Roads Debate Hypocrisy

House leadership put forward Amendment 1A to H.3579 and called it a "reform bill," but they left out the reform part. Somebody had to call them on their hypocrisy.

This is reform: power changes hands, bad behavior gets to be punished, records are made public.

  1. Abolish the Transportation Commission, which insulates DOT from you, the voting public. DOT should be a cabinet agency under the Governor.
  2. Abolish the Infrastructure Bank, which is a 5-member board that puts your kids on the hook for another $500 million every year, just to help their political allies. (The legislature should vote if large sums need to be borrowed.)
  3. Expose DOT's internal operations. Corruption cannot survive in sunlight.

Here's all that in legalese: Amendment 5A and H.5204. Guess what? The House voted it down 101-16.