Tavares, FL - Apr. 13, 2011 - The Lake County, FL County Board of Commissioners voted recently to subsidize the repairs of the privately (not public) owned CSX rail lines that run from Apopka to Eustis. They voted to spend over $1-million of their funds for the project which will cost taxpayers a total of over $16.5-million (Florida State kicks in about $13-million). The firm leasing the CSX line, Florida Atlantic Railway, will only pitch in about $1.5-million.
We call that corporate welfare.
We received the following memo from Sarah Hardy, a Legislative Assistant in Senator Paula Dockery's office on a related subject - the Sunrail subsidized rail project. Dockery has voiced objections to earlier attempts to use taxpayer funds to subsidize railroads.
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Hi, Mr. Jochim,
Thanks for your continued fiscal vigilance on behalf of the taxpayers. I really enjoyed your “on the hunt” illustration in the email. It’s great.
Remember to mention that Orange County Commissioners recently voted to spend $18 million taxpayer dollars for infrastructure improvements on a private railroad corridor between Apopka and Eustis. This is the rail line that The Lake-Sumter Metropolitan Planning Organization (MPO) Executive Director, TJ Fish, keeps asking for support from the Legislative delegations, for the purpose of having a commuter rail spur to connect to Sunrail.
Florida Central RR leases those tracks from CSX, so in effect, the taxpayers are providing corporate welfare to
Here are article links about the recent decision by OC Commission to give taxpayer $$ to private rail line:
http://www.dailycommercial.com/022311lakecountyrail
http://www.myfoxorlando.com/dpp/money/030811-taxpayers-to-foot-bill-on-upgrading-private-rail
Are the Lake TEA activists, who rallied for Governor Scott to kill the Florida High Speed Rail project, know this is happening with Lake County tax dollars? Here’s an excerpt from the above link from the Lake Daily Commercial newspaper:
The issue of rail transportation may be polarizing at the state level, but in Lake County, officials appear united about the transit possibilities.
At Tuesday's county commission meeting, the board voted unanimously to allocate $1,007,500 for future rail projects.
Be aware that the Central Florida Commuter Rail project (Sunrail) rail corridor purchase confidential negotiations between the FDOT and CSX began at least six years before the project was announced to the public. Sunrail will cost the taxpayers $1.2 billion at build-out and $2.66 billion after 30 years of operations & maintenance and financing costs. Sunrail has no dedicated funding mechanism for operations and maintenance. Local Governments will come after car rental corporations for a surcharge (tax) for this dedicated funding mechanism. Stop by your local Enterprise Car Rental office and ask them what’s the percentage of rentals to local residents (usually because of car accidents, and paid by insurance, which will go up to cover the surcharge/tax). I talked to a regional Enterprise director and he said it was about 80% rentals to local residents in Florida, and 20% to tourists, and that includes Central and South Florida (because South FL counties have asked for a rental car surtax to help pay for TriRail in the past). All the reasons the Governor used to turn down the Florida High Speed Rail grant money are the same reasons to stop Sunrail or renegotiate the price with CSX. Our office has FDOT documentation reporting beginning ridership will be 3,500 trips per day. In a business corridor of millions of people. After 30 years of Sunrail operation, FDOT’s ridership number was 14,000 trips per day. For $2.66 billion of taxpayer money.
And speaking of RINOs, a couple of years ago when Sen. Dockery was fighting not to kill Sunrail, but to merely renegotiate the terms of the corridor purchase deal with CSX to be in the best interest of the Florida taxpayer rather than a wealthy corporation, she was labeled as a RINO by pro-Sunrail public relations firm bloggers simply because rail unions and trial attorneys also opposed the liability legislation that CSX required of FDOT to conclude the purchase agreement (Sen. Dockery, incidentally, has a record of supporting tort reform). This bill would change Florida law to allow the transfer the liability of a private corporation onto the taxpayers of Florida, specifically in this case, for accidents along the shared freight/passenger corridor (because CSX will still use the corridor they are selling to the taxpayers for 12 hours a day to move freight). This liability bill was the only part of the Sunrail deal required to be vetted by the Legislature. Trial attorneys didn’t like the liability bill because it covered CSX under the State’s sovereign immunity, with a cap for lawsuits. That year the bill was defeated.
The next session when the liability bill was reintroduced (by a Central Florida Republican Senator), it removed the sovereign immunity clause to peel away the trial attorneys’ opposition. The bill failed again. The third time the bill came before the legislator, in a special session called by the Senate President (now CFO), but written this time so that if the bill didn’t pass, Florida would lose out on the Federal grant money for High Speed Rail, Senator Dockery again had the votes to kill the bill until 15 minutes before the vote on the floor of the Senate, when the Senate President ordered the Secretary of FDOT to make a deal with the rail unions to preserve their jobs on the rail corridor, which peeled away the South Florida Democrats who had opposed the bill. The bill passed. FDOT later reneged on the union job loss provision.
Whether you like unions or not, the fact pertinent to taxpayers is, the rail jobs on the Sunrail corridor are currently privately funded jobs (by CSX) and now they will become taxpayer funded rail jobs. So, are RINOs Republicans who fight to protect taxpayers from having to fund corporate welfare projects or are they Republicans who cut deals with trial attorneys and union officials to get legislation passed that will benefit wealthy corporate special interests?
Sarah Hardy, Legislative Assistant for
Senator Paula Dockery, District 15
101 W. Main Street, Suite 110
Lakeland, FL 33815
Ph: 863.413.2900
Fx: 863-413-2902
