There has been a lot of criticism among Pinellas County Tea Party members about the penny sales tax referendum for a light rail initiative that could come before county voters in the next year or two.
That's why there was an effort made by pro-rail advocates to attend in large numbers at Monday afternoon's PSTA (Pinellas Suncoast Transit Authority) workshop that discussed the possible initiative, to show that there is in fact public support for the possibility.
However, it was only a workshop, meaning no public comment was solicited. That left the 80-100 people in the audience to endure a lengthy presentation by PSTA's CEO and Executive Director Brad Miller, a lecture that began with him discussing the basic fundamentals of transportation funding in America, such as the fact that most sectors of it rely on public subsidies. That was a rebuke to the comment that such a rail system "doesn't pay for itself," a familiar argument that conservatives used in Hillsborough County for that referendum in 2010 that lost by 19 percentage points.
This article appears in Jun 14-20, 2012.