(The following appeared on the Orlando Sentinel website on April 23.)
ORLANDO — Central Florida and CSX would have to sign off on a whole new commuter rail agreement, under a plan by Senate Majority Leader Daniel Webster to keep the battered rail deal from collapsing in the final days of the legislation session.
Webster barely managed to muscle the new agreement through the Senate Economic Development and Transportation Appropriations Committee Tuesday by offering deals to South Florida lawmakers to bolster their own Tri-Rail system with higher rental-car taxes.
But he said afterward the full Senate could still shoot it down.
The original plan agreed to between the state and CSX and nearing passage in the House “would be very difficult to get passed” in the Senate, said Webster.
Instead of giving the company $650 million and mandating that most of it be spent to improve Florida freight lines, Webster’s compromise would offer the company $450 million for the right-of-way around the line only and let the company use that cash wherever it wants.
“It doesn’t stop them from using it in Chicago, which they may after they’ve seen the reception here,” Webster said after the hearing.
“Why would they necessarily care about getting freight from South Florida up when they’ve got bigger things to do?”
To win support, Webster also offered a deal to South Florida legislators to allow both Central and South Florida to raise a new $2 rental car “surcharge” at airports that would support both Central Florida’s commuter rail plan and Tri-Rail in South Florida.
State Sen. Tony Hill, D-Jacksonville, also added another amendment onto the transportation SB 1978 that would give House Speaker Marco Rubio, R-West Miami, one of his political aims: banning DOT from contracting out consolidated contracts for Turnpike fuel, food and maintenance services.
Rubio wants that language to help a political ally bid on the contracts.
While the vote keeps the commuter rail deal alive, it’s also becoming a bigger target.
To appease trial lawyers, he upped the insurance agreement to $250 million, raised the amount of individual awards injured parties could sue the government for, and doubled the allowable attorney fees in lawsuits over wrecks on the rail.
To appease unions, he allowed an amendment that spells out that rail unions would have to agree with the state and CSX about what would happen to their jobs.
The local governments that have already approved the commuter rail plan would have to vote again on the new deal, he said.
“We’ll be fine,” Orlando Mayor Buddy Dyer said after the hearing. “I’m pretty happy it passed out of this committee today.”
But CSX said afterward they would have to spend more time reviewing it before agreeing.
“This was a complex agreement we negotiated over many, many months,” said CSX spokesman Gary Sease.
“We’ve had 24 hours and need just a little more time to look at the provisions in this amendment.”
It’s possible the company wouldn’t want to re-open the negotiations.
“That’s a big decision for us,” he said.
Webster defended his amendment Tuesday as a simpler, more politically viable alternative that essentially uses Central Florida tax dollars for the deal. Orange County is the state’s largest “donor” county in tax revenues to the state, and Webster briefly flashed a bit of anger that criticism had still arisen to his newer concept.
“We have built roads all over this state with our taxpayer dollars,” he said, “and then how dare these people come in and say ‘We don’t like what you’re doing.’”