[ back ]
Build bridge to somewhere first
(by Dave Lange - February 08, 2012)
COUNTY LINE, BY DAVE LANGE
Build bridge to somewhere first
After the Ohio Department of Transportation announced in January that the planned $377 million bridge to somewhere will not be funded until 2023, political leaders in Northeast Ohio went ballistic. Evidently, they think downtown Cleveland, with its tax-bought stadiums and arena, is somewhere.
Meanwhile, the infamous $304 million "bridge to nowhere," which happens to be Gravina Island, Alaska, where almost nobody lives or attends Cleveland Indians games, is still being funded by the federal government. Last March, when "job-killing" Democrats in the U.S. House of Representatives attempted to strip $183 million for the Gravina Island bridge from the Surface Transportation Act of 2011, Republicans unanimously voted to keep it.
Perhaps if Ohio Gov. John Kasich could convince Congress and President Barack Obama that Cleveland is nowhere, he could get more federal funding for the second span of the Inner Belt Bridge over the Cuyahoga River valley, which has been promised by his predecessors. Unfortunately, previous Ohio governors, mostly members of the current one's Republican Party, made a bunch of promises that Mr. Kasich says he can't keep, and the planned bridge to carry eastbound Interstate 90 traffic through Cleveland is one of them.
Well, he might be able to keep those promises if the defenders of big government, who seem to be prevalent in the northern realm of the state, yield their objections to the governor's scheme to lease the Ohio Turnpike to a private operator for maybe $3 billion.
While there are arguments on opposite sides of big-government tax-and-spend and big-business sell-and-lease philosophies, both sides of the Inner Bell Bridge divide are in favor of entitlements. It's just a matter of who's entitled.
Alaskans are entitled to more federal pork than people in every other state, except New Mexico and Mississippi. So no one should be surprised that they would build a bridge to nowhere with taxes paid by people who are somewhere in New York and New Jersey.
If you can believe Cleveland Mayor Frank Jackson, a Democrat, Southern Ohio is more entitled than Northern Ohio. Noting that ODOT is giving priority to major highway projects in Cincinnati and Dayton, he's convinced that the Cleveland region sends more tax money to Columbus than it receives back.
Former Republican state Sen. Gary Suhadolnik, who also is former executive director of the Ohio Turnpike Commission, has a similar sense about the governor's proposed turnpike lease to a private operator.
Nobody pays the tolls that have built, widened and maintained the Ohio Turnpike, which runs across the extreme northern corridor of the state, in order to drive to Columbus, Dayton or Cincinnati.
Yet, as Mr. Suhadolnik noted, Gov. Kasich would spend much of the proceeds from leasing the turnpike for highway projects in Southern Ohio.
This redistribution of wealth by politicians who feed the entitlement trough must be stopped. Gas taxes and turnpike tolls paid in Northern Ohio should stay in Northern Ohio. A bridge to somewhere in Cleveland shouldn't take a back seat to a bridge to somewhere else in Cincinnati or a bridge to nowhere in Alaska.
[ back ]
