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The last three years have not been good ones for the Tampa Hillsborough Expressway Authority. Consider this: The agency's least damaging controversy was the collapse of a section of its then-under-construction elevated Crosstown Expressway.
That $120 million disaster turned out to be little more than a fender-bender, compared to the series of head-on collisions the authority has experienced since.
First came media scrutiny because the authority appeared to be violating Florida's open meetings laws in its attempt to shuck off its longtime law firm and hire another. Allegations of political favoritism followed. More controversies surfaced: a possible conflict of interest with an authority board member who had supplied steel for the expressway projects. Millions paid to a lobbyist, perhaps without legal authority to do so. More than $1 million paid to public relations agencies.
Then came the shocker that put the normally anonymous Expressway Authority at the top of everyone's minds: Its executive director, Ralph Mervine, owned a gay porn website that was right there on the Internet for all local media to see. That unusual brand of entrepreneurialism cost Mervine his job.
So how is it that the Expressway Authority's controversial desire to build a four-county, toll-road beltway around the Tampa Bay region seemed to survive all that intrigue and sex -- not to mention the resulting probes by the Governor's Office, the state Auditor General and the FBI?
The answer, increasingly, is that it might not. There are indications the Expressway Authority is not 100 percent committed to completing feasibility studies for the beltway. "There is no point to say we are moving things forward or stopping them," said Expressway Authority spokeswoman Honey Rand. "We are in a serious reassessment and retooling mode."
So, is the idea of a toll road from western Pasco County and northern Pinellas, through rural eastern Hillsborough and into northern Manatee County, still alive? "The answer is yes and no," Rand said.
The authority has put new projects on the back burner for at least 60 days, Rand explained, while it tries to implement some of the changes called for in the December Auditor General's report, which criticized the agency for its questionable record-keeping and lobbyist payments.
Once that is done, and public trust in the agency presumably restored to some measure, "then the next steps are to get together with the city of Tampa and Hillsborough County and find out what they want and when they want it," Rand said.
It is hard for some to imagine the city and the county coming together on anything, given their partisan differences and urban vs. suburban outlooks. More outrageously, some argue, is the idea that the unelected Expressway board (all appointees of Gov. Jeb Bush) is leading the discussion about a project with such growth and suburban sprawl ramifications.
"You have a minor government body coming out with a regionally transforming transportation project," said Ed Turanchik, a former Hillsborough County Commissioner and a light rail and transit advocate. "It is worse than the tail wagging the dog."
The Tampa Hillsborough Expressway Authority controversy is about much more than just road-building. At a December meeting between state legislators and two Expressway officials, state Rep. Kevin Ambler cut short discussion about the agency's problems with the statement, "This is far more complicated than headlines in the newspapers make it seem."
That's because it is really about political power and growth.
"This is all about how we are going to grow," Turanchik said. "Wherever you put transportation capacity is where growth is going to go. It's politically far easier to do it out in the farmlands [of eastern Hillsborough County]."
And if Tampa Bay is to decide on what roads (and transit systems) to build, and how it will grow, it will have to deal with several pending questions:
• Should we have a regional transportation authority that cuts across county lines and looks at the big picture? State Rep. Bill Galvano thinks so, and for the second year he is sponsoring legislation to create such a body. The agency would have the power to finance new toll roads with privately purchased bonds, rather than be dependent on state tax dollars.
"It should include not only light rail, mass transit, but eventually I want to see this authority addressing our ports and airports," Galvano explained. "That having been said, any type of entity like this, much of where it goes depends on the people who are on the board."
The upside? The board could make politically unpopular but necessary decisions on where new roads must go, and it would be able to pay for them without raising taxes.
The downside? Those roads could be directed to rural and suburban areas, feeding sprawl. The proposed regional transportation agency also would add to the glut of road-building, transit, transportation planning and other government agencies already on the case. Even Galvano acknowledges "we are choking to death on plans," but he hopes his new regional authority would have the power to cut through that "Gordian knot."
• Should the Expressway Authority be abolished? After all, it is seemingly wracked with conflicts of interest, inside dealing and improper spending. State Sen. Mike Fasano of Pasco County wants to see it done away with, but longtime Expressway critic Sen. Victor Crist of Tampa will offer an alternative bill that would change the appointment process for board members so it is not dominated by the governor.
"The public perception of that authority is so bad that they have lost all trust with the public," Crist said. Nonetheless, he worries that without an urban-oriented expressway board looking at transportation needs inside Tampa, a regional transportation agency could skew area projects to suburban areas.
His planned legislation would give the city of Tampa three appointments to the board and Hillsborough County three appointments, with the governor's district secretary of transportation as the seventh member.
• Is it all too little, too late? Despite Mayor Pam Iorio's recent announcement that she will devote considerable energy to pushing for transit and other transportation solutions, the federal dollars available to this area a decade ago were lost to changing priorities and tax cuts under President Bush. Where the feds used to pay half of the cost of constructing a light rail system (such as those planned for Jacksonville, Miami and Orlando), today local taxpayers would be the major funding source.
Turanchik, who tried in vain to create a 70-mile light rail system in Hillsborough County in the 1990s, shakes his head in sorrow as he thinks about the missed opportunity (the federal government removed Hillsborough from contention for rail dollars in 2005, after years of hostility toward the idea from a Republican-dominated County Commission and critics who insisted that light rail wouldn't work in a region with low-density, suburban development already in place).
"The money isn't out there [any more for light rail]," Turanchik said. "Anything we do now will have to be more bus than rail."
• Will transportation agencies force local governments to fix land-use plans that promote sprawl? Being in the road-building business, it's not likely they will. The public -- which supports higher taxes for transit, according to recent polls -- is pretty tired of traffic jams, and is looking for alternatives. But if new homebuilding is reduced in Tampa Bay's rural and suburban areas, are existing urban neighborhoods such as Old Northeast in St. Petersburg or West Tampa interested in accommodating townhomes and condos in order to create the densities needed to support mass transit?
That question may land us in the biggest pothole of all.
The author represented Victor Crist as a political consultant from 1986-2000.
COMMENTS
RE: Will the beltway survive the Expressway Authority scandals?
Posted by ed holt on 01.16.07 @ 08:15 PM
I love this quote: '"You have a minor government body coming out with a regionally transforming transportation project," said Ed Turanchik, a former Hillsborough County Commissioner and a light rail and transit advocate. "It is worse than the tail wagging the dog."' But, it is more like a flea holding the dog by the tail and swinging it around violently. What do the people want? Good, fucking public transportation.
RE: Will the beltway survive the Expressway Authority scandals?
Posted by James on 01.16.07 @ 01:13 PM
For metro area that is as large as the Tampa Bay area is in both population & geography, we are very much behind most of the nation when it comes to our transportation & interstate system - and at the rate this city is growing we are falling behind faster than ever. The sprawl is already here, and it's not going away. What we don't have is a quick and efficient way to get from one point of the sprawl to an other with our measly little expressway system. Yesterday, it took me two hours to get from St. Petersburg to Wesley Chapel because. And that's not acceptable now, nor will it be in 10 years when the population of this area explode even further.