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OrlandoSentinel.com
Paula Dockery: SunRail is OK, but this deal is awful
Dan Tracy
Sentinel Staff Writer
April 20, 2009
TALLAHASSEE
Like it or not, and she says she doesn't, Lakeland Sen. Paula Dockery is the equivalent of a railroad crossing arm that has dropped in front of Central Florida's planned SunRail commuter train.
She stopped the $1.2 billion project in the Legislature last year — and she says she's on track to do it again.
The 47-year-old Republican lawmaker has recruited an unusual assortment of allies — labor unions and Democrats — to push SunRail into the last two weeks of the session, a perilous time when legislation can be lost in the crush of hundreds of bills.
Though the project has cleared two Senate committees and will likely pass a third today, Dockery is confident she will prevail. She estimates she has 26 votes to defeat the bill (SB 1212) if it comes to the floor of the 40-member Senate.
Dockery says she takes no joy in trying to deprive Central Florida of a train that would run 61 miles from DeLand through downtown Orlando to Poinciana by 2013. In fact, she said, she is a big mass-transit supporter and would like to see Central Florida get its train.
Her husband, after all, is C.C. "Doc" Dockery, the Lakeland multimillionaire and Republican fundraiser who has tried for decades to get a high-speed train built that would link Tampa with Miami and Orlando.
And it's that relationship that SunRail supporters privately grouse about. They say Dockery is motivated primarily by the supposed animus of her husband, whom they contend is angry that high-speed rail hasn't happened.
He spent $3 million of his own money on a statewide referendum in 2000 that amended the state constitution to create a high-speed-rail system. But then-Gov. Jeb Bush not only got that vote reversed in 2004, he then threw his backing to the Central Florida commuter-rail plan.
Dockery, critics say, is exacting her husband's revenge. "Absolutely not true," said Doc Dockery, who declined further comment.
Paula Dockery also scoffs at the notion. "I'm not against SunRail," she said during an interview in her third-floor Senate office.
The problem, she said, is the agreement between the state Department of Transportation and CSX, the railroad company that owns the tracks that the commuter train would use.
"This is not about me," Dockery said. "This is about a bad deal that needs to be improved."
A University of Florida graduate with a master's degree in mass communications, Dockery said her initial response to SunRail was ambivalent. But she started to pay more attention when she was told freight traffic could be rerouted through her hometown to make way for the commuter train.
SunRail is only a part of a plan that would have the state pay CSX $759 million; more than half will go for improvements to enable CSX to re-route its freight traffic to tracks running down the center of the state and into a new rail yard near Winter Haven. One consequence: the number of freight trains running through downtown Lakeland could increase from an average of 16 today to as many as 54 in coming years.
Dockery started asking FDOT officials questions, she said, and largely was ignored.
"They sort of patted me on the head and said, 'Don't worry. This is going to happen,'" she recalled.
FDOT officials say they cooperated with her. And indeed, Dockery has more than two dozen legal-sized boxes filled with documents about SunRail in her downtown Lakeland office.
Combing through the records with her staff, she said, she concluded that CSX was being paid too much and shifting virtually all of the risk related to any possible accidents onto the state.
A former State Farm insurance underwriter whose husband made his fortune in insurance, Dockery zeroed in on how liability would be split between CSX and the state. Under the current plan — the subject of the bill now in the Senate — the railroad and the state would buy a $200million liability policy that would cover virtually any accident, even one caused by CSX.
"Nothing is coming out of CSX's pockets," she said.
But the railroad is insisting on approval of the entire deal in return for selling its right to run on the tracks through Orlando. That right of way, says CSX spokesman Gary Sease, "has real and tangible value. That's pretty obvious."
A 15-year legislative veteran, including six years in the House, Dockery dug in to fight SunRail. Last year, she recruited trial lawyers — who normally ally with Democrats — and a powerful Miami Republican senator to win.
The lawyers were upset because SunRail was seeking "sovereign immunity," sharp limits on lawsuits.
And with the help of Sen. Alex Villalobos, R-Miami, who chaired the critical Judiciary Committee, she tied the train in parliamentary knots that kept it from coming to a floor vote.
This year, SunRail's sponsor, Sen. Lee Constantine, R- Altamonte Springs, dropped sovereign immunity to mollify the trial lawyers. He even got the support of Lakeland by promising in the bill to help reroute freight traffic away from that city.
Dockery responded by enlisting the AFL-CIO, which has strong influence with the Senate's 14 Democrats. The unions are concerned because eight unionized CSX workers could lose their jobs — and worse, the commuter train could be operated by a nonunion company.
Dockery has also insisted — despite DOT spreadsheets that say otherwise — that there are "hundreds of millions" of state dollars set aside for SunRail. Democrats, seeking more money for education, have jumped on that argument, prompting Senate Minority Leader Al Lawson of Tallahassee to call SunRail "a choo-choo train to nowhere."
Constantine says Dockery has "been very persuasive. She has the 15-second argument."
By that, he means she can say SunRail is a bad deal that could cost taxpayers millions. His response is more complicated, what he calls "the 15-minute argument" that goes into economic development, transportation philosophy and DOT funding. That's more difficult to sell.
Sen. Ronda Storms, R-Valrico, and a SunRail opponent, said Dockery has been so effective at thwarting the train through "sheer doggedness."
Storms said it is not uncommon to hear from Dockery two or three times a day as she passes along new arguments about the train. "She grabs hold. I would say Senator Dockery has not let an opportunity go by," Storms said.
Copyright © 2009, Orlando Sentinel
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