Too Much Even For South Florida

by Bryan

Sometimes it gets so bad that even the wheeler-dealers in South Florida don’t want to touch it. CBS reports on The $10M “Gift” Nobody Wanted:

(CBS) This earmark mystery stretches all the way from the Alaskan tundra to the warm beaches of South Florida.

“Basically, we were given a gift that we didn’t want,” Estero Council of Community Leaders chairman Don Eslick told CBS News investigative correspondent Sharyl Attkisson. “And it was for the wrong thing.”

The “gift” was $10 million tax dollars earmarked from Congress for traffic needs. But not just any traffic need. The money had to be used to connect Coconut Road, a deadend street, with the major Interstate I-75.

The question was why?

A Coconut Road interchange was hardly an urgent priority in the area’s traffic plan.

“If one is the least need and ten is the greatest, I would give it a zero,” says Lee County commissioner Ray Judah.
…

The way the earmark worked, the money cannot be diverted to the county’s actual urgent needs.

So the transit board took a stand.

They voted to send the money back to Washington.

“We rejected the $10 million earmark because we felt it wasn’t warranted,” says Judah.

It may be a cold day before they turn down that kind of money again. But in South Florida, they’re taking the sunny view, hoping Congress will return the money under different conditions for something they actually need.

As soon as I saw “tundra” I knew it was Don Young or Ted Stevens. The entire Alaska delegation thinks the Federal budget is their piggy bank, and they do it in a state where the oil revenue not only pays for state government, but provides a payment for every citizen.

I lived in Alaska, and it is definitely expensive, but that doesn’t mean that the citizens of the other 49 states should be paying for every project they dream up. The Alaskan delegation will complain about someone spending the $2K in instant aid after Katrina on frivolous things and turn around and earmark hundreds of millions for a bridge to nowhere. Who are the real “welfare cheats”?

5 comments

1 Kryten42 { 01.19.08 at 7:01 am }: Hi Bryan.

I didn’t understand why anyone would want to connect a dead-end street with a major Interstate or the connection to the Alaskan crooks. So I did some research and found:

Estero Development Report
Volume 7, Number 6
Edited by ECCL–the Estero Council of Community Leaders

An additional source of controversy at the meeting came as a result of a last minute letter from an attorney reportedly hired by the owner of the land just east of the Interchange, Daniel Aronoff, who alleged that the Letourneau Report was in error in concluding that the last minute change in the Coconut Road I-75 Interchange language was unconstitutional and unethical. The attorney, Jack Schenendorf, a former staffer for the House Committee headed for many years by Congressman Young of Alaska, also testified at the meeting indicating that the change was probably just the result of the House Enrolling Clerk correcting an error in the legislation and asserting that the Congress will never pass a bill correcting this change.

Coconut I-75 Interchange Update
So, there’s a connection between the land developer, Daniel Aronoff, and Congressman Young. What else?

The Coconut Road money is a boon, however, to Daniel J. Aronoff, a Bloomfield Hills real estate developer who helped raise $40,000 for Young at the nearby Hyatt Coconut Point hotel days before he introduced the measure.

Aronoff owns as much as 4,000 acres along Coconut Road.

The $10 million in federal money would pay for the first steps to connect the road to Interstate 75, exponentially increasing the value of Aronoff’s land.

A Republican commissioner of Lee County, Ray Judah, is campaigning against the interchange, calling it an example of congressional corruption that is “a cancer on the federal government.”

Aronoff and Michael J. Malik share the same D.C. political operative: Richard Alcalde, founder of the lobbying firm Potomac Partners D.C.

Young may have first learned of Coconut Road on Feb. 17, 2005. That is when he flew to the region on a plane owned by a Waterford, Mich., charter company that is associated with the Aronoff family, which is based in Bloomfield Hills, Mich.

The Aronoffs are among the company’s biggest clients, its general manager, Tom Hector, said.

Young’s re-election campaign reimbursed the company $3,422 for the flight, according to his campaign filings.

At the invitation of Mack, Young visited Florida Gulf Coast University for a meeting on the Interstate and other transportation questions. Afterward, Young went directly to the fundraiser at the Hyatt Coconut Point. His campaign records show that he received more than $40,000 in contributions on one day around that time, mostly from southwestern Florida developers and builders.

Aronoff, whose family is a major contributor to Republicans, gave $500 to Young’s campaign and later gave $2,500 to Young’s Midnight Sun political action committee.

The Aronoffs gave more than $200,000 to Republican candidates and political committees in 2006.

Daniel Aronoff and Mike Malik have similar relationships with Rep. Don Young

Then, I found this in The Hill

Rep. Connie Mack (R-Fla.) sent a letter to a Florida university expressing his support for an interchange at Coconut Road, a $10 million earmark that has raised red flags and stirred controversy since its belated insertion into the 2005 highway bill.

For months, Mack said he was not involved and knew nothing about the earmark’s inclusion in the massive highway bill — even though it was a high priority for the university in his district and he was a member of the House Transportation panel when the earmark was placed in the bill.

Mack has since pledged to reverse the earmark. But the March 2006 letter appears to undercut Mack’s efforts to distance himself from the Coconut Road controversy and shows that Mack was willing to support construction of the interchange after the earmark’s passage.

“The Coconut Road Interchange, built in conjunction with the [Florida Gulf Coast University] Transportation Management Center, stands to be the cutting-edge demonstration project in America to study and improve hurricane and crisis evacuation transportation safety programs,” Mack wrote in the letter, which was addressed to Florida Gulf Coast University (FGCU) President William Merwin. A copy was obtained by The Hill.

Citing southwest Florida’s “phenomenal growth” and the critical role that I-75 plays as an evacuation route and in the region’s economy, “there is not a more appropriate place in the country to locate this demonstration program,” Mack wrote.

Mack letter supported Coconut Road

More here at Citizens Against Government Waste (CAGW):
CAGW Applauds Florida County Agency for Refusing Earmark

So, OK. That all makes sense now. 🙂 Just business as usual for the GOP. No worries! LOL
2 Kryten42 { 01.19.08 at 8:08 am }: Hi Bryan,

I tried posting a comment with some links etc earlier, but it hasn’t appeared. Tried again and was told it’s a duplicate. Did I trip a SPAM filter or something? 🙂

Cheers.
3 Bryan { 01.19.08 at 1:16 pm }: It’s “or something”, Kryten. Whenever a comment has more than a certain number of links it is held for moderation as possible spam by WordPress blogs, unless you go in and change settings.

It usually is developers, when something like this occurs, but they should be happy it didn’t get through or they might have to do something in the worst housing market anyone can remember since Flagler built his railroad. Too bad the developer didn’t get stuck with several hundred houses that no one can afford.

If I lived on Coconut Road I would have probably been manning the barricades to stop the construction.
4 Kryten42 { 01.19.08 at 7:05 pm }: Hi Bryan,

I figured it was *something* wasn’t sure what as there wasn’t a message. 🙂

And you are right about the developer! LOL *sigh* The locals did the right thing of course… but may have been better *justice* to allow it! Then again… Wouldn’t surprise me if the developer had some way out of that anyway. They are like snakes… 🙂

I think, on balance, it’s better this way. 🙂 The locals served notice that they are not putting up with this crap. Mind you, if you have a look at that Estero FL website reports about it all, it did originally get approved. But in the end, sanity prevailed. 🙂

Nice to see! And in Florida yet! LOL

Cheers. 🙂
5 Bryan { 01.19.08 at 10:42 pm }: There are a lot of things that get through the initial stages of the process before anyone really looks at them. I can’t tell you the number of town and county council meetings I’ve been to where the actual text of the proposals is totally unfamiliar to the people who are voting on these things. The politicians have a nasty habit of voting the way their staffs tell them to vote.

Yes, Minister governments don’t just exist in Britain.