Leaders of Tampa Bay Transportation Organizations Request Gov DeSantis Veto TBARTA Funding

Today leaders of No Tax For Tracks, Save Our Streets Pinellas, and Fix Our Roads First sent a request to Governor DeSantis urging the Governor to veto the $1.375 million funding for TBARTA in the budget. 

Below is a copy of the veto request:

TBARTA funding Veto request
(click to enlarge)

TBARTA is a duplicative transit agency in Tampa Bay who has no long term funding source because they are not needed. Even TBARTA's own board members think little of this agency because they do not regularly show up at TBARTA's meetings.

Tampa Bay does not need another layer of taxpayer funded transit agency in an area where transit ridership is less than 2 percent. 

TBARTA was created by the State legislature 15 years ago at the behest of special interests lobbyist Tampa Bay Partnership, who funds every rail tax boondoggle in Tampa Bay. They never received any long term funding because the intent was to then make TBARTA a regional taxing authority to push costly regional rail throughout the Tampa Bay area....which thankfully never happened.  

Unfortunately, taxpayers have been forced to pay for TBARTA's "well connected" lobbyist to go begging for state funding every year. Fifteen years later, TBARTA has nothing to show except enriching consultants, enriching the lobbyist and now paying their Executive Director $300K. 

TBARTA is a poster child of government creating a new bureaucracy for special interests that has little to no accomplishments. The unnecessary bureaucracy becomes a drag on taxpayers and then we cannot get rid of it.

But this agency can be defunded at the State level. Contact the Governor at GovernorRon.Desantis@eog.myflorida.com to ask him to veto and stop this wasteful spending.

We urge Governor DeSantis to veto the $1.375 Million TBARTA funding in the budget.