This week’s column
By Jennifer J. Foster
Published: March 8, 2010
In case you missed it in Saturday’s print edition of the Opelika-Auburn News, my most recent column is now online. Check it out:
Exploring misconceptions about a constitutional convention
I used this week’s column as an opportunity to answer some questions a reader posed to me after reading my column on Feb. 27.
Your thoughts are welcome.
Frederick Road funding: Blame Obama?
By Jennifer J. Foster
Published: March 4, 2010
This blog enjoys a broad geographic readership, so I don’t often focus on issues specific to the Auburn-Opelika area.
But sometimes, it seems appropriate to do so.
Case in point: The Opelika-Auburn News reported Feb. 23 that federal officials have recalled funding for a major road widening project on Frederick Road, a commercial/residential corridor linking Auburn and Opelika.
This is a big, big deal in our cities.
The economic downturn has slowed our growth somewhat, but it has been clear for a long time—going on 20 years—that the residential nature of Frederick Road would be changing and the road would need to be widened.
The portion to be expanded lies mostly on the Opelika side of the city boundaries, so Mayor Gary Fuller and Opelika city councilors have zeroed in on the project for some time.
The newspaper pondered in an editorial whether the Frederick Road project is truly a priority for Opelika’s municipal leaders. After all, the editorial said, the retail gem that is the TigerTown complex seems to do just fine with the congested road the way it is.
That seemed to strike a nerve with Fuller. In his written response to the editorial, he blamed the federal government, especially President Obama, for the loss of the funds. Congress couldn’t get together on a transportation bill, he wrote, “because all they could talk about in Washington was health care.“
Well, yes, health care has taken a lot of time and effort. But even if a transportation bill had been passed, there is no assurance that the money for this project would be in it. So that’s a red herring.
The editorial made a legitimate point: If it has been the city’s priority all this time, why hasn’t there been more progress? Why didn’t they start the project sooner?
A reader who identified himself only as “Yancey36” pointed out the reason in the comments below Fuller’s response. From the April 25, 2008 edition of the Opelika-Auburn News:
When the Frederick Road project was planned more than 10 years ago, the section of road from the Auburn city limits to Enterprise Drive was to be widened from two lanes to four lanes with a raised median.
About four weeks ago, however, Fuller instructed city administrators to redesign the final leg of Frederick Road without a median. The design change is expected to delay the project.
On Thursday, city officials were told they will need to update the road-widening project’s environmental impact statement following the design change, Fuller said Friday afternoon.
Federal funding for the project, however, is still in place, Fuller said. “We don’t anticipate it changing,” Fuller said of the project’s main source of funding.
As you know, I used to work in the Florida House of Representatives. It just so happens that I once worked on a constituent case with a business owner who was unhappy about Department of Transportation plans to construct raised medians along a state road in our district. The medians, he argued, would hurt his business.
I talked with the engineers who designed the plans. We looked at the traffic history. The engineer explained to me how raised medians encourage predictable traffic flow and discourage accidents caused by right-of-way incursions—accidents, he said, that tend to be high-impact and high-injury.
I tried to explain to the business owner that motorists’ safety, not his clients’ convenience, was the ultimate concern of the DOT. He didn’t like it, but the project went forward as originally planned.
And his business did fine.
Back to our local issue: It was the same story with Frederick Road. Business owners in the area were unhappy with the idea of raised medians restricting access to their properties. They complained to the mayor.
In placating them by ordering the redesign, Fuller gambled with the federal funding.
And he lost.
To be fair—and Fuller even said this at the time he ordered the redesign—city officials didn’t anticipate the funding situation to change, especially so negatively. As a state transportation official told a News reporter, this is the first time in his experience that the department has had such a great loss in funding.
But that’s the point the News made in its editorial: If something is truly a priority, you move on it as soon as you can. You go forward in the best interests of the greatest number of people; you don’t delay it because of dissatisfaction of a relative few.
No matter how noisy—or influential?—they are.
Decipher this
By Jennifer J. Foster
Published: March 3, 2010
I find typos in nearly every press release I receive.
I get a lot of press releases, so I see a lot of typos.
But some stand out.
For example, consider this piece I received today from the Roy Moore campaign:
Judge Roy Moore; Former Chief Justice of Alabama qualified with the Alabama Republican Party today at high noon at the RSA Plaza for the top Job of Alabama.
Judge Moore stated “I am looking forward to leading the State of Alabama into a new decadeOf Growth and Property”.
The major polls show Judge Moore more has a strong lead over the other Republican candidates.
Let’s play a game. Count the typos you see in this release. Post your guess as a comment to this article, e-mail it to me (jefoster1 AT bellsouth DOT net) or tweet it to me (@jefoster) by 9 a.m. Friday.
If you win, I’ll publicly extol your grammatical virtues in this space and maybe come up with some other kind of goofy prize.
The point of this is not just to have a bit of fun at Judge Moore’s expense (though, OK, maybe that’s part of it).
Folks, we’re talking about someone who wants to be the governor of this state. He wants to take on Alabama’s problems, big and small. He’s asking us to have confidence that he is competent to advance creative solutions to those problems.
In my humble opinion, having someone putting out coherent statements on his behalf is the least he can do.
Davis steps out on Rangel
By Jennifer J. Foster
Published: March 2, 2010
From The Hill:
Rep. Artur Davis (D-Ala.) is the first Democratic lawmaker on the Ways and Means Committee and first member of the Congressional Black Caucus (CBC) to call on Rep. Charles Rangel (D-N.Y.) to give up his chairmanship in the wake of an ethics committee admonishment ...
“Rep. Rangel has had a long and distinguished career and I respect his leadership, but I believe Congress needs to do more to restore the public trust,” Davis said in a statement to The Hill. “An ethics committee admonishment is a serious event, and Rep. Rangel should do the right thing and step aside as chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee.”
You may remember a few months ago when I wrote about how Davis has staked out his own ground on policy and in politics—ground separate and aside from that wholly owned by longtime black politicos, no matter how influential they are (or think they are). (In a separate piece that’s worth a look, Huntsville author David Person examined it for USA Today here.)
This is another example of Davis doing that. Charlie Rangel, for better or for worse, has become synonymous with the House of Representatives and the lawmaking process—especially as that process relates to the distribution of trillions of taxpayer dollars.
In this latest dustup, a congressional ethics committee (yes, such a thing exists) found last week that Rangel violated House rules by taking corporate-funded trips to the Caribbean.
It isn’t the first time Rangel has walked a fine line between—ahem, staying “creatively” within the law and breaking it. But this time, as Davis’s defection shows, the prevailing wind against entrenched incumbents may contribute to a situation in which Rangel fins he may have finally worn out the goodwill and longsuffering of his Democratic colleagues.
See also:
“Dem Aide on Rangel: ‘The Dam Broke Today,‘“ from The National Review
The PACT ‘fix,‘ deconstructed
By Jennifer J. Foster
Published: March 2, 2010
I want to call your attention to this great post by my friend Brian, who writes the Flashpoint blog from Huntsville.
He has taken the so-called PACT “bailout” bill—the bill legislators say will stabilize the beleaguered prepaid tuition program—and broken down its numbers.
In short, he’s drawn the reality out of the rhetoric.
Because Brian is such a brilliant guy, this post is detail-dense and, admittedly, a little bit wonkish. But hang with him, because the news he’s revealing is big.
Here’s a hint: The much-ballyhooed tuition cap for contract holders is going to have an unintended consequence.
Think the PACT problem doesn’t affect you because you A) Don’t have kids B) Don’t have kids going to college C) Didn’t buy a PACT plan or D) Have made other financial arrangements for college?
You’re wrong.
Twitter updates from Jennifer at 
