FM Talk 1065 Podcasts
Mobile Chamber's Bradley Byrne - Jeff Poor Show - Wednesday 7-24-24
[Music] Look back to the Jeff Port showed up and talk 106.5. They should stay with us on this Wednesday morning. Joining us now on the light call across from overseas from Scotland but we're very appreciative is Bradley Byrne, the president's CEO of the Mobile Chamber of Commerce. Congress may good morning, how you been? I've been doing very well glad to be in Scotland with my wife and the place where her family's originally from and glad to be on your show. Thanks for calling in, I know it's tricky with time zones and phone reception but as you said it was good that you can make time. So we heard this yesterday that Mobile Bay Keeper is a nanaster in tensions to file a lawsuit against the Corps of Engineers. We've seen this play before when the Bay Keeper wants to, they can really slow down something like this. You put out a statement or a statement put out on your behalf yesterday, we'll walk us through where you guys are on these developments. Well first of all this project has been going on for a long time. The permit was issued several years ago and they're just a matter of months from being completed with it. The timing on this in and of itself is inexplicable but we've been digging on Bay Keeper's partners, the lawyers that will actually bring the lawsuit, a group called the Center for Biological Diversity and I invite you and everybody on this call to check this group out. This group on this website says that they relentlessly file lawsuits. They filed 41 lawsuits this year alone including one to block any further leasing for oil and gas in the Gulf of Mexico which affects a lot of jobs in our area immediately. They set up a lobbying operation in the first year of the Trump administration to oppose the Trump administration and they fund themselves off the legal fees that they get out of cages like this. So just the company you keep tells you something if you were lying upon lawyers like that, any Trump lawyers that make their money off a final lawsuit like this and filed them relentlessly, that in and of itself should raise a lot of questions. We're going to do some more research on these guys but they are blocking or attempting to block what could be thousands of logistics and shipping jobs in the mobile area about blocking this deep and wide and shipped out and we're just not going to lay down and let that happen. Well let me let me ask you this and so I mean is it entirely possible just that the bizarre timing, I agree the timing is very very very curious here but also that they're doing this as just it's just good for the Center for Biodiversity or whatever's a business model that this is a way for them to generate you know their to sustain their operations. Yeah I mean we see this all over the United States with these left-wing organizations that file lawsuits like this, force the opposing side into settlement, get a bunch of legal fees off of it which just funds their organization going forward. I mean this Center for Biodiversity has over 200 lawyers, let me count their other folks, 200 lawyers and they relentlessly file lawsuits. Now the bakie percent out a they email yesterday to its members a call for action and if you go to the very top of the call for action is a red button it's in red it's donate so obviously they're trying to break even bakieper is trying to raise money off of this which I am greatly disappointed in. I've been a big supporter of bakieper over the years I have a lot of friends on that board. This action by bakieper in conjunction with a very left-wing organization really disappoints me when we're on a roll here in Mobile on economic development. Well and like I said the time each strange now what they what they want in this lawsuit it's just where they're dumping the sediment where you know what you're dredging and what you're accumulating there they don't like what that's being put and it threatens the Gulf's sturgeon something I've never heard of until this but I don't know much about any of this anyway but why not just why not just dump all this out further out in the Gulf. Well is it really that how much of a heavy lift would that be? Well I don't know the precise figure but when you've got that big a dredging operation and you've got to take that out phone push it out further than go up that's tens of millions of dollars. Now I don't know that this is their exact strategy but it could be that what they're trying to do is to make it so expensive of course as we don't have the money to do that and then it stops the operation just because the cost of it. That's not acceptable either so you know that the chamber is just not going to let one of the major economic development initiatives in the Mobile area for the last couple of decades just come to an end because bakieper in some fall left-wing organizations try to block it with the last minute loss we just not gonna let that happen. Well and let's talk about that I mean what what kind of no I guess it's just business as usual right now but like what what what could this mean like where does it slow it down what are we looking at maybe more short to medium term. Well the project was well along the way it's not finished yet and you know it doesn't deliver the benefits we want until it's finished because the benefits we want is for the ship challenge to get to the depth where it can handle the largest of the ships that come through the Panama Canal which will make mobile the first stop along the Gulf of Mexico because nobody nobody else in the Gulf of Mexico will be able to handle ships that that large and so those ships will have to come into the portamobile first offload the cargo and then lighten up so they can ride up and be able to get into the more shallow ports and that in and of itself makes this a more attractive destination for a lot of people want to be shipping so we've been talking about the portamobile being the fastest growing container port in the country this sort of thing feeds that and actually this particular development just way feeds that it is going to make an enormous difference so we projected at the chamber that we needed another 30 million square feet in warehouse space now that's just not the jobs are involved in building those warehouses which you build the warehouses you build an ecosystem of people to bring the goods to them from move the goods around the logistics professionals who run it we calculate at the south Alabama logistics port it's already been built and we're building out now that that's going to be several thousand jobs over the next ten years and so if we don't have that growth at the port all that stops so this is not a small thing this is a big thing and I don't think the members of the board of oboe baykeeper understand what what stuff they've taken here I don't think they've had the full information they should have had and so it's our job chamber to get that information out there not just to them but to the entire public what up and here's a question where was the keeper and on like did this whole plan like knowing there I mean whatever they want to pride themselves as kind of a watchdog for the bay or whatever it is knowing that this could be a potential hurdle later on or they really involved in the planning for all of this are did they just decide now to get involved well when you do a project this magnitude you have to have a public comment period during the permitting process which is that that happened several years ago so they had every opportunity during that permitting process to offer whatever comment they wanted to offer now I don't know what they said I wasn't paying attention but whatever they said the permit was issued and so once the permit is issued you think they'd say well if we just agree with that let's file some well no they didn't do that so several years later we're on the cusp of getting this project completed they pop up and say we're going to follow all through I'm gonna tell you that makes sense if you're the center for biological diversity it doesn't make sense if you're trying to portray yourself as a local middle of the road environmental group because that's not middle of the road that is anti-development that is anti-economy that is anti-worker and mobile and align yourself with some group that formed a lobbying operation just to oppose President Trump five years ago I just don't understand why they keep it want to be a part of that now and they might are standing with mobile baykeepers like you guys the sort of the the leaders and mobile really go out of your way to the I don't say a piece but keep them in the loop and you call them a middle of the road group and I mean I've been watching these guys for years and years I've always personally been skeptical of them but that's neither here nor there but it just seems like you've got out of your way the mayor as well to to make sure that they they at least have some buy-in to some of these big things that do involve the bay and some of the things that feed the bay just in the last couple years since I've been on the president of the chamber I've had several personal conversations with them and they know my history with they keep they know that I know didn't start out like being possible to them and I've tried to work with them on a number of things but I mean this is just a straw that broke the camel's back this this is enough if they're going to continue to act like this if they're going to be anti-mobile anti-business anti-worker pro anti-Trump people I just think it's time for us to say all right they don't want to negotiate they don't want to be reasonable they just want to go out there and do this sort of stuff is bad for mobile and that's not what the mobile chambers about and we know the threat that this poses to a major economic development project for our whole area and you know enough enough we're going to stand up and fight against them joy by Bradley burn of the mobile chamber also former congressman for the first congressional district you were recently in London for the air show they are always a big big event for a lot of Alabama's you see a lot of Alabama pull the codes there any takeaways yeah a lot first of all lieutenant governor ain't worth his wishes and I just can't say enough about what he did during the air show not just a push mobile but push all of Alabama he was terrific I mean I can't tell you how good he was at what he did and I didn't know that about him I knew I always had friendship with me but I didn't know exact good at that I was very impressed we had a bunch of good meetings including with Airbus including with ST aerospace which is people have known a long time in Singapore airlines that at Berkeley we've talked to a couple of new companies that we've been around before but haven't had direct discussions with and I think with good discussions we had a great reception Monday night in London had terrific attendance a good interaction there so as we mature that third line added Airbus next year and we've become the fourth largest producer of commercial aircrafts in the world that makes us much more attractive for suppliers in other parts of the world to locate a mobile and I'm really pleased with the conversations we're having with Airbus about that and I think you're going to see them being very helpful does to get more of those clients here because that helps them they need their suppliers closer to them so the bottom line is that the future for the aviation sector and mobile is very bright and I'm just pleased with the entire local effort that we've made and entire state effort we've made to continue to reach out and bring more businesses here and to expand the ones we've already got well last question the elephant in the room I mean that the politics right now Congressman when when Biden won in when he won in 2020 and we were told the chaos you'll start I talked to people in our listening audience a very prominent media figures they just wanted the chaos to stop they want to Trump out of the way that the tweets and the way it made people all kinds of crazy they just just getting out of here we don't care we just won't buy and we just want things to settle down that's all we want so normalcy in our politics I don't know in American history have we had or at least in my lifetime have we had a more tumultuous chaotic time in American politics in this last month that you can remember I can't by the way you left out there that Joe Baum is going to unify everybody yeah he said really poor job that too I remember 1968 when London Johnson dropped out of the race March or April which obviously was four months earlier the cycle than this even that wasn't as chaotic as this so yeah this is a mess it's a mess for the country but it's particular mess for the Democrats the polls that I've seen I know it's early and we've got to wait let the polls calm down the polls I'm saying show that president Biden leads vice president Harris as well so I don't know that this necessarily has bought much for the Democrats at the top of the ticket I really think what they're trying to do is to keep from there being a slaughter down ticket in the US Senate race the US congressional race I think that's what they're really focused on that they're trying to keep Biden from being a drag on them I'm not sure that vice president Harris won't be a drag on by the ticket once people start focusing on her policies her positions her experience inside the Biden administration remember she was the one that they designated early on the administration to be in charge of their efforts on the border we talk about a failure man that one of the biggest failures I've ever seen so when we start focusing on her what she's done what her positions are wherever she is right now my prediction she's gonna follow down some yeah and I said I don't think this does much to really kind of settle and chaos maybe not the right word well I guess we have an attempted assassination yes but be beyond that I just I don't think this really is what the doctor ordered and I you know it's gonna be it's kind of crazy to watch but this is it really it should get a bump out of it and you're right I think this was all driven by down ballot races yeah I know they've been worried about that because I've heard directly from a couple of my democratic friends that that was real concern for them and if you listen to them publicly now they're actually standing very believe you know we're gonna be fine and all that I think they're really talking about the down ballot races and I'm not so sure that that's correct well maybe one or two of them I think it best maybe maybe you salvage one or two but you do it at a I mean this last question we get you out of here on this they've been doing it at the expense of like having the moral high ground they've been preaching to us about democracy for the last four years and then they just totally just throw out their entire 20 24 democratic primary and say the hell of that and we're gonna put this person in place yeah this is the old days when a handful of Democratic bosses ran Democratic Party that's what they've gone back to with this it's pretty transparent to everybody America that's what's going on so if I hear one more thing from the Democrat about how we're trying to save democracy they just prove they don't care about democracy I think you're right about that Congressman we always appreciate you coming on thanks for coming on to talk about this again some clarity to the situation let's talk about again soon when you get back over here happy to do it all right that's Bradley Byrne with the Mobile Chamber of Commerce Colin from Scotland we'll be right back this is effort talk one oh six five you (upbeat music)