Ever notice how transportation–in an area that still equates paving with improving–is always in the news cycle? Despite the “No-Tax-for-Anything; We-Already-Gave-at-the-Office-Up-North” crowd, the subject won’t go away. Just like the need for efficient, 21st century transit won’t go away. Just like the need for quality-of-life upgrades and quantity-of-competition responses won’t go away.
The most recent example: County Commissioner Ken Hagan told other members of Hillsborough County’s Transportation Policy Leadership Group that he wants its specific recommendations within two months. Or in Hagan-speak: “It’s time to bring this in for a landing.” He wants to expedite necessary steps for a transportation referendum (read: sales tax) in November 2016.
Two points are critical.
First, because of what happened in 2010, the specifics deal mostly with roads this time. Trains are the third rail of transit around here. Bob’s Barricades and traffic-cones-forever scenarios still loom.
But while better roadways and intersections help, of course, the point is probably moot.
Most voters stay home and leave too much of the democratic process in the hands of the naysayers who loathe big government and don’t want to pay more taxes. For anything. Better infrastructure. A cleaner environment. Immortality. Eternal salvation. Doesn’t matter; it’s the principle.
Too bad that the Legislature won’t hear of a (small “d”) democratic alternative that a contingent of mayors tried to get help with a couple of years ago. That was when Mayor Bob Buckhorn and his counterparts in St. Petersburg, Orlando, Jacksonville and Miami made the case for city-only (as opposed to countywide) referenda in Tallahassee. It got nowhere.
Had it gotten somewhere, however, we likely wouldn’t have future scenarios similar to what happened in Hillsborough in 2010. That’s when outnumbered Tampa voters favored the transportation initiative with a major rail component, but voters in unincorporated parts of the county voted it down. It’s what they do.
Nor would we have seen what we saw last year with the Greenlight Pinellas transit amendment. It passed in St. Petersburg, but it was voted down outside city limits. It’s what they did.
So much for self-determination. That’s an important principle too.