Our Elected Representatives Already Serve as Lobbyists
Our Elected Representatives Already Serve as Lobbyists
Editor,
I could not disagree more with your editorial calling for lobbyists hired by San Benito County taxpayers to pry money out of Sacramento for our highways (“Lobbyist Would Help Get Our Piece of Pie,” March 14).
We already have lobbyists – we elect them to office. We already pay them, and we send sufficient tax money to Sacramento and Washington to pay for highways.
Our problem is that our leaders divert huge portions of gas tax and other tax revenues from highways to mass transit boondoggles.
We didn’t need more bond debit nor higher taxes. What we need are new priorities for spending the mountains of money that Sacramento already got.
Reports that San Francisco and Los Angeles are disappointed with how “little the California Transportation Commission is sending them from the Proposition 1B bonds” is our reality. They are demanding more, even though San Francisco received $422,000 per year when I last crunched their data and Los Angeles received even more.
They control our Legislature and the CTC. And Traffic World reported during the Congressional debate on the last highway bill porkfest in Washington that some of the new breed of transport infrastucture “lobbyists” were being hired on a contingent fee basis. If so, I’m in the wrong business. What is one-third of $326 billion? (My calculator won’t go that high.)
If we hired lobbyists, and were still shortchanged, would we then need to hire lobbyists to lobby the original lobbyists we hired?
Lobbyists practice their profession immune from voter’s displeasure, unlike assemblymembers and congressional delegates, who can be voted out of office by us under our constitutions.
Instead of lobbyists, let’s have policy reform, before gas prices get any higher.
We haven’t seen trouble like the trouble we’ll see if people start taking mass transit. Do the math. We currently move .004 percent of San Benito County’s annual trips by county transit for about $18 million tax dollars (operating costs only). Calculate the progression by just a few doublings.
I say again: Iceberg dead ahead!
Joseph P. Thompson
Tres Pinos
