BLASKA BLOG

I would like to thank Melanie Hampton who is my represntative on the board. for voting no on this issue.  Geez this is pathetic and a waste of money and time. 

BTW, I guess an NBC station from Chicago doesn't think to kindly of our President.  http://www.nbcchicago.com/news/politics/A-Disconnected-President.html

As it stands, I know the direct legislation (9.20) only applies to cities and villages.  It would be interesting if it could be challenged so that it applies to counties as well.  I would be more than happy to be a part of class action lawsuit for a referendum to be done on the issue.

Dave,

Well done. Factual reporting of the meeting on Nov 5 2009 on RTA=Trains in Dane! Much appreciate you taking the time to sip a few beers and watch the Supervisor Muscial, "We are the clowns" Hope others will google "Dane county supervisors" and view them making sausage out of  antidemocratic baloney- A.K.A The RTA in DANE COUNTY! 

I was there from 6:00pm to 2:30 a.m. on Nov 6. Like you, mightily impressed with the average guy and gal and their eloquent and passionate pleas for simply fair legislation.

The Left had to call in reinforcments via the WISPIRG mind numb UW "just tell me where to sign" and "Oh yeah, do we get paid for this too"  30 or so students.

Even the PEEDEES and the LIBS admitted it was "not the legislation they hoped for" (even though they probably wrote it for the Governator) They admit is is bad legislation, but instead of sending back to the DEM controlled legislature and the Trainiac Govenor who borrowed $47.5 million for Spanish TALGO trians (without the locomotives to pull the damn things around) the trainiacs on the board said. "We got the votes, let's ram this turkey  sausage through."

They did let off Duranczk,Hesselbein,Downing, O'Loughlin?, Kostelic? whose normal reaction to Scott McDonell's "JUMP" is, "How high?"

 When Frankenstein created a monster at least he tried to reign it in, control him, make him acceptable. Not the DANE County Bored, but busybodies- create a monster RTA and then, Whoops we can't do a thing with it now!  Sorry people... I say....Trow da bums out!

Bill,

Let's cut through the crap here and recognize that what is motivating the majority of the anti-RTA folks is the possibility that their sales taxes might go up to pay for something they don't think they will use.  Yes, there are issues to be addressed in the legislation, but for a moment, lets keep our eye on the ball of sales taxes and ROI for commuter rail.

On the topic of tax burden, I direct your attention to the following opinion piece written by a business writer:

http://www.jsonline.com/news/opinion/69419357.html

The tasty bit is this:

"Everything we bought for our apartment in Almería we bought on foot. Plumbers, furniture stores, computer equipment and appliances are only a few minutes away. When we bought our washing machine, the owner's brother was waiting for us at our door, our washer on a handcart, even though we lingered for only moments on the walk home.

What's the cost for living our American way? It's not just the thousands of dollars for the second car, insurance and gas. We also have to support a lake of concrete around us - and gas, electric and sewer lines to stretch out past the near-vacant belts beyond the older suburbs. Property taxes in Almería on our condo are one-twelfth our taxes in Milwaukee, even though the value of the two homes is roughly the same.

One-twelfth. Oh, and they throw in free health insurance."

So there you have it, if we can just convince people to live more like they do in Spain, our property taxes might be 1/12th of what they are here.  Poof goes your anti-tax argument.

Yes, I can hear you now: "But that is not the way people want to live in America, 90% of trips are made by car".

Just today I ran across this article:

http://switchboard.nrdc.org/blogs/kbenfield/major_real_estate_report_shift.html

Which is a blog entry summarizing some of the transportation related findings from the Urban Land Institute's 2010 real estate trends report.  The tasty bit from that report reads thusly:

"Road conges­tion, higher energy costs, and climate change concerns combine to alter peo­ple's thinking about where they decide to live and work. 'It's a fundamental shift.' The lifestyle cost-of-living equa­tion starts to swing away more dramati­cally from bigger houses on bigger lots at the suburban edge to greater convenience and efficiencies gained from infill housing closer to work. These homes may be more expensive on a price-per-pound basis, but reduced driving costs and lower heating/cooling bills provide offsets . . . 'near-in suburbs will do well especially if they link to busi­ness cores by mass transportation.' Empty nesters and later-marrying echo boomers continue to flock to cities and urbanizing suburban areas. For aging baby boomers, infill apartment or town­house living means less upkeep and proximity to cultural and entertainment attractions."

So you see, the trend is that more people DO want to live in a less car dependant way that will act to reduce property taxes.  So again I say "Poof" to your anti-sales tax argument.

Again, I hear you say that you would rather not have to endure any sales tax increase at all, even if there was a property tax payoff at the end of the tunnel.

Well, instead of fighting a train that people will want in the future and will reduce property taxes, how about we focus on the problem of minimizing the need to raise those sales taxes in the first place?  To prime the pump, I now introduce to the world for the first time right here on Blaska’a blog, the “Modesplit Capture Allowance” [MCA].

In short, the MCA would be a reform enacted at the State level that would provide a way to partially fund the RTA by taking a portion of the gas taxes paid by people who switch to transit, and allowing cities the flexibility to take some of their road-aid money and fund capital transit projects.

How does it work?

Joe Driver is currently driving to work.  He is paying gas taxes.  Every year, a certain percentage of Joe’s taxes go toward expanding the road capacity in anticipation of growth in traffic.  The projects that Joe is funding will last about 40-years with good maintenance.  However, next year, Joe might decide to use the train instead and save a little money on car costs.  But wait – what happens to the money that Joe paid in taxes that went to expanding road capacity that he is now not benefiting from?  What if, like a gym membership, he could transfer the unused part of his gas-tax investment into expanding the transit system he now uses?  That investment could be used to reduce the sales-tax burden of the transit system – everybody wins a bit.

I would like to see more ideas like this out of those people opposed to raising taxes!

On the topic of what impact I believe Bill Richardson is having on the effectiveness of our local government:

You don't like Government waste?  Great, because neither do I.  In fact, I view it as part of our civic duty to engage the system in a way that will minimize that waste.  However, each of us has a different perspective on the world, a slightly different knowlege base and level of expertise depending on the issue, and therefore we can come to different conclusions about where the most effective place is to reduce that waste.  In a perfect world we would all come together, share our expertise and reach a consensus as to what the facts were on a given issue.  I believe the source of most government waste is that this consensus approach doesn't happen where it most needs to.  That is why I believe Mr. Richardson is actually making government function less efficiently: instead of striving to settle on the facts, he is constantly distorting them in a way that provokes an emotional reaction.

Mr. Richardson does not need to come to the same conclusion about the value of rail as I do to gain my respect.  He's got his value system and I have mine - we most certainly have differences of opinion.  However, when Mr. Richardson engages in public behavior that distracts from the facts, then he loses my respect.

Examples of the problem:

Failing to correct his numbers on the previous RTA meetings registrants (Bill's numbers suggest a NO Majority, but the opposite was the case) but continuing to use those facts to provoke an emotional response by suggesting the committee didn't listen to the NO Majority (which didn't exist).

Making statements like the following:

"The Left had to call in reinforcments via the WISPIRG mind numb UW 'just tell me where to sign' and 'Oh yeah, do we get paid for this too'  30 or so students."

Which provokes an emotional reaction from his audience based on a false stereotype.  I might note that I talked to a few of those students and they were far from "mind numb".  That of course didn't stop one rta-opponent from calling them "ignorant" as they passed by a couple of the WISPIRG folks I asked to help pass out "RTA YES!" stickers.  Such a statement does not promote a better understanding of the issue, it creates emotional distress.  By the way, this is a great example of why conservatives are viewed as "haters".

Making statements like this:

"Even the PEEDEES and the LIBS admitted it was 'not the legislation they hoped for' (even though they probably wrote it for the Governator) They admit is is bad legislation, but instead of sending back to the DEM controlled legislature and the Trainiac Govenor who borrowed $47.5 million for Spanish TALGO trians (without the locomotives to pull the damn things around) the trainiacs on the board said. 'We got the votes, let's ram this turkey  sausage through.' "

based on speculation about who wrote the legislation, or that the whole disagreement about the legislation is some kind of ruse.  I might also note that Bill was corrected on Mitch Henck's show about the Talgo Trains and their apparent lack of locomotives - it turns out the engines are built into the units and they do not need locomotives - a fact I verified myself, the results I e-mailed to Bill (more than two weeks ago) as well as State Rep Anderson (whose blog entry was the source of Bill's accusation).

The above statements actually detract from the public's ability to get a clear picture of the facts surrounding our potential transportation policy choices or ways to improve the governance of the RTA, and in my opinion constitute a breach of the public's trust.

Good news!  After weeks of posting the wrong numbers for the RTA county committee meeting over two weeks ago and repeating them on air several times, a reorganization of the great train robbery site seems to no longer include any information about that meeting.  While I would have preferred to see a correction and some effort by Mr. Richardson to publicly acknowledge the mistake, I appreciate the effort thus far.

And a minor correction, from a blog friend of mine at madison.com:

"Re: Talgo trains. The Governor's own press release says the following (capitalization is mine):
'The trains will be put into service on the Amtrak Hiawatha Service with the cars pulled by EXISTING locomotives.'
http://www.talgoamerica.com/pdf/talgo-train-sale.pdf"

It appears that while it was technically correct that there was no need for the state to purchase locomotives, the reason for it is slightly different than I had previously thought.  The fact remains that Mr. Richardson's characterization of the issue is still misleading.