

Insurance Journal Friday carried a short AP article discussing upcoming changes to the employee insurance program.  The highlights of the revisions effective 1 January 2010 are reported to be:

• Employees must attend a free health screening, or pay a $25/month surcharge.
• If cholesterol, glucose, weight, or blood pressure issues are uncovered, employees must enroll and participate in an appropriate wellness program, or pay a $25/month surcharge.

Now, at first glance that seems like an interesting, novel approach to managing health care costs – to incent covered members to head off new preventable, expensive health issues before they emerge.

However, it troubles me on two counts:

First, the idea rubs me as being “over the line” in terms of protecting employee privacy.  Do you really want to voluntarily surrender details on your health to your boss, over and beyond what’s already necessary?  Disclosing that you need to take a sick day or seek short-term disability is understandable, but I’m not sure I want my vitals being fed to the payroll system.

Second, with health care being a major topic in public debate this political campaign season, there is a fair amount of noise from the folks who want to see state-provided, single-payer health care.  With an initiative such as the State of Alabama’s….surely I can’t be the only person who sees government-mandated medical inspections (e.g. the poking, prodding, and duck-walking associated with military induction…but for everybody) and state-run reeducation camps fat farms down the slippery slope.

Seen in the Dothan Eagle:

With the Florida panhandle county of Washington deciding Monday to pass on a proposed toll road, organizers say they will continue with the project and are now focusing on their eastern neighbor, Jackson County. [...]

Washington County held two public meetings about the proposed road, and commissioners faced overflow crowds full of residents concerned about eminent domain, the process through which a government entity can take ownership of private land. Other residents were concerned the limited access road would allow traffic to zip through the county without stopping to patronize local merchants.

The commission voted 3-2 against entering into an agreement with the toll road organizers to bring the road through the county.

The map at left should help illustrate why this is a bit of an inconvenience to connector proponents.

As I understand it (and I should disclaim that I live in Connecticut, am interested because of family ties and roadgeekiness, but might not be getting the full story up here in Yankee-land), the thinking has been that a Dothan/I-10 connector would run a bit to the west of Dothan.   The shortest route from such a point to the beach would run through Washington County.

Failure for connector proponents to secure right of way in the county would mean that the ultimate alignment will be a bit longer than would otherwise be necessary.

Personally, I find the concerns about business drying up in the county a little short-sighted. 

True, today Washington County gets a bit of a tourist traffic flow, from folks taking the “back way” through Enterprise and Bonifay to the beach, and it’s likely that some of those smaller businesses will suffer if traffic is moving through on a tollway.

However, if a new controlled-access highway is going to be built — be it a freeway or a tollway — it stands to reason that much of the traffic now sneaking through Washington County will shift to the new road.

If the new road passes through the county, there’s some opportunity to develop new businesses and services to take advantage of the increased traffic.   But if the road goes elsewhere…so do the development opportunities.

There has been a bit of news over the past several months leaking out of the Wiregrass suggesting that work might finally be moving ahead to get Dothan’s I-10 connector built.

However, judging by this article from the Birmingham News (which I apologize for not mentioning earlier), a few folks have grander plans:

Developers and Wiregrass economic development groups want to build the state’s first toll road that would connect central Alabama to the Florida Panhandle.

Transportation officials and Gov. Bob Riley have had several meetings with the developers proposing a public-private road that could ultimately run from Montgomery to Panama City. [...]

There are no estimates of the cost to build the road, but transportation officials estimate it would be in the billions of dollars.

If the toll road is built, it would replace a connector road proposed by ALDOT from Midland City to I-10.

Having lived in southeast Alabama for a few years, and with my wife’s family tied to the area, I am very familiar with US 231 southeast from Montgomery.  There was a time that I could quite literally drive it in my sleep.

While Dothan probably does need better access to I-10 to bolster its local economy and to aid local traffic flow, I do wonder if upgrading US 231 is overkill.  True, it’s not an expressway and traffic can get bogged down in the traffic lights at Troy and Ozark, but it’s a fine road well-suited to its traffic flow.

But getting approval for tolls to accelerate construction of Dothan’s I-10 connector…that would be something for folks in the Wiregrass to get excited about.

As a former resident of the Wiregrass region of southeastern Alabama, it’s nice to see some (admittedly slow) progress being made on connecting Dothan to the interstate system. From the Dothan Eagle:

ALDOT is currently soliciting residents’ opinions of three possible routes for the freeway, and no route will be chosen until the department is able to review the feedback.

“I don’t have any exact time frame,” Biddick said. “We have to look at any potential issues brought up in the feedback, then address those to determine which route would be the best.”[...]

ALDOT expects the project to greatly reduce through traffic in the city.

“I think it’ll help reduce a lot of the congestion on Ross Clark Circle and allow for a lot more development around here,” Biddick said.

For those of you who haven’t had the pleasure (misfortune?) of experiencing the Ross Clark Circle, especially when hordes of folks are headed to/from Panama City Beach and the Redneck Riviera…the Circle can be bad.

Dothan has a surprising amount of commercial development for a town its size. Admittedly, a lot of that is the result of Dothan being the only town its size within some distance, and therefore is able to support quite a bit of commercial development due to its role as a regional economic hub.

Talk of connecting Dothan to the Interstate system, either with its own spur, or as part of a larger project extending up to I-185 outside Columbus, GA; or to the new bypass being built around Montgomery, AL, has been around for quite a while.

However, I wonder if regional planners might be asking for trouble by promoting a new freeway as an excuse for more development. After all, even though Dothan is commercially more significant than its census figures would suggest…there is a limit to the amount of development it can sustain.

If local leaders encourage development along a new freeway bypass, I can’t help but expect that the Circle will start to be as blighted as downtown Dothan became when businesses shifted to the Circle.

OK, maybe a better subject line would have been “can we make this go away so I can fight the bribery charge?” Quoting Insurance Journal:

Attorneys for Mississippi attorney Richard “Dickie” Scruggs asked a federal judge to dismiss criminal contempt charges that he ignored a court order to turn over documents about insurance claims after Hurricane Katrina.[...]

A defense lawyer told U.S. District Judge C. Roger Vinson that Scruggs hopes to put the Katrina case to rest and concentrate on unrelated federal charges filed in Oxford, Miss., where Scruggs is accused of conspiring to bribe a judge in a dispute over $26.5 million in legal fees.

“We just want to get out of here and go deal with the problems in Mississippi,” Scruggs attorney John W. Keker said during a hearing.

Seen in the Birmingham Times:

State officials plan to open 26 miles of Corridor X next month, giving motorists a straight shot from Forestdale to Memphis.

A new 20-mile section of highway will open Nov. 14 from Industrial Parkway in Jasper to U.S. 78 in Graysville. At the same time, transportation officials will officially open a six-mile stretch from Graysville to Cherry Avenue in Forestdale that has been open to local traffic only.[...]

The opening will leave about five miles of the corridor leading to Interstate 65 in Birmingham to be finished, plus construction of the interchange at I-65, before the corridor is completed.

With my first post-college job having been in Lower Alabama and my family living in Memphis, I was rather familiar with the hodge-podge of 2-lane and freeway alignments of US 78 between Birmingham and Memphis. (For example, pictures of my most recent trek up US 78 can be found in my gallery, starting here.)

While I’m a fan of back roads, there is quite a bit of truck traffic on that corridor, so seeing the route converted to freeway doesn’t upset me. It’s just amazing, however, when you think about how long the upgrade has taken (over 20 years).

Interstate-standard sections of Corridor X are supposed to be resigned as I-22 once a connection is made to the interstate system, presumably first at the I-65 interchange to be built north of downtown Birmingham.