Motorists are paying more than 102% of the cost of highway construction and maintenance with our gas taxes. Meanwhile, transit riders are paying only about 1% of all costs, fixed, capital and operational of their transit rides. Most bus seats are transported empty in SBC, have been forever, back to when bankrupt-from-conception COG was created.
Fraud, waste and abuse are hallmarks of COG and its unelected directors, who issue fraudulent financial reports to conceal the truth about their financial boondoggles’ waste of tax dollars.
Instead of diverting our gas taxes to radical socialist boondoggles, instead of raising taxes on the already over-taxed taxpayers and motorists, why not end the waste, the fraud and the abuse, instead?
I’ve said for more than 20 years that COG should be abolished. It is a failure by any rational measure, unless you’re one of the public-sector employees who are paid salaries and benefits not found in private sector carriers.
So, who are the COG directors keeping the monstrosity COG running for? Not for the motorists and taxpayers, that’s for darn sure. We ought to privatize transit, abolish COG, and let Public Works do what they did before COG was created. We’d have more transportation and lower taxes if we did. But COG’s unelected directors never put that on their agenda.
I know, I’ve tried, but never even got to first base. Your predecessor did, however, publish a few of my letters, for all the good they ever did. Why don’t you ask him?
Caveat viator.
Joseph P. Thompson, Esq.
Charter Member, SBCCOG Citizens Transit Task Force
