Governor DeSantis must veto SB 7068. The $10 billion toll road scheme is the handiwork of Florida Senate President William Galvano, whose corrupt $1.6 million sexual harassment settlement I exposed in Folio Weekly Magazine.
From South Florida Sun Sentinel:
Veto this $10 billion 'boondoggle' highway bill, Gov. DeSantis | Opinion
By PAUL OWENS
MAY 02, 2019 | 2:10 PM
Spending billions of dollars to send toll expressways through Florida’s rural and agricultural lands is a terrible idea, writes 1000 Friends of Florida President Paul Owens. He is calling on Gov. Ron DeSantis to veto "this boondoggle". (Taimy Alvarez / Sun Sentinel)
With cavalier disregard for the economic and environmental costs, Florida legislators have greenlighted the biggest expansion to the state’s highway network in more than half a century. Senate Bill 7068 directs the state Department of Transportation to blaze three new toll expressways through rural Florida – a project whose price tag could top $10 billion.
Now, there might be only one person left to stop it – Gov. Ron DeSantis.
One of the three expressways would run from the Naples area to Lakeland. Another would begin in Citrus County, extending the Suncoast Parkway north to Georgia. A third would connect the Florida Turnpike to the extended Suncoast Parkway.
Paul Owens
Paul Owens (Handout)
This bill, now headed to the governor’s desk, takes dead aim at some of the best remaining natural and agricultural land in our state. Floridians who truly care about fiscal responsibility, public safety, the environment and the rural communities in the cross-hairs of these expressways should call the governor and implore him to veto this irredeemable legislation.
SB 7068 would divert hundreds of millions of dollars over the next decade from general revenue — reducing money available for education and health care — just to plan for the three expressways.
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For actual construction, billions would have to be borrowed. This debt financing would be allowed even if the expressways’ anticipated toll revenue could not cover the payments due for 30 years. Florida’s Turnpike Enterprise could make up any shortfalls by redirecting revenue from other toll roads in its statewide network.
In other words, people who drive on already crowded toll roads — like those in Miami-Dade, Broward, and Palm Beach counties — would spend the next generation paying for this unneeded new expressway capacity in rural counties.
A day before giving its final approval to the bill, the Florida House rejected efforts to apply more scrutiny and accountability to the process of planning and bankrolling the expressways. This included an amendment from state Rep. Margaret Good, D-Sarasota, that would have would have required the Legislature to review task force reports on the expressways before giving the go-ahead on funding to build them. Opponents shouted down her amendment.
Advocates for these expressways haven’t demonstrated a current, compelling transportation need for them. Some have relied on predictions of future population growth. But previous governors, transportation officials and task forces that have taken an objective look at roads in these corridors have ranked them low against today’s more pressing transportation priorities.
Some legislators also argued for these expressways using the spurious public safety rationale that they are needed for hurricane evacuation. But getting on clogged roads and hunting for gas as an extreme storm approaches is unsafe. Florida residents really need adequate emergency shelters in their communities to be safe from hurricanes.
A 2006 study from the University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston noted that 90 out of the 111 people who died because of Hurricane Rita, a 2005 storm that hit Texas particularly hard, died from complications of evacuation such as traffic crashes.
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According to a 2018 assessment by Florida’s Division of Emergency Management, our state has insufficient hurricane shelter space. This deficiency is particularly acute in Southwest Florida and in Tampa Bay, the areas these new toll expressways would ostensibly serve.
Shelters are a safe and practical precaution for extreme weather events. Building new expressways in the name of public safety is a $10 billion boondoggle.
These toll expressways and the sprawling, low-density development they would spawn would be a disaster for Florida’s environment. They would degrade water quality in the Everglades, in multiple rivers, and in First Magnitude springs. They would pave over critical wetlands and aquifer recharge areas. They would destroy limited habitat for the Florida panther and other imperiled species, and fragment wildlife corridors.
Though boosters portray the expressways as a way to bring opportunity to rural communities, they would divert traffic from towns and businesses that have developed around existing roads. And because of the land they would consume and the environmental wreckage they would leave, they would undermine the economic foundation of these areas: agriculture and tourism.
The rural counties that would lay in the bulldozers’ path for the expressways have economic needs for sure. But any boost road building provides would not outlast construction. Florida’s rural and agricultural areas need sustainable job growth that builds on the strengths of these communities’ productive land and natural beauty.
If you think spending billions of dollars to send toll expressways through Florida’s rural and agricultural lands is a terrible idea, call Gov. DeSantis. Ask him to save taxpayer dollars, preserve natural Florida, and give drivers on South Florida toll roads a break. Tell him to veto this boondoggle.
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