Why is Florida’s rookie Republican Gov. Rick Scott hell-bent on rejecting $2.4 billion in federal funds for a Tampa-Orlando high-speed railway? Is it because his argument that Florida taxpayers would be “on the hook” for cost overruns was about to be exposed as a bunch of hooey?
Until Scott announced he would veto the rail program on Feb. 16, the new 84-mile rail line was going to be put out to private bid. It was an open secret in business circles that expected bidders, including Japan’s JR Central (builder of the high-speed Shinkansen) and South Korea’s Hyundai Rotem (builder of Korea’s bullet trains), would be willing to pay for Florida’s $280 million share of the project, plus any construction cost overruns and operating losses, in return for a 30-year lease on the Tampa-Orlando railway.
In other words, the private sector, not the Florida taxpayer, would cover any non-federal costs for the project. Since such a revelation would throw a monkey wrench into Scott’s ideological stance that “Obama rail” is “a federal boondoggle,” he tried to veto the program before it got to the bidding stage.
But Scott may have overstepped his state constitutional authority. Two state senators, Republican Thad Altman and Democrat Arthenia Joyner, filed a lawsuit Tuesday before the Florida Supreme Court arguing that Scott exceeded his powers by “retroactively vetoing” the project after the legislature voted to move ahead with the project and prior governor, Charlie Crist, agreed to accept the federal rail funds.
According to the suit, “The legislation implementing high-speed rail and the appropriation of the state and federal monies were fully accomplished prior to the election or inauguration of the Respondent, [but] once elected, Gov. Scott has refused to permit the Grant Amendment to be executed by the Florida Rail Enterprise,” thus halting the process of issuing a so-called “design-build-operate-maintain-and-finance” contract with a private bidder.
Predictably, Scott roared back yesterday by saying the two legislators overstepped their bounds by criticizing him. “Fortunately for the taxpayers of Florida, nothing in Florida law compels the Governor … to pour millions of dollars into a black hole during the historic fiscal crisis with which the state is presently grappling,” wrote Scott’s general counsel.
Scott vowed to veto any future appropriation for high-speed rail by the Florida legislature and added imperiously that he would reserve the right to declare the federal government’s stimulus package, from which the high-speed rail funds were derived, “an unconstitutional infringement on his rights as governor.”
The governor’s intransigence has set off a scramble by federal, state, and local officials to circumvent his office and save the long-planned project. Local governments, including Orlando, Tampa, and Miami, have formed a coalition they said could assume responsibility for putting the project out to bid and ensure that a private company would cover any construction cost overruns. A group of mayors presented the plan to Scott earlier this week, but he did not budge from his anti-train stance.
There is no dispute that the project would create about 30,000 construction jobs in the economically depressed central part of Florida and aid tourism by providing a fast ride from Orlando International Airport to Disney World.
Scott campaigned for office promising to create thousands of new jobs for Florida. But those jobs are to be created “his way” by building new roads, expanding local ports and cutting taxes, not by accepting a program whose job creation might rub off favorably on Barack Obama during the 2012 presidential election.
Scott may be speeding toward his own political fall – his poll numbers are slipping – but at the moment he seems to have the momentum to bring down the Obama administration’s most “do-able” passenger rail project. So far, it’s unclear whether the White House wants to stand up and fight Scott or redirect the federal funds to places like California and New York where the governors are openly campaigning for the money.
U.S. Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood has given Scott until the end of Friday to accept or reject the federal rail funds. Doubtless we know what Scott will do. The Florida story, however, won’t be over until the local entities give up on their plan to take over the project and the state Supreme Court weighs in on the constitutional issues raised by the Altman-Joyner suit.