The Tunnel to Nowhere

It was a perfect storm of missteps and corruption, accelerated by a 1901 state constitutional amendment focused on protecting local business interests making sure no small communities of African-Americans or poor white trash could raise or spend any tax dollars except through state control. The entire state was tilted heavily towards economic interests – small businesses, iron & steel mills and farms, but a whole lot of “old boy cronyism” has always been a part of the mix. Protecting worker or maintaining environmental safeguards were not only not priorities; they weren’t even on the agenda.

When WWII ended, and the federal government wanted to find an insular, backwater community where strangers (read: enemy agents) would stick out like sore thumbs, they picked Huntsville, Alabama as the perfect spot. In 1950, former Nazi rocketeer Wernher Von Braun and his team, were moved to what would become known as the Redstone Arsenal in Huntsville to build America’s missile program. Most of the rest of Alabama continued just the way it had for decades, insular and economically and educationally dramatically behind the rest of the country. Steel production move offshore, and Alabama felt the pain.

It was no big surprise when, in 1996, the Environmental Protection Agency ordered Jefferson County (the county surrounding Birmingham) to stop dumping raw untreated sewage into the Black Warrior and Cahaba rivers. Municipal officials, lacking any serious infrastructure experience or any ability to levy local taxes, railed at first… and then saw this as an opportunity to spread the wealth to local businesses. They created a series of infrastructure projects which they told the public were necessary to comply with the EPA order – some not properly engineered and many actually not even necessary – without regard to the fatted and padded bids that locals provided. So they issued bonds and borrowed to the hilt. Lots of folks profited by this massive spending. Including more than a few elected officials.

“Birmingham, which had thrived from Reconstruction to the mid-1960s as an iron and steel town, had been declining for years. Why not embark on a giant public works project, a Taj Mahal of sewage systems, to foster jobs and development? … Rather than replacing more than 2,000 miles of decrepit sewer pipes, the county dispensed contracts to build water treatment plants, pumping stations and administrative buildings, some on slag heaps left behind by closed steel mills… All this debt was supposed to be paid off with revenue from the new sewer system — in other words, by fees the county would charge residents whose homes were hooked up to the system. As the debt grew, so did those fees — and the public outcry. By 2002, the average sewer bill in the county had doubled, to $18 a month.

“One thing led to another. In an attempt to expand the system and add new ratepayers, the county tried to bore a giant tunnel beneath the Cahaba River, Birmingham’s main source of drinking water. But the tunnel was so unstable that the endeavor was abandoned. The county spent millions just to extract the boring machine, which had become entombed underground… ‘That cost $19 million,’ Mr. Young told the bond analysts. ‘Now it’s called ‘the Tunnel to Nowhere.’’” New York Times, February 18^th. The theory of having users pick up the tab became solidly unrealistic, so a local tax was created to fill in the void.

As 17 local officials were arrested and ultimately convicted of graft and corruption from what had now ballooned into a $4 billion debt, folks in Jefferson weren’t too keen on paying off that corrupt legacy debt. Financial resources were being strained, and with the recession and signs of governmental weakness across the country pushing muni-bond rates higher to cover the anticipated increase in risk, Jefferson County was teetering. In the summer of 2010, when the state used that 1901 state constitutional amendment to pull Jefferson’s right to that special local tax, the house of cards collapsed. Jefferson County file for federal bankruptcy protection in the fall, but even months later, no one really knows what the roadmap is to returning that government back to any semblance of a normal community.

What’s life like in Jefferson County these days? They had to move prisoners from one jail to overcrowded conditions at another because there was no money for staff for two facilities. “The county roads here need paving, and the tax collector needs help… There is no money for them, either… There is no money for a lot of things around here…There is no money for holiday D.U.I. checkpoints, litter patrols or overtime pay at the courthouse. None for crews to pull weeds or pick up road kill — not even when, as happened recently, an unlucky cow was hit near the town of Wylam… Ordinary citizens can’t do much at this point. Jefferson County has even canceled municipal elections scheduled for this August. It seems that there’s no money for voting booths, either.” NY Times.

As some states are beginning to find surpluses (like even Michigan), it is easy to forget and write off other communities where educational standards make even mediocre an unachievable dream, where the system has simply failed. These people are Americans too, betrayed by corrupt or incompetent local officials, but every-much deserving of the kind of local government that most of the rest of the country has or is close to restoring. How much in our deficit reduction efforts will continue to deny these people the live the rest of us enjoy? Are you really comfortable with that?

I’m Peter Dekom, and harsh choices and difficult times can create exceptionally difficult decisions and sacrifices from the rest of us.