The downtown of this northeast Alabama community of 6,600 looks like a Hollywood version of a sleepy Southern town. Squat buildings line clean streets dotted here and there by benches on wide sidewalks, and there isn't a parking meter anywhere.
Not much is moving along Main Street on a recent afternoon. Several storefronts are shuttered. The recession is taking its toll: The county unemployment rate _ which had risen when the nearby steel plant closed at the start of the decade _ is now 9.6%, compared with the U.S. rate of 8.9% in April.
So when the state announced that some of Alabama's federal stimulus money would be used to re-pave Interstate 59 through Etowah County just outside town, some here, such as former Attalla mayor Larry Means, expected a jobs boomlet, at least for the two years or so that it will take to resurface the 11-mile stretch of highway.
Those expectations were soon dashed. State pride had to take a back seat to a growing new reality in the world of road-building, and Alabamians watched as the largest state stimulus project announced to date went to an out-of-state company.
"When you're talking about stimulus money for the state of Alabama, and you write the specs so no Alabama company can get it, then whoever gets it, whatever state they're from, that's their stimulus money," says Means, who's now a Democratic state senator representing the area. |
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