YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED...

GOVERNMENT'S CENTRAL PLANNERS AND COMMISSIONER ED TURANCHIK DON’T WANT YOU TO DRIVE!  

Political Commentary

By: Owen S. Whitman

5.31.97

(updated 1.3.98) 

AMERICANS LOVE THEIR CARS

Roy Cordato, Lundy Professor of Business Philosophy at Campbell University, concludes in a recent article published by the Competitive Enterprise Institute that "cars are a fundamentally liberating technology," and recent statistics demonstrate that America’s love affair with the automobile continues undiminished.

CONDESCENDING GOVERNMENT

But, for the past several years, the self-serving interests of government central planners, opportunistic politicians and politically influential, narrow interest advocacy groups (largely environmental) have converged to produce a crush of proposals that seek -- directly and indirectly -- to limit Americans’ ability to ultimately use (afford) their private automobiles.

Dr. Cordato notes that among those of the political centralist elite, the alleged overuse of automobiles is paternalistically referred to as "hypermobility" -- implying that Americans, like hyperactive children, are simply too mobile for their own good and that the Mass Transit, centralist planning remedies they "prescribe" are the public policy equivalent of Ritalin. Limited interest advocacy groups and government agencies alike have produced studies claiming Americans "overuse" their automobiles, relative to some abstract "socially efficient" level of driving. Thus, goes the "Govthink", if government could "slowly" and "covertly" force people into new lifestyles with new working and living arrangements, we would all be better off.

A CENTRALIST AGENDA

A few of the more sensational and draconian policies being quietly proposed to raise private automobile operating costs are:

The objective and end result of this covert social manipulation and centralist economic tinkering is to dramatically increase the price of gasoline to over three dollars a gallon thereby forcibly relocating middle-class taxpayers from their suburban and country homes into the  "New Urbanist” Utopias in densely populated urban centers. Clearly, such centralist social engineering is intolerable for a free American people.

TAMPA AND HILLSBOROUGH COUNTY

Sound familiar? It should. In Hillsborough county Florida (Tampa), both HARTLINE (our perpetually "financially challenged" public transit system) and proponents of a highly suspect, $600MM, 70 mile commuter rail system -- primarily being promoted by Hillsborough County Commissioner Ed Turanchik and State Senator James T (Jim) Hargrett -- are hungrily viewing existing gas taxes and quietly proposing new ones to subsidize their deceptive and highly unpopular agenda for a centralized Public.

Apparently, there is little concern for The University of South Florida's Center For Urban Transport Research that concludes only 2% (17,000 people) of the county's 860,000+ residents use any type of public transportation service. Obviously, the pursuit of discredited rail and other "Centralist" transport schemes is a linchpin of their own personal political agendas. Consider the following.

 HARTLINE'S ORWELLIAN MALINVESTMENT

HARTLINE, Hillsborough county government's bus transportation monopoly, proposed a 1996 budget totaling $42,188,838.00. The budget anticipated two basic income (revenue) streams from operations:

Totaling these two figures and subtracting the result ($6,607,000.00) --  which  private sector businesses would consider to be the gross operating income -- from the $42,188,838.00 that HARTLINE projected for gross 1996 expenditures, taxpayers funded a staggering 1996 HARTLINE shortfall from operating revenues in the amount of at least $35,581,838.00. In fact, the 1996 HARTLINE subsidy was greater than this amount.

In May of 1996, the Tampa Tribune in a curious report noted that HARTLINE bus routes had to be cut due to an additional budget deficit of $944,000, "…. due to lower ridership than anticipated.." The Tribune report continued to state that HARTLINE officials were also contemplating an additional fiscal year 1997 HARTLINE deficit of $2,100,000.

Again, using The University of South Florida's transportation study which concludes that only 2% of the County's residents utilize public transportation of any type, and HARTLINE's unadjusted 1996 budget projections and generously assigning all of these public transportation consumers to HARTLINE buses, the annual 1996 taxpayer subsidy for HARTLINE's 17,000 passengers was staggering!

Specifically for each $1 fare paid HARTLINE in 1996, taxpayers subsidized (paid) more than $5.38!

HARTLINE CONTINUES TO "IMPLODE"

As was noted in the Tampa Tribune's "financially challenged" link above, Hillsborough County Administrator Dan Kleman in May of 1997 proposed to:
 

Also reported in May of 1997, HARTLINE officials projected a $4,500,000 revenue shortfall in FY98. Assuming 17,000 riders are still interested in public bus transportation (perhaps an overly generous and unwarranted assumption), the new and rapidly expanding FY98 deficit will soon bring the annual taxpayer subsidy for each HARTLINE rider to over $2300 per year!

The answer is clear, economic reality means absolute nothing to the "End-Game" of Government Planners' centralist social makeover. Indeed, locally and nationally, central planners and allays are waging nothing less than a covert, Holy War to drastically limit private transportation options for the specific purposes of urbanizing and centralizing our residential, commercial and transportation lifestyle. And, despite a clear taxpayer preference for the undeniable convenience of private transportation -- and the disastrous fiscal performance of Miami Metrorail/Mass Transit -- some of Hillsborough county’s self-serving Politicals and their commercial cronies believe that a naïve and unenlightened public should be forced from their "evil" automobiles and relocated into "kinder," benign, government controlled buses and metro/commuter-rail.

NATIONAL IMPACT

On a national level, the objective of these bizarre, transportation "policies" is an avowed desire to increase the cost of driving to Americans by $3OO billion annually!

Says professor Cordato, "In true Orwellian fashion, it is argued that these proposals would enhance overall "economic efficiency" and increase economic growth." Predictably, the cosmetic rhetoric of the Central Planners, professing a concern for "social costs," totally disregards the overwhelming preference of citizens for the convenience of private transport and the staggering social and "spiritual" costs associated with the loss of basic, individual transportation freedom.
 

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City of Tampa Government Email Link 

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Hillsborough County Government Email Link 

Hillsborough County Commissioners Email Link 

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