The corporation has several powers related to its legal existence, property, court actions, roads and bridges, borrowing, contracting, and handling funds.
The corporation shall have the following powers: (1) To have succession by its corporate name without time limit; (2) To maintain actions and have actions maintained against it and to prosecute and defend in any court having jurisdiction of the subject matter and of the parties; (3) To have and to use a corporate seal and to alter the same at pleasure; (4) To construct, reconstruct and relocate, or to cause to be constructed, reconstructed and relocated, public roads and bridges, including work incidental or related thereto in the State of Alabama; (5) To receive, take and hold by sale, gift, lease, devise or otherwise real and personal estate of every description and to manage the same; (6) To acquire by purchase, gift or the exercise of the power of eminent domain or any other lawful means and to convey, or cause to be conveyed, to the State of Alabama any real, personal or mixed property necessary or convenient in connection with the construction of public roads and bridges and approaches thereto in the State of Alabama or the reconstruction or relocation of public roads and bridges in said state; (7) To exercise the right of eminent domain as freely and completely as, and in the same manner that, the State of Alabama is empowered to exercise such right; (8) To borrow money and issue its bonds in evidence thereof subject to the provisions of Section 23-1-177; (9) As security for payment of the principal of and the interest on its bonds, to pledge the proceeds of the appropriations and pledges provided for in this article; (10) To appoint and employ such attorneys as the business of the corporation may require; (11) To receive from the several counties of the State of Alabama interest-bearing warrants of such counties secured by a pledge of the proceeds of gasoline tax appropriated from time to time to the counties by the state, or any part or percentage thereof, or any other fund or security in payment of, or to secure the payment of the county’s portion of the cost of any roads or bridges built in such county and to sell such county warrants, or borrow money on the security thereof; provided, that any funds received from the sale of the warrants of any county or the proceeds of any loan made on the security of the warrants of any county shall be expended in such county; (12) To enter into contracts with counties, the State Department of Transportation of Alabama or other agency performing any of the functions thereof, road district authorities, persons, firms or corporations, federal Emergency Administrator of Public Works and any other branch of the federal government in furtherance of its public purposes and objects either relative to the work done or to be done; and (13) To turn over to the State Department of Transportation any and all funds of the corporation as from time to time may be necessary or proper for the most economical construction of such roads and to comply with all federal or other legislation relating to federal aid roads or other federal moneys.