1. Mobile Bridge & Bayway ‘dead’

• Gov. Kay Ivey has declared the Mobile Bridge and Bayway project “dead” after a critical vote by a local governance group.
• The Eastern Shore Metropolitan Planing Organization (MPO) on Wednesday voted to remove the Mobile Bridge and Bayway proposal from its Transportation Improvement Plan, a move that Ivey warned would derail the project some 20 years in the making.
• “With the action taken today, there is no pathway forward, and this project is dead,” Ivey said Wednesday evening.
• Members of the MPO, which includes local mayors and county commissioners, voiced opposition to the Alabama Department of Transportation’s plan to use tolls to finance the $2.1 billion construction. A proposal released earlier this year estimated one-way tolls ranging from $3 to $6, with discounts for local commuters. The span over the Mobile River shipping channel and reconstructed bridge along Mobile Bay are meant to ease frequent traffic congestion along Interstate 10 as it passes through the Wallace Tunnel.
• Earlier in the day, Gov. Kay Ivey urged Daphne Mayor Dane Haygood, who chairs the Eastern Shore MPO, and Mobile Mayor Sandy Stimpson, who chairs the Mobile MPO, to keep the project on their Transportation Improvement Plan lists, warning that removing it would threaten the ability to get federal dollars for the bridge and other projects.
• Full story HERE.

 

2. Screwy election night.

• Montgomery had a big election Tuesday night, and if you were paying attention, it really took a while for the numbers to roll in.
• Now we know why.
• Memory cards with with precinct vote totals were “corrupted” when poll workers removed them improperly from voting machines, according to Montgomery County Election Center Director Darryl Parker.
• Then, a printer went down causing the election center to delay posting the results.
• It was a “calamity of errors,” Parker said, and it came at the worst possible time.
• Parker and Montgomery City Clerk Brenda Blalock insist there was nothing nefarious going on, just mistakes from tired poll workers.
• And it helps that the elections for Mayor and State House really weren’t close. Probate Judge Steven Reed and businessman David Woods will face each other in a runoff in October.
• Woods didn’t hesitate from connecting the election failures to his opponent, whose office supervises the election center. “If Steven Reed can’t run an election… how can he be trusted to run the city?” Woods said in a Facebook post.
• Reed said he would take a “wait and see” approach to determine what the investigation uncovered.
• Alabama Secretary of State John Merrill says his office received several complaints and that they are looking into them.
• Read more from the Advertiser’s Sara MacNeil HERE and watch coverage from WSFA’s Lydia Nusbaum HERE.

 

3. Chamber points to Alabama job growth.

• As the country gets ready for its annual Labor Day celebration of the workforce, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce is acknowledging Alabama’s record job and wage growth.
• According to the Chamber, Alabama has added 40,000 jobs since July 2018. The state ranks 10th in the nation for job growth and 18th in the nation for wage growth.
• The average weekly earnings for Alabamians in June 2019 were $861.80, which is $45.83 more than what people saw the previous year.
• Alabama’s unemployment rate is at 3.3%, the lowest ever recorded in state history. That’s good enough for 16th lowest in the nation.
• Read more, including reaction from Gov. Kay Ivey and Business Council of Alabama CEO Katie Britt, in Caroline Beck’s full story HERE.

 

4. More details on shock slayings.

• More information is coming in about the killing of the wife, child and mother-in-law of Montgomery Biscuits baseball player Blake Bivens.
• Matthew Thomas Bernard, 18, was arrested and charged with killing his mother, 62-year-old Joan Bernard; his sister, 25-year-old Emily Bivens; and his toddler nephew, 14-month-old Cullen Bivens.
• The Biscuits cancelled their doubleheader game in the wake of the killings. Tampa Bay Rays Manager Kevin Cash said “All we can do is kind of put our arms around (Bivens) as an organization, him and his family, and do the best we can.”
• The Biscuits are a Rays Double A team.
• Read and watch more HERE.

 

5. Mattis: Bitter politics threaten US.

• Former Defense Secretary Jim Mattis is warning that bitter political divisions threaten American society, saying he views “tribalism” as a greater risk to the nation’s future than foreign adversaries.
• The retired Marine general, who resigned in December 2018 in a policy dispute with President Donald Trump, said he worries about the state of American politics and the administration’s treatment of allies.
• “We all know that we’re better than our current politics,” Mattis wrote in an essay adapted from his new book and published Wednesday by The Wall Street Journal. “Unlike in the past, where we were unified and drew in allies, currently our own commons seems to be breaking apart.”
• Mattis said the problem is made worse by this administration’s disregard for the enduring value of allies, which he alluded to in the resignation letter he gave Trump on Dec. 20.
• “Nations with allies thrive,” he wrote in the Journal essay, “and those without them wither. Alone, America cannot protect our people and our economy. At this time, we can see storm clouds gathering.”
• Read more and link to the op-ed itself HERE.

 

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