We are working on convincing voters that the Democratic party believes that government can do good

[question everything]

But when we look at the disaster of the Southwest rail line in the west metro, it is hard.

Met Council: Funding to plug Southwest light rail's $534M shortfall to be identified by end of year

https://www.startribune.com/met-council-funding-to-plug-southwest-light-rails-534m-shortfall-to-be-identified-by-end-of-year/600205120/

How can there be such a shortfall? And I think that there are still problem with the route, with damages so apartment buildings along the route.

I have not followed closely the development of the rail; I don't live along it. But when regular voters hear about all the problems, they can be justified by casting doubt on the good the government agencies can do.

[TigressDem]

1. We don't control the Senate. THEY have final say of council member confirmation.

https://ballotpedia.org/Party_control_of_Minnesota_state_government



DEMS have the solution, more transparency and accountability by having these council members elected by the voters.


https://www.mprnews.org/story/2022/09/02/auditor-report-half-a-billion-dollars-of-southwest-lrt-project-unfunded

State Sen. Scott Dibble, DFL-Minneapolis, who serves on the state Senate Transportation Finance and Policy Committee, said the Met Council seemed to turn a blind eye to anticipated costs that should have been publicly vetted.

“We have an agency that needs a lot more oversight, transparency and accountability,” he said. “The only real remedy to that is to make sure that the people who are in charge of running all of the services and all of the infrastructure for which they’re responsible have to be elected. We can’t simply have a bureaucracy that has no real measure of accountability to the public it serves.”

Dibble said he’ll introduce a bill next session to make the Metropolitan Council elected by voters. The members of the council are currently appointed by the governor and confirmed by the state Senate. Dibble said there’s a growing consensus that an organization like the Metropolitan Council that spends billions of taxpayer dollars needs to be transparent to the public and accountable to voters.





BOTTOM LINE... DELAYS to handle unforeseen problems and ADD ONS that will ultimately make the project better.


Since 2011, the cost to build the 14.5 mile extension of the Metro Green Line has more than doubled to $2.74 billion.

The legislative auditor found that about $225 million of the additional costs were approved by the Metropolitan Council in April and include a previously deferred station in Eden Prairie, a longer concrete barrier between freight rail and light rail lines and problems with construction of the tunnel through Minneapolis’ Kenilworth Corridor.

The federal government is currently funding $969 million of the project and Hennepin County has committed $772 million, with an additional $200 million from the Hennepin County Regional Railroad Authority. The rest of the funding is being supplied by cities and the state of Minnesota. That leaves an estimated $535 million that’s unfunded.

The auditor determined the delays and increases in building costs are due to uncertainty about whether freight rail lines would be relocated. In 2014, the Metropolitan Council decided that plan wouldn’t work, and decided to build the light rail lines next to the freight rail.

The legislative auditor’s report also found that the delays themselves have ballooned the budget due to higher costs for materials and the expense of employing consultants and construction contractors for longer time periods.

[progree]

2. Deliberately low-balled this horrible project in the beginning. And after.

https://www.cbsnews.com/minnesota/news/swlrt-special-review-legislative-auditor-finds-over-500m-of-2-74b-budget-is-unfunded/

The report determined that some of these change orders were expected when the Council opened bidding for the construction contracts, but it didn't include the expected added costs in the project's scope.

Sen. Scott Dibble, DFL-Minneapolis, a leading critic of the handling of this project whose district captures part of the transit line, called this finding a "bombshell."

"This was deceptive. This was misleading. This was hiding important information from the public, from policymakers," he said in an interview Friday. "It's really quite outrageous."

Back when the cost estimate was $2.003 Billion, the Hennepin County taxpayer share of that was $879 million.
There were 536,000 households in Hennepin County in 2021. https://stats.metc.state.mn.us/profile/detail.aspx
So the Hennepin County share alone is $1640 per Hennepin County household on average

The federal, state, and other county shares are all extra to this. Operating subsidies are extra.

Now with the extra $740 million in project costs, probably most of that extra will be paid by Hennepin County taxpayers (the feds don't match cost overrruns and doubt the Minnesota legislature is going to appropriate more), this will surely drive the cost to about $2,000 per Hennepin County household on average. Primarily paid for by sales taxes -- the most regressive of all the major taxes.

As a Hennepin County taxpayer, I am extremely very angry that we are paying that kind of money to gold-plate one 14.5 mile route.

As a transit dependant person, I think our funds can and should be far better spent than pissing our money away on 14.5 miles, just so some damn politicians can cut ribbons while blathering Met Council talking points about shiny new trains.

I HAVE been following blow-by-blow the Southwest LRT and Bottineau / Blue Line Extesnion projects for nearly a decade, and I've been screaming and hollering about it.

I am not an anti-tax nut, and I am strongly pro-transit. But this is horribly poorly spent.

The Met Council are chronic liars. Yes, I have some examples of how those fuckiers lied about this project in the past, besides the excerpt above. Like when they tried to make it sound like the $135 million match from Minnesota that they tried to get back in 2016 would be matched 9:1 by the federal government -- well, they made it sound that way without technically lying, but it was a deliberatly grossly misleading propaganda piece. Actually half of the match would have come from county and city taxpayers, but they of course didn't mention that because they are sub-animals.

[brush]

3. How is that the fault of Democrats?

And surely funding from the infrastructure bill, passed by Democrats, will flow to it.

[question everything]

4. I don't know whose fault it is

Only that a government body seems to have screwed it up and too many like to remember Reagan's infamous quip of the "worst words" I am from the government and I am here to help.