It's Deja Vu! Below is a clip from my interview with Chris Ingram in October 2018 about All for Transportation's 2018 rail tax boondoggle.
2010, 2014, 2016 (did not get on ballot due to Go Hillsborough scandal), 2018 and now 2022. The same wealthy donor class cronies keeps pushing rail tax boondoggles on taxpayers that will greatly benefit them. They and their rail activist allies are at it again in 2022.
The same people who lied about the illegal 2018 rail tax are now pushing the $18 Billion 2022 rail tax. They call it a "moderate" investment and refuse to call it what it is - a TAX.
These are the same people responsible for why $562 MILLION of unlawful tax dollars was illegally collected. Those funds are still have not been refunded to the TAXPAYERS in Hillsborough County.
How can these people be trusted?
We already have two of the country's most accident prone "death" trains in Florida - street level rail lines Brightline and SunRail that cause many accidents and create congestion.
The $18 BILLION rail tax forces taxpayers to hand HART transit agency, with a ridership of 2%, $8 Billion to fund street level rail in Tampa. Is it fair for taxpayers in unincorporated Hillsborough to fund Tampa rail? Who wants more accident prone congesting creating "death" trains?
These same people are confident that since voters voted for the illegal rail tax in 2018, voters will vote for the rail tax in 2022. Are they stuck in 2018 believing they they can mislead voters again?
But we're not in 2018 anymore.
And 2018 is NOT 2022!
CTCL (Center for Tech and Civic Life) is the highly partisan Democrat aligned nonprofit where Mark Zuckerberg dumped at least $350 million to influence the 2020 election. CTCL was founded in 2012 by Tiana Epps-Johnson, a partisan who trained Progressive organizers and Democrat Party operatives.
Aa a result of the "ZuckBucks" shenanigans in 2020, a number of States, including Florida, enacted new laws prohibiting the use of private money on election activities.
Such laws are not stopping CTCL or their Progressive partners from more election meddling in 2022.
With $80 Million of funding from the Audacious Project, CTCL launched in April their latest initiative: The U.S. Alliance for Election Excellence.
Hillsborough County - you have a problem!
At the June 15th BOCC meeting Hillsborough County staff recommended handing $700K to engineering firm HNTB for a taxpayer funded PR campaign in support of the $18 Billion rail tax on the November ballot.
The County knows they are treading on very thin ice launching a publicly financed campaign for a political issue - the monster rail tax referendum.
The lawsuit was filed by Plaintiff Hardam Tripathi on May 25, 2022 against the Hillsborough County Supervisor of Elections (SOE) and Vistra Communications, LLC.
The entire Complaint (case number 22-CA-004366) can be found here. The Complaint is in the first 24 pages with pages 25-173 as Exhibits. The Complaint is focused on Florida Sunshine laws as the case Introduction states:
This is a case about the public interest, and specifically, about the need for transparency in the operations of government and in the conduct of public elections. Plaintiff's Complaint asks only that Defendant, Vistra Communications, LLC ("Vistra") make available to Plaintiff's inspection public documents made transparent by Florida's public records law.
With their constituents struggling with skyrocketing gas prices, raging inflation, rising food prices, exploding rents and property taxes, the Tampa Centric 5 Democrat Hillsborough County commissioners (Kimberly Overman, Mariella Smith, Pat Kemp, Gwen Myers, Harry Cohen) put an unnecessary and egregious rail/transit tax on the November ballot.
This is atrocious, appalling and totally tone-deaf.
Record property tax revenues are flowing into Hillsborough County, city of Tampa and to transit agency HART.
Hillsborough County still owes taxpayers $562 MILLION of the unlawfully collected illegal 2018 All for Transportation rail tax.
Hillsborough County is about to hand YOUR tax dollars to engineering firm HNTB to fund a taxpayer funded CAMPAIGN targeting voters to vote for the Tampa Centric 5's $18 Billion rail tax boondoggle.
We will continue deconstructing their nonsense and their fiscal irresponsibility, unethical behavior, disinformation/misinformation, false narratives and outright lies.
First episode of Transportation Explanation is below (about 12 minutes). Direct link is: https://eyeontampabay.podbean.com/e/transportation-information-and-raging-inflation/
