Blog — Vote No on Issue 9

Monday, June 8, 2009

Misplaced Priorities

The proposed Anti-Progress Charter Amendment would prevent the City from spending money on "right-of-way acquisition or construction of improvements for passenger rail" without first bringing this decision to the voters. The proponents of this legislation seem intent on stopping all progress in the city, so it makes sense they are against all rail transportation. But why stop there? Why not stop any progress being made to other transportation and infrastructure projects? Why are they only focused on rail transit, a minuscule percentage of the total spending on transportation?

What the proponents of the Anti-Progress Charter Amendment also fail to mention is that there is often a local match required for all federal transportation and infrastructure investments. Meaning, if the Anti-Progress Charter Amendment passes, then the city would have to bypass all federal funds for rail in the city since the local match can not be secured. It's not like the City can just decide to spend these dollars on other projects. These federal dollars will go to some other City, not Cincinnati.

For example, check out this article in this morning's Enquirer, which outlines our local Congressional Representative's earmark requests in the massive transportation and infrastructure bill going through Congress. In total, Reps. Driehaus and Schmidt requested $553,160,000. Projects within the city limit account for $467,200,000. Of that amount, only $5,000,000 is requested for rail.

So, the Anti-Progress Charter Amendment folks are more concerned with stopping the expenditure of $5,000,000 for rail but see no issues with the $462,200,000 of funding that the City could be responsible for matching locally.

If the Anti-Progress Charter Amendment supporters were serious about wanting to let the people have their say on transportation expenditures, they wouldn't have made the language of their Amendment focused on rail. What this Amendment will do is force the City to give up critical transportation and infrastructure improvement dollars and turn Cincinnati into a California style government.

How is that style of government by referendum working for California? Check out this story in today's LA Times, a result of the multi-Billion dollar budget crisis facing the state.

Faced with what he calculates to be a potential $24-billion budget deficit in the fiscal year starting July 1, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has proposed cutting state supplemental payments for the elderly and disabled down to the minimum allowed by federal law. It would be their third cut this year.

Is this the kind of government we want in Cincinnati?

posted by Cincinnatians For Progress at 9:48 AM

1 Comments:

Anonymous said...: Regrettably, that's exactly the kind of government many conservatives would like to see. I know it's important to fire up supporters of rail, but if we are ever going to get a functional regional transit system we are going to have to learn how to persuade conservatives (like the people who voted down the last rail initiative). That means talking about the potential for new and redevelopment along rail right of ways since transit, like most types of infrastructure won't pay for itself. As far as the California initiative process goes it has its drawbacks, but it also delivered on proposition one, which is America's best hope for a real high speed rail line. Let's try a more nuanced approach here folks.

Blog — Vote No on Issue 9

Misplaced Priorities

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