Cash pursuit for rail line thorny issue for Florida GOP
by Michael C. Bender | December 6th, 2009Florida House Speaker Larry Cretul called lawmakers to the Capitol last week to clear a path for high-speed rail. The move came six years after he cast a ballot to repeal a voter-approved mandate for high-speed rail.
From the campaign trail, Republican Gov. Charlie Crist condemns federal spending. In radio ads for his U.S. Senate race, he tells President Obama, “Enough is enough.”
But in Tallahassee, Crist is the leading supporter of the special session bill aimed at securing $2.5 billion in stimulus money for the state to build a bullet train. That money would be in addition to the $5.2 billion in stimulus funds propping up the state budget Crist approved in May.
“Anybody who wants to help us, we’re more than eager to accept it and to make sure that we put people before politics,” Crist said.
For Florida Republicans, who have controlled the state House, Senate and governor’s office since 1999, the federal stimulus plan has proven to be a thorny issue in a high-stakes political year that includes open races for U.S. Senate, governor and all three Cabinet jobs. Doubly so when it’s for the creation of public transportation, a campaign promise of Democratic President Obama’s and not a typical Republican issue.
“It’s hypocrisy,” designated House Democratic Leader Ron Saunders of Key West said. “They’re campaigning one way and governing another.”
Tags: High-speed rail, stimulus, SunRail, Tri-Rail
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Sentenced to die for crimes judged heinous and cruel, inmates await execution in a 9 feet by 6 feet cell.
December 6th, 2009 at 10:13 am
Government spending is out of control. Where will the taxpayers get the money to maintain such a boondoggle ? Ticket prices would only cover a small part of the operation. The politicians won’t tell you that .
December 6th, 2009 at 12:41 pm
Florda and all of the United States should have been moving to a high speed rail system 20 years ago. In all of Europe you can travel fast and efficiently both in indidivual countries and well as across Europe - but in the United States we sit our big fat solo butts in big gas guzzling vehicles and sit in traffic instead.
December 6th, 2009 at 1:55 pm
As a former legislator, if I were in the Florida House today, I would be whole heartedly against this boondoggle.
• Has anyone preformed an accounting of the hidden monies treasured away within FDOT? FDOT has funds to torment local communites with make work programs and grants (gov’t. welfare to local gov’t.).
• Has anyone had a recent appraisal of the value of the CSX rail purchase? The appraisal is two to three years old. Values of land and businesses have fallen immensely and more so in recent years.
• Why are we not capturing the depressed values of the land and business at this time to benefit Florida?
• Have assessments been made of the support within communities for this rail system?
• Have assessments been made to determine if local governments can afford these systems? Surely, if they can’t we, the State of Florida, will have to bail them out.
• What about the insurance burdens upon the State and upon FDOT
• Why is it that CSX burdens Floridians with the cost of lawsuit and liability?
Dozens of questions go unanswered here. This is more than a small special session to threaten lawmakers to support another liberal boondoggle. I say tell your lawmaker “No” on this issue.
December 6th, 2009 at 9:35 pm
Hypocrasy is Ron Saunders pretending that he is a resident of the Keys - he lives in Tallahassee, his kids go to school in Tallahassee, and he claims his homestead there…that makes him a resident of Tallahassee, not our Florida Keys…
December 6th, 2009 at 10:34 pm
Jerry,
Unlike you, Ron probably is smart enough to spell hypocrisy (not hypocrasy) correctly- but then you never were a rocket scientist when you served as a nobody in the Legislature. Hope you lose your current race for the House since you probably too senile to serve.
December 6th, 2009 at 11:39 pm
The Senate President Jeff Atwater and his fellow thugs like Mike Fasano have exercised the worst type of tyrany by hammering and threatening other legislators to vote for this very bad legislation because they are greedy, avaricious and corrupt to the core.
This is worse than the mafia. At least the Corleone Family was honest in their criminal intent. Atwater, Fasano, Thrasher, Constantine, Haridopolos, Cannon, Alexander and the rest of the blatantly corrupt Republican Mobsters in the Florida Senate and House want to rape the vulnerable taxpayers of this state rather than put their considerable pressure on FDOT to renegotiate the terms of the rail purchase deal to be far less expensive.
But this deal is not so much about the merits of passenger rail as it is about corporate welfare and land development. Go back to the drawing board until a more fiscally responsible deal can be hatched, in the Sunshine so all the taxpayers can see it.
We don’t need this bloated increase in government (Enterprises and Rail Authorities) to cover the fact that the political leadership of Florida is bailing out a Fortune 500 corporation with taxpayer money in order to feather their own corrupt nests.
Who is getting what reward? Campaign contributions? Jobs for after-office? Developer cash-ola? Corporate Board Appointments? Lucrative CSX warehousing contracts and a toll road into the family agricultural property they want to develop?
This culture of corruption and the hideous tyrany of those in power must be stopped! Ronald Reagan is spinning in his grave!! Aren’t Republican values supposed to be LESS Government and Fiscal Conservatism?