Well, truck me: Padgett and friends' Main Street lawsuit finds its way to history's dust bin.

Irony alert: Many of us feel that the city of New Albany definitely is at fault concerning the beautification-oriented redesign of East Main Street ... just not in the exact way alleged by the plaintiffs in a plainly frivolous lawsuit.

First, some background from the fall of 2015.

Conservatives to Padgett: "The heaviest road users are the ones who get the biggest subsidies."

Zurschmiede swings and misses as Padgett and pals sue the city of New Albany.

New Albany's new slogan: "Truck Through City" ... Part 86: Bored of Works to approve Arch de Capitulation on 5th St., facing Padgett.

Tort claim notice offers preview of Padgett's lawsuit against modernity.

Next, the most recent update.

Judge rules in New Albany's favor, by Chris Morris (Gahan Gets a Free Pass Digest)

NEW ALBANY — It took more than two years, but a judge ruled the city of New Albany was not at fault concerning the redesign of East Main Street.

On Nov. 6, Judge Daniel Donahue ruled in the city’s favor and against the plaintiffs which included Padgett, Inc., Tiger Truck Lines, J&J Pallet Corporation, Kaiser Wholesale, Inc., E.M. Cummings Veneers, Inc., Maximum Fleet Service, LLC, Mr. “P” Express, Inc. and W-M Lumber & Wood Products, Inc.

The eight local manufacturers, service and trucking companies filed suit in 2015 alleging that the redesign of East Main Street negatively affected their right to safely access the “Heavy Haul” route. James Gray, the attorney who represented the business owners, said when the lawsuit was filed the companies were not consulted prior to the redesign, which included building a decorative median down Main Street from Vincennes Street to East Fifth Street. Gray said there were safety concerns as well following the redesign.

City attorney Shane Gibson called the lawsuit at the time “absolutely ridiculous” and feels the same two years later after the judge ruled in New Albany’s favor.

“The timing of when this was filed was totally politically motivated,” Gibson said.

He said there were public meetings to discuss the plans and there were no safety concerns. In fact, he said last week the redesign made Main Street safer because it slowed traffic ...

Yes, the lawsuit was absolutely ridiculous. No doubt about it.

Yes, city attorney and current interim redevelopment commission slush fund maintainer Gibson is perfectly correct in saying so.

Pot/kettle alert: Of course, Gibson remains the best remunerated and most prominent cog in an administration that digests matters of "politically motivated" timing along with its Lucky Charms.

However, the plaintiffs’ point about an unfavorably altered roadway base might well be a potentially interesting topic, given the frequency of repairs during the past three years.

It's a question for redevelopment, isn't it?

Yo, CM Phipps: Why doesn't this sign prevent destructive monster truck immigration?

See that sign by the stop light?

Here's a closeup. It hangs from the spot where westbound one-way traffic commences on Spring Street.

So, if no heavy trucks are supposed to be traveling past this point, how do we explain this?

And this.

And these.

Padgett and friends have filed a suit alleging that these heavy trucks are being prevented from using their rightful street (Main Street) owing to beautification changes there. Accepting these claims at face value, how does it make these heavy trucks on Spring Street any more legal?

Shouldn't they be ticketed for improperly using the street?

Conservatives to Padgett: "The heaviest road users are the ones who get the biggest subsidies."

Narcissus, still gazing at that pesky erection.

Wanna know what's really funny?

The Padgett-led heavy trucking coalition seeks to sue the city of New Albany for failing to maintain city streets suitable for their interstate-grade vehicles.

And yet, when it comes to overall maintenance of roads in this nation, note the disparity.

The Congressional Budget Office estimates that trucks already cost the public as much as $129 billion annually more than they pay in road user fees.

Whoa! That's a lot of TIF bonds.

But wait, because here's the punch line: In the article below, which explicates "asphalt socialism" in our autocentric nation, the air is being let out of the truckers' tires not by liberal leftist pinko fags, but by the Padgett Political Action Committee to Elect Republicans' very own beloved conservative element.

That's rich, indeed. The hypocrisy flies over their heads as quickly as the dump trucks speed down Spring.

I'm reprinting the entire article here, because it's just too good to excerpt.

House Republicans’ Asphalt Socialism, by Joe Cortright (The American Conservative)

The House of Representatives has hit on a clever new strategy for funding the bankrupt Highway Trust Fund: raid the Federal Reserve. Their plan calls for transferring nearly $60 billion from the profits earned on the Federal Reserve’s operations—basically fees paid by member banks—to bail out the Highway Trust Fund.

For years, many macro economists have been urging the Federal Reserve to stimulate the economy by using its power to effectively print money in the form of a “helicopter drop”—simply crediting every American with a certain amount of extra dollars in their bank accounts. The idea has been suggested as a way to jump start consumer spending in a moribund or deflationary economy by economists of some stature, including Ben Bernanke and Milton Friedman. The idea was advanced as a way of accelerating the sluggish growth we’re currently experiencing in an article in Foreign Affairs. But while it might make theoretical sense to economist, it was simply politically impossible, because as The Economist intoned, the idea of a helicopter drop would be anathema to Republicans.

But when it comes to a helicopter drop for highways, there’s no such problem. Remarkably, the proposal to tap the Federal Reserve’s funds comes not from radical Keynesians, but from the Republicans in the very conservative House of Representatives. And apparently, the same people who preach personal responsibility in almost every other field of endeavor want to insulate automobile drivers from paying the costs of the roads they drive on. While they may espouse the virtues for the free market in almost everything else, this position makes them “asphalt socialists” when it comes to transportation.

The best estimates are that drivers now pay only a tiny fraction of the direct costs of building and operating roads, not to mention causing huge externalities in the form of crash-related injuries and deaths and pollution. As we’ve noted before, the heaviest road users are the ones who get the biggest subsidies: The Congressional Budget Office estimates that trucks already cost the public as much as $129 billion annually more than they pay in road user fees. And a report from TransitCenter and the Frontier Group recently detailed the $7.3 billion in parking tax subsidies drivers get every year as well.

(Even with these subsidies, however, increasing fuel efficiency and the decline in per capita driving have pushed down revenues for the Highway Trust Fund, and contributed to the current crisis.)

While this latest chapter of dysfunctional public finance and ideological hypocrisy is playing out at the federal level, it’s equally prevalent in the way states and localities treat driving, too. Local governments have parking requirements that drive up the cost and drive down the supply of housing to subsidize car ownership. In Seattle, parking requirements add something on the order of $250 a month to the price of a typical apartment.

The new transportation bill will favor cars in other ways, too. Local highway projects will get an 80 percent federal match, but transit projects will get only 50 percent. Meanwhile, important sources of funds for transit, pedestrian, and bicycle programs, including TIGER grants and the Transportation Alternatives Program, were cut or imperiled.

While advocates of the road system regularly cloak their arguments in the rhetoric of choice and the free market, our transportation system is actually characterized by heavy government intervention on behalf of private vehicles. Massive, taxpayer-supported subsidies effectively bribe people to drive, and insulate them from the financial consequences their choices impose on others.

Drivers want more roads—as long as they don’t actually have to pay for them. The fact that there’s no stomach for increasing the gas tax—even though gasoline prices have fallen by more than a dollar a gallon in the past year—shows that when put to the test of the marketplace, there’s actually little demand for more transportation.

The irony, of course, is that transportation is clearly one policy area where traditional free market principles would put a serious dent in the problems of traffic congestion, air pollution, and safety. If car users faced anything close to the actual costs of building and operating roads (and mitigating or preventing the injuries and pollution effects), we’d see much less driving, and much less demand for additional capacity.

Zurschmiede swings and misses as Padgett and pals sue the city of New Albany.

Narcissus gazes at his erection.

We've been following this story since the original April tort claim (here ... here ... and here, among others).

Whatever your political persuasion, it should be obvious that the lawsuit's timing has been determined according to the election calendar, and just as non-coincidentally, given Padgett & Pals' healthy monetary support of the GOP in the current voting cycle, Republican mayoral candidate Kevin Zurschmiede has made sure the C-J's reporter got this much in writing.

(Zurschmiede) does not consider turning one-way streets into two-way streets to be a top city priority. He wants to add an additional lane in each direction to Interstate 265 to help deal with traffic on the Sherman Minton bridge when the two metro area Ohio River bridges open and start tolling.

So, in his zeal to appease the trucking paymasters, KZ desperately wants us to know that (a) he does not at all understand induced demand, (b) he thinks it is necessary to rely on the state and feds to redesign an interstate on short notice, and (c) enough of that two-way stuff, 'cuz it makes his brain hurt.

If you're a two-way streets advocate, and in terms of casting a vote for mayor, I'm not guilty of hyperbole in suggesting to you that only one choice exists: Me.

But beyond that, a pinch of salt helps the lawsuit make better sense, because this much is true: When it comes to breathtaking duplicity, Jeff Gahan has exercised supreme arrogance and bad faith with two-way streets proponents and Padgett obstructionists alike, in equal measure.

He has lied to us all.

Boondoggles like the Main Street "improvement" project have poisoned potential resolution by making lawsuits like this inevitable, and Gahan's inept evasiveness ever since has made an ugly situation intolerable.

It's why he cannot be trusted, and it's why he has to go.

Period.

New Albany, others sued over street design, by Chris Morris (News and Tribune)

NEW ALBANY — Eight local manufacturers, service companies and trucking companies have filed suit against the city of New Albany, New Albany Mayor Jeff Gahan, the Floyd County Commissioners, Indiana Department of Transportation and other government agencies alleging that a recent redesign of East Main Street has negatively affected their right to safely access the street.

The plaintiffs are: Padgett, Inc., Tiger Truck Lines, J&J Pallet Corporation, Kaiser Wholesale, Inc., E.M. Cummings Veneers, Inc., Maximum Fleet Service, LLC, Mr. “P” Express, Inc. and W-M Lumber & Wood Products, Inc.

According to their counsel, James Gary, these business owners were not consulted prior to the redesign, which has impaired the ability of their vehicles to travel the designated “Heavy Haul” route for New Albany.

David White wants all NA merchants assured of being harmed by Padgett's lawsuit to attend a David White party at Padgett.

Surreal, isn't it?

Padgett, et al, currently are pursuing a lawsuit that in effect, personally attacks my interests both as a Spring Street homeowner and as a downtown business stakeholder. That's because Padgett and confederates oppose all "complete streets" measures to improve the independent business climate downtown and to increase property values and quality of life in the neighborhoods.

Padgett's chosen surrogate has been an obviously anger-crazed and demented Irv Stumler, who somehow has managed to tell more lies to locals about Jeff Speck's downtown street network proposal than John Rosenbarger has about the Main Street project. Gads. Laid end to end, their combined whippers would reach the planet Mars.

White himself has chosen to dismiss street grid reform as something that must wait, and in truth, he never seems to have grasped the meaning of it. Now, with his choice of political bedfellows, it's fairly obvious why.

At this point in time, perhaps the only choice remaining in the primary election is an emergency bulk shipment of body condoms. In good conscience, all I can do is refrain from voting for Jeff Gahan -- and yet here, as a reflection of my annoying fair-mindedness, is David White's plea for you to come and break bread with the people who oppose you interests.

Roger

Just an FYI for you and the downtown merchants. There will be a Meet and Greet for David White for Mayor - hosted this Saturday, April 25 from 2:00-4:00 at Padgett, Inc. in downtown New Albany. Daisy's will have desserts and beverages available. I will be there to answer any questions.

Thanks - David

New Albany's new slogan: "Truck Through City" ... Part 86: Bored of Works to approve Arch de Capitulation on 5th St., facing Padgett.

He wants to turn back the clock to a halcyon youth in pre-Eisenhower days, but for heaven's sake, just calm down, Irv. One-way streets are bad for everyone but speeding cars.

In fact, there are many reasons to regard one-way streets as a disease.

Not only that, but complete streets are a bargain -- at least when maximizing campaign contributions from contractors and construction interests aren't a mayor's primary goal.

Alas, last week, Chairman Naps presided over the Bored of Works as the predicted gutting of Speck's downtown street network proposals began, with Mayor Jeff Gahan giving the finger to complete streets advocates.

In part, federal funding prerequisites supposedly were behind City Hall's abject street grid surrender, but upon closer examination, all the extra expense, time, and proposed iterations have nothing to do with securing federal funds. In short, John "Pinocchio" Rosenbarger conducted yet another drive-by whopper as the Bored glanced furtively at their iPhones.

Only two days later did the reason for this full-scale retreat become evident, when Padgett, Tiger, EM Cummings Veneer, Kaiser Wholesale, et al, revealed a lawsuit against City Hall over the Main Street dishevelment project.

The trucking mafia's tort claim notice offered a preview into a lawsuit borne of a jihad against modernity, one designed to stop Speck in its tracks ... which the mayor already had been doing before the lawsuit became a factor. Who's on first, anyway?

So few answers for attribution, although we're not without an enduring if archaic constant: If ya wanna ask a question, sonny boy, then you'll have to take a vacation day, because the Bored's meeting's is at 10 a.m. on a Tuesday, and in an era of instant communication with virtually every corner of the globe, Warren Nash will speak to you only via an official audience in HIS meeting room.

I wonder if the Pope has an iPhone?

Tort claim notice offers preview of Padgett's lawsuit against modernity.

Narcissus gazes at his erection.

Four days ago at NAC:

BREAKING: Padgett, Tiger, EM Cummings Veneer, et al, are suing City Hall over the Main Street dishevelment project.

 ... Don't forget that it is Padgett and its toady "business as usual" trucking minions who don't give a damn about neighborhood interests apart from despoiling them for profits. They'd run a toxic waste dump by S Ellen Jones School if they thought it would turn a profit.

Admittedly, they're not an easy read, but here are the pages of the tort claim notice of March 23, precursor to Padgett, et al versus New Albany's neighborhoods and independent small businesses. There'll be more as it comes to the Green Mouse.

Strictly speaking, city officials are being sued, but let's harbor no illusions: Padgett and friends are attacking each one of us living in the designated areas. Padgett and friends are staking claim to the supremacy of their interests over those of retail and service businesses downtown. Padgett and friends are trying to make the point that our infrastructure exists primarily for their use, with any remaining scraps and thread grudgingly ceded to the citizenry.

Plainly, Padgett and friends are attacking the sovereignty of the city of New Albany.

Already we see Jeff Gahan and his down-low bunker dwellers in full pre-emptive capitulation mode, and so the question must be asked, and not for the first time:

Who's fighting for US?