Tampa, Fl
From: Eye
On Tampa Bay
Posted by: Sharon Calvert
All for Transportation "hot mess" Dumpster Fire
|
The Tampa Centric Five Hillsborough County commissioners were staunch supporters of the unlawful All for Transportation Transit (AFT) $16B rail tax in 2018. Commissioners Pat Kemp, Kimberly Overman, Mariella Smith, Harry Cohen and Gwen Myers, all Democrats, aided and abetted AFT's shameful activity of putting an illegal rail tax hike on the ballot and misleading the voting public. |
Tampa Centric 5 County Commissioners who
supported illegal AFT rail tax
|
Now Hillsborough County OWES taxpayers $521,183,433 that needs to be refunded according to this fox13 report |
Karen Jaroch, with
the group "Fix our Roads First," calls it a "hot mess,"
adding, "this whole tax could have been avoided if it was legally vetted
in the first place."
....the Florida
Legislature could step in with a local bill to enable White’s idea [sales tax
holiday], which Jaroch supports, telling FOX 13, "the Department of
Revenue could work with legislators to come up with a good bill to return the
money fairly through a sales tax holiday."
Jaroch also stated the "Defenders" of the AFT rail tax
should NOT be deciding the refund remedy for the "hot mess" they
helped create. The winners of the lawsuit NOT the losers must decide the refund
remedy.
Fox13 stated AFT is a road tax but that is not true.
The County can fund its roads within the County's bloated $7.142
BILLION growing budget without any massive tax hike.
AFT is a rail tax to force taxpayers in unincorporated
Hillsborough County to pay for rail boondoggles in the city of Tampa to benefit
AFT's crony wealthy donors and downtown developers. The rail tax is also tied
to a new baseball stadium that the same wealthy cronies want taxpayers also to
fund.
Horrifically the $16B AFT rail tax specifically prohibited
funding of new road capacity. it also forced hundreds of miles of "road
diets" to remove valuable lanes of vehicle traffic all over
Hillsborough County.
AFT is the congestion creation rail tax hike.
The AFT rail tax is scandalous and a very contentious and
tainted issue in Hillsborough County. Judge Barbas, who assigned himself to the
case in the lower court after former Judge Laurel Lee recused herself and he
also allowed AFT to intervene in the lawsuit, should not be negotiating any
refund with the losing Defendants or the AFT losing intervenors of the
lawsuit.
The refund remedy must be determined by the lawsuit winners in a
Court preferably outside Hillsborough County.
Or, as Ms. Jaroch states in the Fox13 interview, our state
legislators can pass a bill to implement a sales tax holiday in Hillsborough
County until the $521M is depleted.
The Hillsborough County commissioners should be championing such
bill with Hillsborough's local legislative delegation instead of proposing
"funny business" refund shenanigans to allow the County to keep most
of the illegal tax proceeds.
Commission Chair Pat Kemp and the rest of the Tampa Centric 5
commissioners have already agreed they are putting AFT 2.0 rail tax do-over on
the 2022 ballot. There's been no public meetings and no refund of the 2018 AFT
illegal tax proceeds. They don't care. They have the votes to put another rail
tax boondoggle on the ballot and they will. It is a done deal.
While the Tampa Centric 5 were warned in 2018 there were
numerous legal issues with AFT, they ignored the warnings. The AFT rail tax referendum included 5 pages
of appropriations - stating who, how, where, how much the $16B would be spent
and pages and pages of regulatory gobblygook.
It is simply common sense that biased political committees have
NO authority to appropriate public funds or create regulations. Florida Statute 212.055, which governs local
transportation sales tax referendums clearly states it is the elected county
commissioners who have the appropriations authority.
Proceeds from the
surtax shall be applied to as many or as few of the uses enumerated below in
whatever combination the county commission deems appropriate
How could Pat Kemp, who has publicly touted herself as being a
lawyer while sitting on the dais during commission meetings, and Harry Cohen,
also a Florida lawyer, not understand Florida law?
Or does the end justify the means?
When Cohen ran for his county commission District 1 seat he
barely won last year, he did not disclose to voters he was a lawyer for one of
the AFT Defendants - Hillsborough Clerk of the Court office - in the AFT
lawsuit. Though he no longer is the lawyer for the Clerks office, Cohen was
legally tied at the hip with AFT and their high priced lawyers last year but he
was not transparent about it.
Now Cohen sits on the county commission and Surprise Surprise he
wants to put the AFT rail tax boondoggle do-over on the 2022 ballot. Cohen had the audacity to ask in February
this year, ironically right before the Florida Supreme Court threw out the
entire AFT rail tax as unlawful, if the County should begin spending the AFT
tax proceeds. Remember he's a lawyer...asking whether the County can spend tax
proceeds still under litigation. It's like the Twilight Zone.
Commissioner Overman got caught lying to
the media that AFT had been "thoroughly vetted" in December 2018
right after Commissioner White filed his lawsuit. These commissioners are
disqualified from proposing any refund remedy to fix the big mess they helped
create.
Kemp, Overman and Smith voted on April 1,
2020, right as the pandemic wrecked havoc on us and before the Supreme Court
ever issued their ruling striking down the entire illegal tax down, to put the
same AFT 2.0 rail tax on the 2020 ballot. They wanted to reward the
wealthy AFT cronies by putting another $16B tax hike on the 2020 ballot when
their constituents were losing their jobs and their livelihoods and financially
struggling....while they kept their 6 figure taxpayer funded jobs.
Shameful!
A survey this year of Hillsborough County residents reflects a
vast super majority 89% want their roads fixed. A vast supermajority 75% would
never use transit and do not want to pay for more transit.
The Tampa Centric Five are out of touch with their own
constituents.
Those who support illegal rail tax hikes, crafted in the dark
behind closed doors and funded by crony wealthy downtown donors, should not be
in elected office. Those who support unlawful activity cannot be trusted,
should be removed from office and are disqualified from having any say in the
AFT refund remedy.
Lucky for Hillsborough, four of the five Tampa Centric
commissioners - Kimberly Overman, Mariella Smith, Gwen Myers and lawyer Harry
Cohen are running for re-election. They can be voted out of office next year.
So wake up Hillsborough County voters.
And send these four commissioners and their crony rail tax
boondoggle packing in 2022!
Posted by Sharon Calvert at 4:04 PM
This post is contributed by EYE ON
TAMPA BAY. The views expressed in this post are the blog publisher's and do not
necessarily reflect those of the publisher of BayPost Internet.
Cross Posted with permission from: Eye On Tampa Bay
