Tuesday, December 21, 2010

Dear Ed.

For the record: The following e-mail was sent to State Representative Ed Clere last Wednesday, just after the Tolling Authority's "public input" debacle, and a day before the Authority ratified its foregone conclusion. During the "input" session, I enjoyed an unexpected chat with Mrs. Clere, and based on this exchange of views, it occurred to me to "reach out" (a faddish usage I detest, but which seems appropriate here) and see if communications might be resumed. I've heard nothing so far, but maybe this time will be different.

Note also that this tolling fight has only just begun, in spite of the Tolling Authority's efforts to convince the public that its unelected dictates are carved in stone. Oatmeal's more like it. The letter is followed by comments to the Tolling Authority submitted by myself and BG.

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Good morning, Ed.

I needn’t remind you that we’ve not spoken lately. This has been a phenomenon I neither instigated nor sought, but history is precisely that. It is what has passed. We cannot change history, only rewrite it, although accuracy certainly is paramount when it comes to moving forward.

Let’s consider the topic of tolling existing Ohio River bridges as a means of financing the Ohio River Bridges Project.

I had the pleasure of speaking with your wife at Monday’s farcical public “input” meeting, and she assured me that both of you are opposed to tolling as a means of implementing the $4 billion transportation “solution.”

However, she added that because you were so busy with the campaign, and lacking time to familiarize yourself with tolling’s details, you’ve chosen not to speak publicly on the issue. I sincerely believe that (a) you have clearly spoken (see below) on the issue, and (b) apart from your answer to the Tribune’s question, your absence as we’ve debated the matter has decidedly not been in the best interests of your constituents. I told Amy this, and trust that she relayed word to you.

Personally, I believe that your linkage of opposition to bridge tolls with partisan political concerns was unbecoming considering your level of skill. It was both unnecessary and insulting to those many people, like me, who typically shun the vulgarities of both major parties. I believe that genuinely valuable time has been wasted, but I also believe that enough time remains, precisely because the future is not the past, and it’s never too late to start all over again.

Let’s examine your one public statement on tolling, in the form of comments to the Tribune/Evening News just prior to the election, in which you indicated with a fair amount of clarity that you in fact held (as yet hold?) a position, and that this position addresses tolling in only two contexts: As partisan politics, and as job creation. It is my contention that both these contexts ignore reality here, now, on the ground, and in the trenches, as has been made evident every day since the election was held by exponentially growing opposition to tolling.
1) DO YOU SUPPORT TOLLS AS A MEANS TO PAY FOR TWO NEW BRIDGES ACROSS THE OHIO RIVER?

“Special interests are trying to use tolls as a scare tactic to kill the bridges project altogether. Politicians have failed for decades to build the bridges, and I won’t use the issue of tolls to score cheap political points. There’s too much at stake, including tens of thousands of jobs. This isn’t a question of being for or against tolls. It’s a question of being for or against jobs, and I’m for jobs. I don’t want to pay tolls. I also don’t want to leave the bridges project as a problem for my children to solve. It’s our responsibility to find a way to move forward. I’m eager to see the financing plan the bi-state Bridges Authority will propose later this year. If the plan involves tolls, I will have the same questions and concerns as anyone else who lives here and uses the bridges. I won’t, however, take a position against something that hasn’t been proposed in a cynical attempt to win an election.”

Ed, there are so many questions to ask about this statement.

Am I to deduce from this statement that my opposition to tolling indicates that I am being manipulated by special interests?

If so, can you identify them?

Am I to deduce that the Democratic Party has compelled me to speak out?

Do you think for a moment that the 10,000 local residents and dozens of Hoosier businesses signing petitions against tolling did so because they were trying to influence the outcome of an election that already was decided?

When it comes to jobs, why must the concerns of these dozens of small Hoosier businesses – concerns derived from daily experience in the marketplace over long periods of time -- that tolling will negatively impact their operations be almost entirely ignored in favor of accepting exaggerated claims of job creation that have been discredited time and again?

Doesn’t putting a small business out of business actually cost us jobs?

Who decides which of these jobs is most important?

A plan for tolling “hasn’t been proposed”?

As noted in my comments below, for as long as I’ve been attending meetings and observing the activity of the Bridges Authority, there has constantly occurred an activity for which the English language possesses no single word as accurate as this one: Lying. Officials stand directly in front of placards explaining the absolute necessity of tolling to achieve the project, look at you, and say there is no firm plan to toll.

Really?

Can’t you see that in your ongoing silence, you lend tacit support to this unabated nefariousness?

Ed, during the period of your silence, for whatever its reason, an anti-tolls movement has emerged that reaches across various and sundry aisles in a surreal way seldom witnessed hereabouts. I have sat in a room and found myself agreeing with tea partiers. Communists and fascists are sharing beers. More than a few local Republicans have confided to me their agreement that tolling is madness, even if they cannot bring themselves to say so publicly for fear of being blackballed by the same party (as a hint, an elephant as symbol) that preaches fiscal responsibility and non-taxation on perhaps every other topic except this one.

How can this be, and how can special interests manipulate folks on so many different sides?

As busy as you have been, and for whatever other reasons you have chosen to maintain distance, you cannot fail to have noticed the phenomenon. And yet, all that you have yet been able to say publicly about an issue of huge significance and cost that will impact your community for a half-century to come is the frankly dismissive and snarky passage quoted above, which surely – surely -- is not indicative of your caliber of intellect, and the your capability of discourse.

Ed, in the larger scheme of things, it doesn’t matter whether you and I like each other, or if we get along. We needn’t consult an oracle to deduce that given my political proclivities, I don’t have a proverbial pot to piss in, and remain isolated in New Albany's noted progressive ghetto, although better to live in obscurity than be forced to attend another Nurnberg rally like the one I endured on Monday.

But ... in what amounts to lofty disdain for those in opposition to tolling, those mere “populists” who actually oppose tolling for the very same reasons that undergird your core political orientation, you are doing a tremendous, indefensible disservice to the community which only recently returned you to office. They are looking to you, and you are not there.

By all rights, this is your fight.

Where are you?

--Roger

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My “official” comment, as submitted to the Bridges Authority:

Personally speaking, I resent the ongoing, self-perpetuating lies about tolling, which have been representative of Orwell at his finest. When the placard on the wall says, in effect, "there must be tolls to support the project as constituted," and otherwise sane Authority members look one in the eye and say, "no decision has been made about tolling," it is an abomination that speaks to the existence of cognitive dissonance on a deep and perhaps unredeemable level.

Tolling will be injurious to Southern Indiana small retail businesses, and yet not a person connected to the Authority has considered studying what this effect might be until AFTER tolls are established. Don't you think that's important to know?

Even beyond tolling, the truth of the matter is that the ORBP is a 1950's solution to 2050's problems, entirely ignoring every other available option beyond automotive transport to "solve" mobility needs for the next 50 years. How is any of this a judicious expenditure of $4 billion?

A friend of mine says it best: "Build what we need. Build what we can afford. Build the East End Bridge. And see what happens."

Raising a barrier to commerce in the form of tolls on existing Interstate and other infrastructure is madness. Do any of you sleep at night?

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As usual, Jeff Gillenwater says it better:

The projections used to justify this project in its current form are not accurate. Population, job, and traffic growth rates are lower than predicted. There are regional mobility solutions that are cheaper, safer, more conducive to economic investment, that will create more jobs, and are environmentally much more responsible. That none of them have been seriously considered in direct comparison to ORBP is a disservice to the region and the nation, creating a false "all-this-or-nothing" dichotomy and necessitating rancorous dissent where reasonable discourse would have better served had initial, well researched public input efforts been responded to in kind. What you are asking is that the regional community spend the next several decades paying more than necessary for a project it neither wants (except the East End Bridge) nor best serves its long-term transportation needs. The conflicts of interest, both real and perceived, that led to this untenable juncture should be disclosed and reviewed right alongside readily available alternatives to this project. According to your own estimates, all that can be accomplished while the East End Bridge is being constructed utilizing traditional state and federal funding with no new sources of revenue - tolls, private investment or others - needed. 

14 comments:

Drew said...

Well put, this is truly the one issue where I am able to agree with people across seemingly any aisle. It seems that the only people that are for this project are those with the power to stop it. Keep fighting the good fight.

Iamhoosier said...

"It seems that the only people that are for this project are those with the power to stop it."

Outstanding.

Iamhoosier said...

I find it amazing about the partisan accusations. I get accused of it, too. I would bet if you went down to the city/county building with my picture, maybe two people could immediately put my name with it. Some may recognize me but they don't know me. And it's not like most of us haven't skewered Democrats and Republicans alike.

I can rightfully be accused of many things, but partisan is not one of them.

VetteMan said...

This could be the means to fund the project without tolls:

In The Beginning: The Federal Highway Trust Fund

Last week’s KBT Transportation News included an article about how raising the federal gas tax could actually reduce the federal deficit, because the Treasury wouldn’t have to advance revenue to the Highway Trust Fund (HTF) to keep it solvent. As a result of that story, one KBT member sent us an e-mail saying, “KBT, please do a little homework and take us back to the beginning of the HFT.”

Well, in the beginning the HFT was not always operating on a shoestring, or at a deficit, as it does in modern times. In August 1958, the U.S. Treasury Department released “Financial Condition and Results of the Operations of the Highway Trust Fund, Fiscal Year 1957,” a report on the first full year of the fund’s operation. That report revealed a relatively modest, but healthy HTF, that paid out 65% ($968 million) of the total revenue collected ($1.48 billion) for the fund during the 12 months ending June 30, 1957.

At that time, gasoline taxes were the largest revenue source for the fund, accounting for nearly $1.3 billion. Still, there were several other user fees that fed the HTF, including an excise tax on diesel ($30 million), tires and inner tubes ($82 million), tread rubber ($34 million), trucks and buses ($25 million). There was also a truck use tax that generated $25 million during that first year in 1957.  

While the fund spent $968 million on highway programs during that first year, it carried a very healthy $516 million positive balance into the second year, 1958. That money was largely spent on building the first miles of the interstate highway system, as President Dwight Eisenhower had signed the momentous Federal-Aid Interstate Highway Act of 1956, putting into motion the eventual construction of 43,000 miles of interstate highway.

By contrast, the modern HTF has operated at a deficit for the past two years, caused by declining vehicle miles traveled, increased fuel efficiency and rising construction costs. In the future, the HTF deficit situation is guaranteed to worsen, not improve, because “next generation” alternative-fuel vehicles powered by electricity, natural gas or hydrogen will pay no federal fuel taxes, unless Congress acts to change federal law.  

Congress, three times since 2008, has bailed out the HTF by legislating specific infusions from the U.S. Treasury. In 2008, $8.02 billion was added. In 2009, $7.00 billion was added. Then in March this year, $19.50 billion was infused into the HTF, part of the Hiring Incentives to Restore Employment Act (HIRE).  This latest boost is expected to carry the HTF through the Spring of 2011. By then, KBT hopes that the new 112th Congress will have negotiated a federal transportation reauthorization that addresses the HTF’s chronic shortfalls.

 

RememberCharlemagne said...

"Am I to deduce from this statement that my opposition to tolling indicates that I am being manipulated by special interests?

If so, can you identify them?"



You are them.

RememberCharlemagne said...

Supporters of 8664 are them.

RememberCharlemagne said...

"It was both unnecessary and insulting to those many people, like me, who typically shun the vulgarities of both major parties."


Can you seriously say this with out lightning striking you dead?

You’re so partisan that you make Rush Limbaugh look like Henry Clay.

RememberCharlemagne said...

"Republicans have confided to me their agreement that tolling is madness, even if they cannot bring themselves to say so publicly for fear of being blackballed by the same party"


Well do tell, who were these important Republicans? Who is going to blackball them?
Will they not be allowed to buy Lincoln Day tickets?

Randy said...

Jameson clearly does not know the meaning of partisan.

RememberCharlemagne said...

As usual, Jeff Gillenwater says it better:

When it comes to presuppositions.



Thanks Randy, but I do.

Karen B said...

RemChar: You *seriously* type with a straight face that 8664 is the "special interest" driving opposition to tolling and cannot possibly see that many people without any connection to that movement whatsoever (and from across the political spectrum) oppose this plan on its own merits (or lack thereof)??

You can't see or admit that many, if not most of the people running the show at the Bridges Authority stand to profit from the very decisions they're making to forge ahead with the entire project, public opinion, lack of funding, and lack of demonstrated need be damned??

And do you lack the imagination to allow that local Republicans who fail to toe a party line handed down from on high could be black balled in a variety of ways? Would the Republican Central Committee perhaps fail to fund those folks' election/re-election campaigns? Could those folks find their legislation lacking in co-sponsors or necessary votes? This shit happens on both sides of the aisle; is it so very hard to believe it would be happening right here in River City regardless of the party?

Seriously, man, I just...seriously. I have personally voted in republican, democratic, independent, and open primaries (California) where I voted for people from every political nook and cranny available. This isn't about a party for me, and it isn't about a party for a lot of the people I know who are similarly opposed to it. It's about waste, corruption, injustice, economics, and yes Politics (big P) because of the way this is being played out. But it isn't about party.

/with a capital T, and that rhymes with P, and that stands for Pool.

RememberCharlemagne said...

"RemChar: You *seriously* type with a straight face that 8664 is the "special interest" driving opposition to tolling"

Karen, 8664 is only a part of a larger fragmented consortium who share similar ideologies that have spearheaded opposition to the bridges project from the get go.

Yes, I do believe that opposition to the ORBP is non-partisan both in the public sector and private, for a variety of reasons: taxes, environment, ideology, etc.

Yes, I can see how some could profit, but not all.

No I don't lack the imagination.

If republicans were out to get republicans politically, they did a poor job of showing it during the last Louisville mayoral election with Hal Heiner. He was the only serious candidate that entertained a change in the project, but you didn't read it here on NAC.
Even Tyler Allen endorsed Hal. Didn’t and doesn’t Yarmuth support ORBP?

"This isn't about a party for me, and it isn't about a party for a lot of the people I know who are similarly opposed to it."

We share this in common Karen.

My criticism here is directed at NAC's double standard and my criticism is motivated by own longing for more public objective independent thought, I’m not pro-bridges or even very anti bridge.

I've said it before and Govern Beshear said it recently in the "State of Affairs" program that I submitted here on NAC: Now that the committee's vote is over the debate on the ORBP is begun.

You heard it and responded to it yourself.

Beshear’s comments highlights NAC pre-election and premature fear campaign.

The next few steps are the important ones.

Roger’s and others’ oppositions will now come into play.

I look forward to finding out what will happen.

Jeff Gillenwater said...

LOL

The New Albanian said...

I wrote to Ed and got RemCha.

Who do I write to get Mitch Daniels?

Jose Canseco?