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Minnesota House of Representatives

State Representative Bob Barrett

287 State Office BuildingState Office Building
100 Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Blvd.
651-296-5377

For more information contact: House GOP Communications 651-296-5520

Posted: 2011-03-10 00:00:00
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NEWS RELEASE

Light rail transit funding letter to Met Council Chair

Representative Bob Barrett sent the following letter to Met Council Chair Susan Haigh:

Dear Council Chair Haigh,

I am writing to you as an author of HF 843, a bill intended to suspend construction on the Central Corridor light rail transit project until such time as full federal funding is guaranteed, and substantial outstanding legal issues are resolved.
HF 843 would mandate nothing more than simple prudence—don’t spend money you might not get—and I write to encourage you to suspend construction even prior to the passage of our bill.
As you know, $145 million has already been spent on design and construction work on the project, despite the fact that the largest single revenue source for completion of the project—a federal full-funding grant agreement—has yet to be finalized.
The Obama Administration has expressed support for the Central Corridor project, but as you know the President proposes and Congress disposes. Federal New Starts money is on the chopping block, with many members of Congress concerned about our $14 trillion dollar national debt looking for ways to reduce spending, especially on non-essential items. Lacking a federal commitment to the project, it seems unwise to commit even larger sums of local property and sales tax dollars to a project that is at risk of not being funded.
In an MPR story, the Met Council’s point person for the project Mark Fuhrmann is quoted as saying "We are at the 99.9 percent confidence level.” Nancy Homans, the point person on the project for St. Paul Mayor Chris Coleman told MPR that "I have every confidence that it's going to happen the way it's always happened before, but we don't count our chickens before they're hatched.”
Respectfully, spending tens or hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars on a project which may not be funded is indeed “counting your chickens before they hatch.” Should the federal matching funds fail to materialize, the taxpayers of Ramsey and Hennepin County could be on the hook for nearly $400 million in additional property taxes. Putting them in that position is irresponsible in the extreme.
In my view, HF 843 should never have had to be introduced. Minnesota taxpayers agreed to support the Central Corridor project through bonding dollars, and in return we expected the Metropolitan Council and the local governments to uphold their fiduciary duties to the taxpayers. It appears that you are failing to do so, and inviting the Legislature to act.
In addition to the lack of current federal dollars, the lack of an accurate economic impact study is also a large concern. A just completed draft study estimates revenue loss for neighborhood small businesses at between 0% and 2.5%. The reaction from local small business has been consistent and can be summarized as, “Are you kidding me!?” Given this unbelievable draft study, we are also asking that the Metropolitan Council quantify the expected negative economic impact that this project will have on businesses along the rail line. Just to be clear, what we are asking is a simple statement saying:
“The Central Corridor is estimated to have a negative impact on local businesses in the amount of $xxx,xxx,xxx.”
In addition to this sentence, we are asking for a detailed analysis to be included that supports that conclusion.
Given Minnesota’s $5 billion dollar state deficit and given our need to have ALL Minnesota businesses on sound footing to help in the recovery, it would be negligent in the extreme to move forward on a project that; a) has a funding hole of $394 million and b) dramatically understates the negative economic impact to the community and state.
The Metropolitan Council is a creation of state government, receives a large fraction of its budget from state taxpayers, and its members are subject to approval by the State Senate. It has a responsibility to protect the interests of both local and state taxpayers, who may be asked to cover a substantial fraction of the shortfall should federal dollars not materialize to complete the project. Given the fact that the state budget is strained to the breaking point, neither I nor many of my colleagues would be inclined to support a request for further state dollars as a substitute for federal funds which did not materialize.
My colleagues and I at the State Legislature are not asking you to abandon the Central Corridor project, but merely to suspend work until such time the full funding of the project is guaranteed and all the important issues are answered accurately. Given the magnitude of the potential shortfall--$394 million according to media reports—that seems only prudent.

Sincerely,
Rep. Bob Barrett
Rep.
Mark Buesgens
Rep. Bob Gunther
Rep. Linda Runbeck

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