Gudger outlines Rural Roadmap deliverables: grant portal, new classifications for rural Alabama

The Alabama Rural Roadmap Initiative was created during the 2025 legislative session to develop a coordinated plan for revitalizing the state’s rural communities. Operating under the Alabama Growth Alliance, a public-private partnership established by the Legislature.

At Yellowhammer News’ annual Legislative Preview event last week, Senate President Pro Tem Garlan Gudger (R-Cullman) outlined what rural mayors and county commissions should expect to see from the effort.

“One deliverable would be a grant portal. After listening to every sector under the umbrella of rural Alabama—every place we went, whether midsize, low population, suburbia, or areas around the urban sections—everybody still says: We need access to grants. Whether that’s public safety, fire departments, roads, education—whatever it might be.

There’s not one place that puts all of that together. The closest we have is ADECA, and they have a great site. We’ve been talking to Kenneth Boswell about: how do we enhance that?

One thing we do well here is we have money for grants. People just don’t know how to get to it. I’ll be honest with you: if you go to Cold Springs, Hanceville—anywhere in my district—they really just don’t know how to access it, the council members. We’re thankful the League now has a training service that mayors can go through. But county commissions need the same thing. We need to be singing off the same sheet of music.

So a grant portal, no matter what it is — workforce, Rails-to-Trails, whatever — you can type it in and it pulls it up: this is when the application is due, this is how much you can get, this is what your match is going to be. Then people can plan.

I think there are ambassadors in our counties and cities all over Alabama who want to do the best job they can as elected officials back home—and we need to give them the tools. There’s some low-hanging fruit we can give them to make their job easier and more efficient. And then we can let some of the federal money flow out through the state back to them, instead of some of that money staying in bank accounts. Because the more we can get back into rural Alabama, the better off not only rural Alabama is, but our urban sections too.”

The Rural Roadmap Initiative was established through SJR 92, which directed the Alabama Growth Alliance to engage local officials, community leaders, businesses, universities, and state agencies to develop policy recommendations. The initiative focused on five areas: infrastructure, business growth and entrepreneurship, workforce training, community quality of life, and healthcare. Under the resolution, the completed roadmap was required to be submitted to the Governor and legislative leadership by the fifth legislative day of the 2026 session.

Gudger said another priority is standardizing how the state defines rural communities.

“There are eight different places in the Code where it defines ‘rural Alabama.’ If you look at cities and municipalities, there are different tiers. But if you look at, for example, just say a smaller town versus a mid-sized town, there’s a big difference in economic development, agriculture, healthcare. So what is the importance of that community?

It can’t be one size fits all, which we’ve done in the past. We’ve got to change the way we’ve thought about it for the last 50 years. Maybe there are classes of rural Alabama we’ve never thought about before. And by doing that, like we have classes for municipalities, either by population or whatever the data shows, we can bring those classifications together.”