(The following editorial appeared on the Lakeland Ledger website on May 6.)
LAKELAND, Fla. — When the Florida Legislature’s regular session ended Friday, the CSX train did not arrive. Florida Senate Majority Leader Daniel Webster wanted so desperately to be the celebrated engineer who barreled a made-in-secret transportation deal through the legislative session. In doing so, he would bring commuter rail home to the Orlando area and his home district.
Instead, the ending was more like the fate of the Old 97, the train officially known as the “Fast Mail,” that left the tracks near Danville, Va., in 1903. Too much speed on too steep a grade.
“Central Florida wanted to have commuter rail. It’s not going to happen,” Webster said during a debate. The state would lease 61.5 miles of CSX track for a commuter rail line serving Orlando, while freight traffic would be rerouted through other towns in Central Florida, including Lakeland and Ocala. “We tried.”
And here’s what they tried: Lawmakers tried to ramrod through a sweetheart deal for one of America’s most profitable transportation companies – while the state’s $66 billion budget, the smallest in three years, was being slashed by some 10 percent with cuts to education, health care, nursing homes, courts and other vital needs.
THE LIABILITY ISSUE
Jacksonville-based CSX Corp. last month reported $2.7 billion in revenue during the first quarter of 2008, a company record. It also made $351 million in profits – up 46 percent over a year ago.
Lawmakers tried to saddle Florida taxpayers, and not CSX, with the liability for any accidents on the route, at least those not involving solely CSX, from DeLand to Poinciana. That included a taxpayer-funded $2 million annual insurance premium to support a special $200 million trust fund to cover any accident claims.
Lawmakers tried to bring a spiffy new commuter train, established with $300 million in federal funding that would purchase and operate the rail cars, to the state’s tourist hub, while significantly increasing the freight train traffic and intensifying vehicular traffic snarls in smaller, less politically connected communities such as Ocala and Lakeland.
Before Webster and other CSX backers, including Sen. J.D. Alexander, R-Lake Wales, gave up, they gave the familiar condescending lectures.
“Tampa and Lakeland will never in our lifetimes see commuter rail if this goes down, and they don’t seem to understand,” Orlando Mayor Buddy Dyer told the Orlando Sentinel on Friday.NEVER IN THE CARDSCommuter rail for Tampa and Lakeland never was in the cards of this deal in the first place. Many legislators, including Rep. Dennis Ross, R-Lakeland, complained of the “piecemeal approach” the state was taking for a commuter rail system.
Dyer complained that “they don’t seem to understand,” but CSX’s detractors, including Republican Sens. Paula Dockery, R-Lakeland, and Alex Villalobos, R-Miami, understood only too well what was at stake. What they understood was that this idea, and the money behind it, was surreptitiously inserted into a massive growth-management bill that Dockery ironically sponsored three years ago.
Was this a good deal? We can’t be sure. We don’t know because there was no public debate of the plan. The public was simply told by then-Gov. Jeb Bush, certain lawmakers and officials at the Florida Department of Transportation in no uncertain terms to trust them, that they knew best and knew how good a deal this was.
And while nearly every state program and agency was being told to cut back, the price of the CSX deal grew from $491 million to $641 million – and most legislators never complained about, or challenged, the figures.
Many share in the credit for exposing this railroad plan before the taxpayers were on the hook for it. Dockery overcame the politically powerful in Tallahassee, with help on the House side from Rep. Dennis Ross, R-Lakeland, who questioned why the state should buy insurance so it could hold CSX harmless for any damages to commuter trains and passengers caused by CSX’s equipment or employees.
A special commendation also goes to Florida Chief Financial Officer Alex Sink, who urged lawmakers to “limit the liability provisions … and prevent future negotiations from happening under the cover of darkness.” Gov. Charlie Crist, who pushes for open government, has been inexplicably quiet about the secret negotiations.
If all this is a good idea, it can stand the test of sunshine and open debate. Easy on the throttle next time.