The FasTracks boondoggle - Coming after your wallet in 2010!

The Denver Metro Mayors Caucus has seen the writing on the wall and decided to recommend that RTD put off asking for a doubling of the FasTracks boondoggle tax until 2010.  Previously the mayors recommended proceeding with the measure this year.

The FasTracks project has become Colorado’s version of Boston’s ‘Big Dig’ with ballooning costs and poor management.  By its latest estimate, RTD says there is a $2.2 billion shortfall for the project – less than five years after voters approved it thinking RTD could actually manage something professionally.  Now the district finds itself without a leader as General Manager Cal Marsella is due to leave RTD on July 31st after having become embroiled in a battle over his excessive pay and bonuses. 

The Denver Post reports that the mayors are now hesitant to ask for the tax increase due to Marsella’s departure and due to “new research about off-year voting patterns.”  The research points to decreased voter turnout in off-year elections when only truly “hard-core” voters cast ballots. 

In other words, RTD doesn’t want those that are more informed and willing to take the time to vote to have the say.  They would rather have a casual voter who most likely doesn’t study the issues decide the measure’s fate.  Certainly this works better for RTD as these are the same voters who were fooled into voting for the project the first time and are the same ones who don’t seem to read and understand what their vote means. 

The article points out that some mayors including Thornton’s Erik Hansen, Broomfield’s Pat Quinn and Aurora’s Ed Tauer wanted the vote this year because their city’s lines are in the greatest jeopardy.  Without a tax increase, those municipalities will see less service from FasTracks – if any at all – while others are built out fully. 

At least one of those mayor’s, Broomfield’s Quinn, apparently reversed course and now supports a measure in 2010.  It is unknown how Hansen or Tauer feel on the issue.

In the Post’s article is this interesting paragraph:

Delaying the vote “allows us to work with RTD to ensure that what was promised to voters” in the original 2004 FasTracks tax vote “will be delivered,” Louisville Mayor Chuck Sisk said.

This is not the first time we have heard a local politician saying something akin to the fact that the added tax will allow RTD to deliver “what was promised to the voters.”  I really do not understand how someone can say this with a straight face.  Voters were promised a rail system to be completed by 2017 at a cost of $4.7 billion. 

The fact that a tax increase is now required to complete the boondoggle inherently says voters are NOT going to get what was promised.  Right?

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