Florida's CFO says too risky for state to take on CSX liability. State to bear passenger liability.

[madfloridian]

It's a really bad deal being pushed hard by Republicans and accepted by Democrats with hardly a whimper. Amazing how that happens so often in Florida.

Democratic CFO Alex Sink, the lone Democratic voice in Florida's leadership...fears that the state could not even get the needed insurance policy underwritten.

This is corporate welfare. Taking the burden off CSX for everything but its damaged equipment. It's an outrage.

Sink Says Revised CSX Rail Deal Still Flawed

LAKELAND | The revised rail deal with CSX is still too risky for the state, Chief Financial Officer Alex Sink said Friday.

"It doesn't suit me; I've told them there are flaws," Sink said during an interview while attending a fundraiser sponsored by the Lakeland Democrats Club's Committee for Change at Carillon Lakes.

Sink raised similar concerns about a different version of the agreement that was before the Florida Legislature last year. She said her concern is that CSX has no liability for damages in accidents, even if the company was to blame because one of its engineers was under the influence of drugs and a CSX train hit a commuter train and killed or injured passengers.

"The state has to bear the liability for the passengers," she said.

"All CSX would have to worry about is the damage done to its own train and equipment."

She does not think the state would be able to get the needed amount of insurance.

Sink said she also is uncomfortable with the provision that includes the state's purchase of a $200 million liability insurance policy.

"We don't even know if we can get a $200 million policy," she said.

"We don't know whether someone would underwrite that risk."

Sink said she had no idea what kind of financial risk the state would be exposed to because of the CSX deal.

"It's hard to say," she said.

This paper recently had an editorial which questioned where were the checks and balances in this state....and asked who was actually running the state.

Florida's economy crashes, state holds $795 million in cool cash for CSX.

WHO'S RUNNING STATE GOVERNMENT?

DOT officials say that because the CSX money was appropriated by the Legislature in 2006 for the commuter line, hence, for CSX, it does not need the Legislature's approval to move forward with the project. That, of course, begs the question: Who, exactly, is running state government, and what happened to checks and balances?

It is outrageous that the state of Florida would allow teachers to be laid off, poor people to be denied access to health care and other support services, infrastructure to be neglected and universities to turn away qualified students while it has access to $795 million of unencumbered taxpayers' money. All because a company with deep pockets, a record profit, and an army of lobbyists and its patrons in the Legislature want to pay too much for a commuter-rail line that is not even guaranteed of being a success.

I notice there is a blog set up to fight this terrible horrible very bad deal.

Wrong Track 4 Florida

One lone Florida Republican moderate senator has fought this battle nearly on her own. Paula Dockery has fought all the way to stop this secret deal done by Jeb and his cronies. It was done without the knowledge of many legislators. Paula's husband wrote a scathing letter to the editor about the deal.

Top Florida Republican accuses Jeb Bush of brokering the harmful CSX deal...

n November 2004, CSX executives made a half-billion-dollar pitch to Bush's Florida Department of Transportation. That pitch is now being played out in an impending agreement to pay CSX $491 million of taxpayers' money to move some of its freight trains off what they call the A Line, running down the east central part of Florida to Orlando over to the S Line, running down through west central Florida: Gainesville, Ocala, Plant City and Lakeland. The terminus is Winter Haven, where CSX wants to build a huge intermodal logistics center.

The payoff for CSX's Ward was $36 million in salary and benefits paid to him in 2005 and 2006.

Much of the funding for the $491 million, a first-of-a-kind deal for a private company, was accomplished in the 2005 session of the Florida Legislature. The Tampa Tribune reported in its Nov. 28 edition that few legislators knew of the Bush-backed Senate Bill 360 where the funding was inserted just before midnight on the last day of the legislative session, May 6.

Perhaps it's worth knowing that Ward's CSX predecessor was John Snow, who left CSX to head up theU.S. Treasury Department for Gov. Bush's brother, President George W. Bush.

It helps to have friends in high places.

Yes, it does, especially when Democrats over all are silent and complicit.

Thanks to Alex Sink for speaking out.

[Atman]

1. Google Treasury Secy John Snow. It's all you need to know.

Dear friend of the Bushies, the CSX CEO was offered a million-dollar-plus bonus if he was able to land a job within the Bush Administration. Hmmmmm. Now, why would a company offer that? Anyway, he got the job...as Treasury Secretary. LOTS of good things began to happen to CSX immediately, not the least of which was the plan to transport all of the nation's nuclear waste to the Yucca Debacle Waste Depository on trains and rail lines owned by -- you guessed it! -- CSX.

The Florida deal was a Jeb Bush product, sucking life from the state long after Jeb is gone. Much the same as with any other Bush Family machination, we all feel the affects of their self-serving greed and cronyism decades after they've slithered away.

.

[madfloridian]

3. Right in the middle of the whole mess.

Jeb rammed this through when he was gov and he is still behind the wheel.

[Donnachaidh]

2. Doesn't the Carlisle Group own CSX? n/t

[madfloridian]

4. You know, I am not sure.

I think there is a connection, just not sure what.

[madfloridian]

5. Most Floridians simply don't care.

That so much money is going to CSX while teachers are being laid off, the needy are losing health care, and people are losing their related jobs.

:shrug:

[imdjh]

9. So what is this deal supposed to accomplish?

Other than making it easier to completely pave and suburbanize even more of Florida's farmland and interior wastelands? Other than making the people of Hillsborough County feel as trapped by interior development as Pinellas countians now do by Hillsborough's endless suburban sprawl?

[The Backlash Cometh]

6. If they're not on the take, they have 101 reasons to decline a project.

All of them beginning with: Too much money.

[lib2DaBone]

7. CSX Deal Brokered by Jeb Bush...? Surprise....

I could be wrong.. but I thought (I remembered) reading that Jeb Bush had brokered the CSX Rail deal deal before he left office?

Notice that it had nothing to do with rail lines or improving service or serving the tax-payers with transportation. It was soley a "profit" propaganda. The main motive (as always) how much can the Bankster/Gangsters reap from this deal?

If anyone has information on the Offshore Drilling contracts owned by Jeb Bush... it would be interesting to see. Is Katherine Harris still romping around on her Ponies with her breast implants? (Implants bought and paid for by the Republican party.. I might add)

As soon as they can get gasoline back up to $4 a gallon.... the Bush's can make some real money. BTW... they don't give a rat's ass about you or your family. (in case you didn't know)

[madfloridian]

8. Yep, and Jeb gets real testy like when someone says it was his secret deal.

He got rude with some reporters at the forum at Southeastern Bible College...oops make that Southeastern University now.

But it was his secret deal. Many of the Republicans in the legislature did not even know it was going on.