Rationale to Push Regionalism Disappeared November 8th: Dump Long's Regionalism Proposal

We previously posted here and here about Pinellas County Commissioner Janet Long's push for regionalism, the merger of HART and PSTA and using PSTA as a proxy to accomplish that agenda.

We updated our last post to highlight that the direction of Long's Regional Vision she presented at the January 13 PSTA workshop is to regionally control a big huge new pot of tax dollars:
REGIONAL SALES TAX FUNDING PLUS THE EXISTING LOCAL JURISDICTIONAL [PROPERTY TAX] FUNDING.

Pinellas County Commission Long's Regional Vision

Trump was elected because voters want to stop the over reach of government, which is at every level of government, and return power back to the People where it belongs.

What Commissioner Long is pushing is the exact opposite. What Long, PSTA's Brad Miller, the Tampa Bay Times and their cohorts want is to take power away from the people and regionalize decision making.

Regionalizing decision making is being done in coordination with the Obama Administration's Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing (AFFH) Affordable Housing regulations. The Obama Administration forced the AFFH regulations on all localities receiving HUD funding in July 2015, obligating them to compare their demographics to the region as a whole, nullifying municipal boundaries. 

Long presented her Regional Council of Governments Cronies proposal in October at a joint meeting of HART and PSTA. The chart below reflects the broad areas of focus her regional decision making agency would control, including all their pots of money.

Chart from Commissioner Long's presentation
at the joint HART/PSTA meeting in October

Long's focus areas fit right into the Obama Administration's over reaching AFFH regulations and the MPO merger regulations pushed through AFTER the November election. Both of those regulations force regionalism and regional decision making upon us all without ever going through any deliberative, legislative process.

Taxpayer funded use of local resources to start implementing the over reaching AFFH regulations has started. HUD has provided their "regional" data and maps to begin the regional implementation.

Transit plays a part of the AFFH regulations with HUD provided data related to disparities in access to transportation as this presentation reflects.

HUD provides their data to locally
comply with AFFH regulations

The election in November was about de-centralizing government power and decision making and pushing power back to the People where it belongs. Long's proposal to take away local control, regionalize power, take away local decision making and influence, enable greater special interests/lobbyists influence and push for regional sales tax funding goes in the exact opposite direction.

Long used the last minute MPO merger rule, pushed through by the Obama Administration on December 20th and Obama's AFFH regulations to rationalize her regionalism agenda.

It is obvious that a real goal of Long's regional proposal is to pursue a new multi-county regional sales tax hike to pay for her regional agenda.

Perhaps last October Democrat Long envisioned Hillary, who would have simply continued Obama's policies, would win in November.

The reality now is that a new Trump Administration and a Republican Congress will be rolling back and eliminating many over reaching burdensome federal regulations.

The reality now is there's a very good probability Obama's tyrannical AFFH regulations and the last minute MPO merger rules are going away.

So what Republican elected officials in Tampa Bay are going to support Democrat Long's proposal that supports Obama's regionalism agenda?

Time to Dump Long's proposal because her rationale excuse for pushing her regionalism agenda disappeared on November 8th.